"An uncovering of secret pasts, and a book that explores the creation and development of world-changing legal concepts that came about as a result of the unprecedented atrocities of Hitler's Third Reich. The personal and intellectual evolution of the two men who simultaneously originated the ideas of "genocide" and "crimes against humanity," both of whom, not knowing the other, studied at the same university with the same professors, in a city little known today that was a major cultural center of Europe, "the little Paris of Ukraine," a city variously called Lemberg, Lwow, Lvov, or Lviv. The author began by learning about the extraordinary city with its rich cultural and intellectual life, home to his maternal grandfather, a Galician Jew who had been born there a century before and who'd moved to Vienna at the outbreak of the First World War. The author uncovered, clue by clue, the deliberately obscured story of his grandfather's mysterious life, and of his mother's journey as a child surviving Nazi occupation. Sands searched further into the history of the city of Lemberg and realized that his own field of humanitarian law had been forged by two men - Rafael Lemkin and Hersch Lauterpacht - each of whom had studied law at Lviv University, and each considered to be the father of the modern human rights movement. Sands looks at who these two very private men were, and at how and why, coming from similar Jewish backgrounds and the same city, each developed the theory he did, showing how each man dedicated this period of his life to having his legal concept -"genocide" and "crimes against humanity" - as a centerpiece for the prosecution of Nazi war criminals."--Provided by publisher.

"This is a Borzoi book published by Alfred A. Knopf." --- Title page verso. 2017-04

An invitation -- Leon -- Lauterpacht -- Miss Tilney of Norwich -- Lemkin -- The man in the bow tie -- Frank -- The child who stands alone -- Nuremberg -- The girl who chose not to remember -- Judgment -- To the woods.