East West Street: A Song Of Good And Evil

Internationally renowned human rights lawyer and author Philippe Sands returns to Lviv for a special performance-lecture based on his acclaimed book East West Street: On the Origins of "Genocide" and "Crimes Against Humanity."

In this performance-lecture, Philippe Sands will trace the intertwined stories of Hersch Lauterpacht and Raphael Lemkin — two legal scholars who independently originated the modern concepts of "crimes against humanity" and "genocide." Lviv/Lemberg/לעמבערג/Lwów is crucial as the city where Lauterpacht and Lemkin studied at the same university, but at different times and without knowing each other. These two legal concepts were argued for the first time at the Nuremberg trial itself, where the paths of Lauterpacht and Lemkin converged with that of Hans Frank, Hitler's former lawyer and governor of occupied Poland, who stood trial for his life. The story of Philippe Sands's own family is woven into the performance, making it at once a personal memoir and an exploration of how the foundations of international human rights law were laid.

Accompanying Sands on piano is acclaimed French jazz pianist Guillaume de Chassy, performing excerpts by Bach, Beethoven, Rachmaninov, and Leonard Cohen — the same music that, remarkably, connected prosecutors and the accused at the Nuremberg trials.

The performance-lecture has been staged around the world, including the Cashel Arts Festival in Ireland, the Middle Temple and Opera North in the UK, the Isi Foighel Day human rights lecture in Copenhagen, and the Montreal Holocaust Museum. This chamber format now returns to Lviv, where the full theatrical staging of the piece was performed at the Lviv Philharmonic Hall in 2017, with narrators Philippe Sands and Katja Riemann, bass-baritone Laurent Naouri, Guillaume de Chassy on piano, and Emanuel Ax as a special guest, returning to the city of his birth. 

Co-organizers:

• NGO "Publishers' Forum"
• Center for Urban History
• Staryi Lev Publishing House
• Lviv City Council
• Dnistrianskyi Centre for Law and Politics

This event is presented as part of Lviv BookForum and the public program "From Place to Place: Stories from Scattered Archives" of the "REHERIT 2.0: Common Responsibility for Shared Heritage" project. 

The 33rd Lviv International BookForum is organized with the support of the Ukrainian Cultural Foundation as part of the "Flagship Events" program, the International Renaissance Foundation, the Canadian non-governmental organization "Ukrainian-Jewish Encounter," the Lviv Regional Military Administration, and the Lviv City Council. The festival is organized by the NGO "Publishers' Forum." 

The "REHERIT 2.0" project is implemented by the Center for Urban History and the "Regional Development" Center of the PPV Economic Development Agency with financial support from the European Union.

Credits

Cover Image: photo by Iryna Sereda / Art Performance "East West Street. A Song of Good and Evil", 2017 / Center for Urban History