June 1, 2025 • 23 mins
How are we to make sense of the swirling chaos around us? The multiple wars, accusations of wrongdoing, and human carnage? And how can we possibly have civilised conversations about it all?
British barrister and author Philippe Sands, is uniquely placed to guide us through this moment. It’s not just that he’s an expert on crimes against humanity, who has won cases against former Chilean dictator, Augusto Pinochet. But he understands the personal toil of it all; he’s written about the Nazi SS officer who might have been responsible for the death of one of his family members.
Today, Philippe Sands, who recently visited Australia for the Sydney Writers Festival, on helping to defend Palestine at the International Court of Justice. And the breakups he’s experienced with friends, over their comments about Israel.
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S1 (00:01):
From the newsrooms of the Sydney Morning Herald and The Age.
This is the morning edition. I'm Samantha Selinger Morris. It's Monday,
June 2nd. How are we to make sense of the
swirling chaos around us, the multiple wars, accusations of wrongdoing
(00:21):
and human carnage? And how can we possibly have civilized
conversations about it all? Lucky for us, British barrister and
author Philippe Sands is uniquely placed to guide us through
this moment. It's not just that he's an expert on
crimes against humanity who has won cases against former Chilean
dictator Augusto Pinochet, but he also understands the personal toil
(00:44):
of historic tragedies. He's written about the Nazi SS officer
who might have been responsible for the death of one
of his family members. Today, Phillippe Sands, who recently visited
Australia for the Sydney Writers Festival on helping to defend
the Palestinian Authority at the International Court of Justice and
the breakups he's experienced with friends over their comments about Israel. So, Philippe,
(01:15):
we have to start with your latest book, 38 Landry Street.
In part, it's about how the former Chilean dictator Augusto
Pinochet escaped to Chile unpunished after being arrested and charged
with crimes against humanity and genocide. Now you were involved
in the case to try to hold him to account
in Britain. Tell us, what were you arguing and why?
(01:36):
In the end, did Pinochet not get his day in court?
S2 (01:39):
Well, thank you for that question. I was originally contacted
by his lawyers, asked to act for him. I would
have done so because we have a principle at the
English bar, as in many bars in Australia and elsewhere,
called the cab rank principle. We don't turn down cases
because we don't like the person's politics or the cut
of their jib or whatever. But, uh, my wife told
(02:02):
me she would divorce me if I did the case, and, um,
I didn't do the case. And then Human Rights Watch
came along, and I acted against Pinochet. And what that meant,
amongst other things, was I had a front row seat
throughout the 500 or so days that he was incarcerated
in London, through all the shenanigans and proceedings. It was
an incredible story. So Augusto Pinochet was the head of
(02:24):
the army in Chile. And on September the 11th, 1973, he, uh,
led a coup d'état overthrowing a democratically elected leftist socialist president,
Salvador Allende, who would die by his own hand during
the events of that day. And for the next 17
(02:44):
years he was head of state. From the very first days,
the military junta determined that there were many undesirables who
would be got rid of and got rid of meant, um, detained. Tortured,
killed or disappeared. And to this day 1300 people are
(03:05):
still disappeared. And the upshot was the then Home Secretary,
Jack straw, decided in January 2000 that he was not
fit for trial. And one of the storylines in this
book is, was he indeed not fit for trial, or
was it a ruse to get him back?
S1 (03:23):
Okay, well, let's get to Walter Rauff because of course,
he is a great focus of of your book as well.
He was a Nazi SS officer involved in the invention
of the gas vans that were the precursor to the
gas chambers in the concentration camps where millions of people
were murdered during the Holocaust. Now, Walter Rauff also escaped justice.
Tell us about how and where he escaped to, because
(03:46):
you really couldn't make it up. And let's just start
there because you really couldn't make it up.
S2 (03:51):
You really couldn't. I mean, you really couldn't. So he
oversees the operation of these mobile gas vans in 1941
and One. In 1942, hundreds of thousands of human beings
are murdered in this way. He gets up to various
other nasties. He's off to Tunisia, where he's responsible for
the extermination of the Jews. And he then is posted
(04:14):
in Milan, where he's responsible for rounding up and getting
rid of partisans, leftists, and so on and so forth.
To this day, he's still a hated figure in in Milan.
His name is notorious. He escaped first to Syria and
then makes his way via Italy to South America.
S3 (04:33):
Ralph had every reason to hide. In 1940, he had
deployed gas chamber trucks in Eastern Europe to assist SS
commandos in the mass murdering of communists, gypsies, the handicapped
and above all, Jews.
S2 (04:47):
Where in 1956, he and his wife Edith meet a
charming Chilean couple who tell them they are in the
wrong country and they should really be in Chile, where
they love people like him. And there's a fine German community.
S4 (05:03):
The key to his whereabouts was here in Santiago. A
local telephone directory produced the first clue. A check through
its columns revealed this name. The only house listed in
the city.
S2 (05:15):
And he becomes the manager of a king crab cannery.
He fights off an effort to extradite him to West
Germany for prosecution for crimes against humanity and genocide. And
then on September 11th, 1973, the day of the coup
to which we had just made mention miracle of miracles,
his friend from Quito, Ecuador, becomes head of state of
(05:37):
Chile because it is none other than Augusto Pinochet.
S5 (05:40):
A sleepy street some kilometers from the city center. Suddenly
the unexpected happened. Approaching from the north end of Los
Pozos was a man himself, SS Obersturmbannführer Walter Rauff, the
alleged murderer of a quarter of a million human beings.
S1 (05:58):
And really, is it legal limitations that in the end,
prevented him from being convicted. Seeing his day in court,
because my understanding is that Germany requested to extradite him
to Chile, and that the Chilean Supreme Court declined on
the grounds that the country's laws applied to the crimes
Ralph was accused of committing, and that the statute of
limitations had expired. So that's really key to this, isn't it?
S2 (06:21):
Spot on. Spot on. Basically. Chile had a rule which
said for an extradition to take place, the crime alleged
must have occurred no more than 15 years earlier. So
the crimes of the gas vans had occurred in 41
and 42, 21, 22 years had passed, and therefore the
Chilean Supreme Court, by six votes to one, ruled that
(06:43):
he could not be extradited, and he goes back to
his job and runs the King Crab Cannery. I mean,
the guy is a raging anti-Semite for the rest of
his life. Every year he celebrates the Fuhrer's birthday. There
are sing songs with other old Nazi comrades. A truly
nasty piece of work. And there's no question he had
a visceral hatred not only of Jews, but also of
(07:05):
communists and other and many others. And he adhered to
the same views for the entirety of his life.
S1 (07:11):
And there's another personal connection which I have to ask
you about, because, of course, 38 Landry Street isn't just
a detective legal thriller, it really is partly a memoir,
and you have a personal connection. I think it can
be said to Walter Rauff really in the most horrible
of ways. I believe some of your relatives probably died
in Ralph's gas vans. So who were these relatives and how,
(07:31):
if in any way, did this impact your writing?
S2 (07:34):
Yeah, I find this very touching. It was only in
writing East West Street that I really came to understand
what had happened to my mother and her family in
Vienna in 1938 and 1939, and I came to learn
the full details of how she was taken to safety
by a remarkable lady, an evangelical Christian missionary called Elsie Tilney.
(07:54):
Elsie Tilney travels from Paris to the West Bahnhof in
Vienna to pick up two little girls. One is my mother, Ruth,
and the other is my mother's 12 year old cousin, Herta.
And Herta at the station decides she cannot bear to
be separated from her mother and stays in Vienna. And
(08:15):
two years later, Herta and her mother are deported from
Vienna with my great grandmother to Poland, and they end
up in the ghetto. In lodge and lodge is where
the mobile gas van had a serious activity, and the
materials on the mobile gas vans fingering Valter Ralph um
(08:38):
appear in the Nuremberg trial in relation to the Lodz Ghetto.
And so there appears to be a direct connection between
the murder of Herta Gruber and her mother and and
Valter Ralph. And that is, of course, very personal. And again,
as I as I said before, in a sense that
makes it more real and, and and even more alive,
(08:59):
but it also makes it more difficult because when you've
got a personal element, the way I write my books,
I do want to keep a certain distance. I don't
want to get overly emotional. I don't want to, you know,
do a great big sob story. That's not my style
of writing. And it becomes much more difficult to distance
yourself when there are family members involved. And that does produce,
(09:22):
in some readers a sentiment of how could you talk
to this person or give that person space? But that
is really, I think, what makes the books have more
resonance and have more readers, because I'm leaving it to
the readers to form their own views and their own emotions.
I don't want to impose my emotions on the readers,
(09:43):
but at times, to be honest, it is. It's difficult.
It's very difficult.
S1 (09:46):
Totally understandable. And it leads me to my next thing
I really wanted to ask you about, because just last year,
you were involved in an incredibly consequential case in the
International Court of Justice on behalf of Palestine for the
removal of Israel's occupation of the Palestine territories. And, well,
I guess, how did you come to that role? Is
it something you wanted to take on in particular?
S2 (10:08):
Sure. No, I mean, I do. So I have three lives.
I'm a professor at the university. I'm a barrister, and
I do. I only do cases before international courts, and
I and I write books. I have been involved for
15 years on a case for a small African country
called Mauritius against the United Kingdom, and it concerned the
illegal occupation by the United Kingdom of an archipelago, the
(10:31):
Chagos Archipelago, which included one island, Diego Garcia, well known
where there's a large US military base. And that turned
on what's called the right of self-determination, the right of
a people to determine for themselves what their future direction
is going to be. So after the Chagos case, the
decision on that came down from the International Court of
(10:51):
Justice in 2019. A year or so later, members of
the team on the Mauritius case were invited by the
Palestinian Authority in, uh, in New York at the United Nations.
Would we be involved in a similar request from the
General Assembly of the United Nations? And, of course, it's
(11:12):
a very sensitive issue for a lot of people. Um,
but this was a technical issue on the right of
self-determination of an entire people in relation to the territory
of the West Bank in relation to Gaza. And I
had no problem doing it. And I'm often asked about this,
you know, and I'll say, you know, the fact that
I did the case for Mauritius, um, on self-determination, on Chagos,
(11:37):
in which the United Kingdom is in a sense the
opposing party doesn't make me anti-British. And and I think
it's exactly the same doing a case on self-determination for
the Palestinian Authority. To be clear, I would not have
done it for Hamas. This is the Palestinian Authority, an
entity which recognizes the right of Israel to exist, meant
(11:57):
that it was a no brainer. But for many people,
you know, it's crossing a line. It's inappropriate. That's not
how I function. And the reality is many of my
cases involve sensitive issues. And that's because I believe ultimately,
my social function as a barrister in these cases is
to contribute to the development of the rule of law.
That's really what it's about. So I did participate in
(12:19):
the case at the International Court of Justice, then gave
its decision, and it ruled very clearly that the Palestinian
people have a right of self-determination and that right of
self-determination has been violated and is being violated. And of course,
right now we have all the debate and the discussion
in relation to the horrors that happened on October the
7th and the horrors that have happened subsequently and are
(12:42):
continuing to this day about the creation of a Palestinian state.
And we're shortly going to have a big conference at
the UN and some countries that have not been willing
to recognize a Palestinian state because of what the court
has said on the right of self-determination, now appear to
be on the cusp of doing so. And, you know,
I understand these things are very contentious and different people
(13:04):
have very different views about it. And, um, and I
respect many of those views, but ultimately my commitment is
to the idea of the rule of law.
S1 (13:12):
Well, this is why I am so delighted to have
you on today, because I feel like we're in a
similar situation before we started recording. I'll tell the listeners,
both you and I are Jewish, and we are both
reflecting on what a febrile environment this now is to
be discussing these issues. And I just wanted to ask
you for people who are having conversations about Israel and
Gaza in particular, all the issues you've just mentioned who
(13:35):
are struggling to to converse in any sort of productive way,
because I've noticed, I guess, since October 7th in particular,
that people who advocate for Palestine or they advocate for Israel,
they seem to be really blocked from feeling compassion, perhaps
for the other side, or perhaps understanding what each other feels. And,
you know, I'm just wondering if do you have any
(13:56):
advice and tell me about any uncomfortable conversations you've had,
if any. You know, in particular, possibly from Jewish people
who have said, well, you know.
S6 (14:03):
I mean, these are as.
S2 (14:04):
You as you rightly say, these are intensely personal things.
And I think it's for each person to find their
own path. I found a path that I'm very, very
comfortable with. I mean, I was appalled by what happened
on October the 7th, and I sensed, as many others did,
that it was going to be followed by further horrors
(14:25):
as it has been. I joined with, um, half a
dozen other British Jewish lawyers, including the former president of
the British Supreme Court, David Neuberger, in writing a piece
for the Financial Times about 2 or 3 weeks after
the events of October the 7th. And we made three points.
And I stick to those three points. They are my
(14:47):
guiding lines. One what happened on October the 7th was
a crime under international law. Whatever name you give it,
it was wrong and it was criminal and it was outrageous.
Ages to Israel as a sovereign state has a right
of self-defense. It cannot possibly stand by while such things
are happening. But, and this is where things get more tricky. Three.
(15:11):
The exercise of that right of self-defense must be in
accordance with the norms of international law. That means you
cannot target civilians. You cannot starve people. You cannot seek
to purify a territory. As an Israeli minister has apparently
recently said, there was some criticism of us that we
were somehow assuming that one crime on October the 7th
(15:36):
would be followed by another crime. But that is, of course,
what has happened. I mean, there's no way to conclude
that what is happening in Gaza today is lawful. Anything
more than what happened on October the 7th is lawful.
And that is my roadmap for going forward. I use
the rules of international law to provide guidance for me
(15:57):
as to what is right for me and what is
wrong for me. But I respect that it is for
each person to find their own path.
S1 (16:05):
Okay, now I really appreciate that. I think those are
excellent points, but I did want to follow up by asking,
do you have any conversational tools or tools of narrative
or something? Because you're a very unique person. You aren't
just a barrister who's, you know, who focuses the facts,
and it's very clinical, perhaps in its way, but you're
also a storyteller. You know, you're this interesting combination of things.
And I've noticed in my own conversations with people on
(16:28):
opposite sides of the political spectrum that whatever rational point
you make on either side, there's a counter, right. So,
for instance, you know, you might say what you've just said,
and someone who's advocating for Israel would say, well, you know,
the proceedings are illegitimate. You know, that's what Israel, of course,
has argued about that case that you were involved with
at the International Court of Justice. So I'm just wondering,
is it about appealing to people's primal emotions? You know,
(16:50):
that people, no matter where they are, they deserve safety.
They deserve dignity. They deserve humanity. Like, how can we
appeal to people? Because for whatever fact you give, there's
going to be a counter fact, right? Like I often find,
that devolves into chaos and recriminations. Do you?
S2 (17:05):
Yeah.
S6 (17:06):
Yeah. Up to up to a point. I mean, to
come back to link that.
S2 (17:08):
Question to the previous question, I've ended a number of
relationships and friendships because of positions adopted by people in
relation to this particular conflict. October the 7th and subsequently.
I have no truck with extremist views on either side.
People who fail to have a position of empathy for
(17:31):
any person of innocence who gets caught up in this horror,
whether it is the people who are lined up and
executed on October the 7th, or the people in Gaza
who are on the receiving end of the horrors that
are continuing. And so, for example, when one former colleague
of mine tries to say to me that what happened
on October the 7th was not an act of execution
(17:53):
or murder, people just got caught in the crossfire. I
haven't spoken to that person since. I just I don't
want to engage with those kinds of views on either side.
I will, you know, they want to have those views.
I'm not going to change those views. I'll stick to
my to my position. And I think that the way
(18:13):
I've managed to go through, as I said, is with
a roadmap, um, you know, the argument, frankly, that what
happened at the International Court of Justice on self-determination in
Palestine is illegitimate. It's just it's just a nonsense. It's
an absolute nonsense. I go back to a conversation that
I had in relation to another case. I'm involved as
(18:33):
counsel right now in the case brought by The Gambia
against Myanmar in relation to the allegations of genocide in
relation to the Rohingya. Um, a community in Myanmar. And
five years ago, I was involved in the first aspect
of that case, and I was on a panel in, uh, uh,
George Washington University in Washington, DC with a former American
(18:57):
judge at the International Court of Justice, a wonderful man
called Thomas Bergenthal, who has written, incidentally, for your listeners,
an extraordinary book called A Lucky Child, A Book of
Great Humanity. Tom Bergenthal, at the age of ten, was
at Auschwitz and was under the care of a medical
doctor called Josef Mengele. So Thomas Bergenthal knows what it
(19:17):
means to be on the receiving end of horror. And
he said to me, can you imagine, Philippe, this is
in relation to the Rohingya case at the international court.
If in 1944, when I was in Auschwitz, there had
been a piece of paper called a convention on crimes
against humanity or genocide or against torture or whatever, and
there had been an international court and a far away
(19:38):
country had gone to that international court and said, Germany,
you cannot treat people in this way. He wasn't drawing
an analogy, but he was basically saying the existence of
these institutions and these obligations under international law, which came
out of the horrors of the 1940s, would have given
(19:59):
us hope. They may not have changed the situation and.
Institutions and the idea and the ideal of the rule
of law offers another way of. Going. And I think
that is the message that is extremely important for me.
You know, in that case, in the hearings in the,
in The Hague, uh, I was for Gambia against Myanmar.
(20:20):
I sat literally next to an San Suu Kyi who
was leading the case for Myanmar, the former Nobel Peace
Prize winner. She was the agent of Myanmar, and I
didn't like much that she said that day. But one
thing she said that really has stayed with me. She said, Mr. President,
members of the court, we don't agree on much. But
(20:41):
one thing is clear. The only language we have in
common is the language of international law. And I thought
that was very interesting. And that is emblematic of, I think,
my approach to the way forward.
S1 (20:55):
That's fascinating. And I guess I wanted to ask you,
you know, you've worked in this space as a barrister.
You've researched the history of various crimes against humanity. I'd
love to know your long view. You know, do the
perpetrators of hideous crimes against people, whether it's Jewish people
or Palestinians or Chileans, do the perpetrators of these crimes
more often than not meet their justice?
S2 (21:16):
No they don't. And it's rare for the former head
of state who's committed crimes to get the tap on
the shoulder. That is what happened to Augusto Pinochet. And
that is what is so remarkable about that story. It
was the first time in human history that a former
head of state of one country is arrested in the
territory of another country for international crimes committed elsewhere. I've
(21:39):
said this. I think many times the idea of justice,
both domestically and internationally, is a long game. And we're
in it for the long run. You can't imagine that
in 1945, these new rules were created, and then all
of a sudden, everyone keels over and says, oh, yes, absolutely.
I'm going to comply with all these new obligations. Life
just isn't like that. I take my cue from my
(22:00):
favorite poet singer in the whole world, someone I listen
to every single day.
S1 (22:05):
I'm going to guess you can. Leonard Cohen, Leonard Cohen.
I knew it only because I read an interview with you.
And I think you were playing anthem.
S2 (22:12):
Yes. And it is a line from anthem. There is
a crack in everything. That's how the light gets in.
It's the line that guides me. It's the line that
keeps us going in the darkest of times, even right now,
as we see on the ground in Gaza, images of
(22:33):
apparent starvation, which are, I think, very painful for all
people of good faith and decency. We just have to
keep going, even though it's difficult and even though it's
unlikely very often that the rules themselves, whether it's October
the 7th or subsequently, whether it's Sudan, whether it's Ukraine,
whether it's many other places in the world that the
(22:53):
rules themselves will not, with immediate effect, stop the horrors.
But they provide a modicum of hope.
S1 (23:03):
It has been an absolute pleasure speaking with you. Thank
you so much for your time.
S2 (23:08):
Oh thank you. I've really enjoyed the conversation so beautifully.
Well prepared.
S1 (23:15):
Today's episode of The Morning Edition was produced by myself
and Tammy Mills. Tom McKendrick is our head of audio.
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(23:39):
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in the show. Notes. I'm Samantha Selinger Morris. Thanks for listening.
From the newsrooms of the Sydney Morning Herald and The Age.
This is the morning edition. I'm Samantha Selinger Morris. It's Monday,
June 2nd. How are we to make sense of the
swirling chaos around us, the multiple wars, accusations of wrongdoing
(00:21):
and human carnage? And how can we possibly have civilized
conversations about it all? Lucky for us, British barrister and
author Philippe Sands is uniquely placed to guide us through
this moment. It's not just that he's an expert on
crimes against humanity who has won cases against former Chilean
dictator Augusto Pinochet, but he also understands the personal toil
(00:44):
of historic tragedies. He's written about the Nazi SS officer
who might have been responsible for the death of one
of his family members. Today, Phillippe Sands, who recently visited
Australia for the Sydney Writers Festival on helping to defend
the Palestinian Authority at the International Court of Justice and
the breakups he's experienced with friends over their comments about Israel. So, Philippe,
(01:15):
we have to start with your latest book, 38 Landry Street.
In part, it's about how the former Chilean dictator Augusto
Pinochet escaped to Chile unpunished after being arrested and charged
with crimes against humanity and genocide. Now you were involved
in the case to try to hold him to account
in Britain. Tell us, what were you arguing and why?
(01:36):
In the end, did Pinochet not get his day in court?
S2 (01:39):
Well, thank you for that question. I was originally contacted
by his lawyers, asked to act for him. I would
have done so because we have a principle at the
English bar, as in many bars in Australia and elsewhere,
called the cab rank principle. We don't turn down cases
because we don't like the person's politics or the cut
of their jib or whatever. But, uh, my wife told
(02:02):
me she would divorce me if I did the case, and, um,
I didn't do the case. And then Human Rights Watch
came along, and I acted against Pinochet. And what that meant,
amongst other things, was I had a front row seat
throughout the 500 or so days that he was incarcerated
in London, through all the shenanigans and proceedings. It was
an incredible story. So Augusto Pinochet was the head of
(02:24):
the army in Chile. And on September the 11th, 1973, he, uh,
led a coup d'état overthrowing a democratically elected leftist socialist president,
Salvador Allende, who would die by his own hand during
the events of that day. And for the next 17
(02:44):
years he was head of state. From the very first days,
the military junta determined that there were many undesirables who
would be got rid of and got rid of meant, um, detained. Tortured,
killed or disappeared. And to this day 1300 people are
(03:05):
still disappeared. And the upshot was the then Home Secretary,
Jack straw, decided in January 2000 that he was not
fit for trial. And one of the storylines in this
book is, was he indeed not fit for trial, or
was it a ruse to get him back?
S1 (03:23):
Okay, well, let's get to Walter Rauff because of course,
he is a great focus of of your book as well.
He was a Nazi SS officer involved in the invention
of the gas vans that were the precursor to the
gas chambers in the concentration camps where millions of people
were murdered during the Holocaust. Now, Walter Rauff also escaped justice.
Tell us about how and where he escaped to, because
(03:46):
you really couldn't make it up. And let's just start
there because you really couldn't make it up.
S2 (03:51):
You really couldn't. I mean, you really couldn't. So he
oversees the operation of these mobile gas vans in 1941
and One. In 1942, hundreds of thousands of human beings
are murdered in this way. He gets up to various
other nasties. He's off to Tunisia, where he's responsible for
the extermination of the Jews. And he then is posted
(04:14):
in Milan, where he's responsible for rounding up and getting
rid of partisans, leftists, and so on and so forth.
To this day, he's still a hated figure in in Milan.
His name is notorious. He escaped first to Syria and
then makes his way via Italy to South America.
S3 (04:33):
Ralph had every reason to hide. In 1940, he had
deployed gas chamber trucks in Eastern Europe to assist SS
commandos in the mass murdering of communists, gypsies, the handicapped
and above all, Jews.
S2 (04:47):
Where in 1956, he and his wife Edith meet a
charming Chilean couple who tell them they are in the
wrong country and they should really be in Chile, where
they love people like him. And there's a fine German community.
S4 (05:03):
The key to his whereabouts was here in Santiago. A
local telephone directory produced the first clue. A check through
its columns revealed this name. The only house listed in
the city.
S2 (05:15):
And he becomes the manager of a king crab cannery.
He fights off an effort to extradite him to West
Germany for prosecution for crimes against humanity and genocide. And
then on September 11th, 1973, the day of the coup
to which we had just made mention miracle of miracles,
his friend from Quito, Ecuador, becomes head of state of
(05:37):
Chile because it is none other than Augusto Pinochet.
S5 (05:40):
A sleepy street some kilometers from the city center. Suddenly
the unexpected happened. Approaching from the north end of Los
Pozos was a man himself, SS Obersturmbannführer Walter Rauff, the
alleged murderer of a quarter of a million human beings.
S1 (05:58):
And really, is it legal limitations that in the end,
prevented him from being convicted. Seeing his day in court,
because my understanding is that Germany requested to extradite him
to Chile, and that the Chilean Supreme Court declined on
the grounds that the country's laws applied to the crimes
Ralph was accused of committing, and that the statute of
limitations had expired. So that's really key to this, isn't it?
S2 (06:21):
Spot on. Spot on. Basically. Chile had a rule which
said for an extradition to take place, the crime alleged
must have occurred no more than 15 years earlier. So
the crimes of the gas vans had occurred in 41
and 42, 21, 22 years had passed, and therefore the
Chilean Supreme Court, by six votes to one, ruled that
(06:43):
he could not be extradited, and he goes back to
his job and runs the King Crab Cannery. I mean,
the guy is a raging anti-Semite for the rest of
his life. Every year he celebrates the Fuhrer's birthday. There
are sing songs with other old Nazi comrades. A truly
nasty piece of work. And there's no question he had
a visceral hatred not only of Jews, but also of
(07:05):
communists and other and many others. And he adhered to
the same views for the entirety of his life.
S1 (07:11):
And there's another personal connection which I have to ask
you about, because, of course, 38 Landry Street isn't just
a detective legal thriller, it really is partly a memoir,
and you have a personal connection. I think it can
be said to Walter Rauff really in the most horrible
of ways. I believe some of your relatives probably died
in Ralph's gas vans. So who were these relatives and how,
(07:31):
if in any way, did this impact your writing?
S2 (07:34):
Yeah, I find this very touching. It was only in
writing East West Street that I really came to understand
what had happened to my mother and her family in
Vienna in 1938 and 1939, and I came to learn
the full details of how she was taken to safety
by a remarkable lady, an evangelical Christian missionary called Elsie Tilney.
(07:54):
Elsie Tilney travels from Paris to the West Bahnhof in
Vienna to pick up two little girls. One is my mother, Ruth,
and the other is my mother's 12 year old cousin, Herta.
And Herta at the station decides she cannot bear to
be separated from her mother and stays in Vienna. And
(08:15):
two years later, Herta and her mother are deported from
Vienna with my great grandmother to Poland, and they end
up in the ghetto. In lodge and lodge is where
the mobile gas van had a serious activity, and the
materials on the mobile gas vans fingering Valter Ralph um
(08:38):
appear in the Nuremberg trial in relation to the Lodz Ghetto.
And so there appears to be a direct connection between
the murder of Herta Gruber and her mother and and
Valter Ralph. And that is, of course, very personal. And again,
as I as I said before, in a sense that
makes it more real and, and and even more alive,
(08:59):
but it also makes it more difficult because when you've
got a personal element, the way I write my books,
I do want to keep a certain distance. I don't
want to get overly emotional. I don't want to, you know,
do a great big sob story. That's not my style
of writing. And it becomes much more difficult to distance
yourself when there are family members involved. And that does produce,
(09:22):
in some readers a sentiment of how could you talk
to this person or give that person space? But that
is really, I think, what makes the books have more
resonance and have more readers, because I'm leaving it to
the readers to form their own views and their own emotions.
I don't want to impose my emotions on the readers,
(09:43):
but at times, to be honest, it is. It's difficult.
It's very difficult.
S1 (09:46):
Totally understandable. And it leads me to my next thing
I really wanted to ask you about, because just last year,
you were involved in an incredibly consequential case in the
International Court of Justice on behalf of Palestine for the
removal of Israel's occupation of the Palestine territories. And, well,
I guess, how did you come to that role? Is
it something you wanted to take on in particular?
S2 (10:08):
Sure. No, I mean, I do. So I have three lives.
I'm a professor at the university. I'm a barrister, and
I do. I only do cases before international courts, and
I and I write books. I have been involved for
15 years on a case for a small African country
called Mauritius against the United Kingdom, and it concerned the
illegal occupation by the United Kingdom of an archipelago, the
(10:31):
Chagos Archipelago, which included one island, Diego Garcia, well known
where there's a large US military base. And that turned
on what's called the right of self-determination, the right of
a people to determine for themselves what their future direction
is going to be. So after the Chagos case, the
decision on that came down from the International Court of
(10:51):
Justice in 2019. A year or so later, members of
the team on the Mauritius case were invited by the
Palestinian Authority in, uh, in New York at the United Nations.
Would we be involved in a similar request from the
General Assembly of the United Nations? And, of course, it's
(11:12):
a very sensitive issue for a lot of people. Um,
but this was a technical issue on the right of
self-determination of an entire people in relation to the territory
of the West Bank in relation to Gaza. And I
had no problem doing it. And I'm often asked about this,
you know, and I'll say, you know, the fact that
I did the case for Mauritius, um, on self-determination, on Chagos,
(11:37):
in which the United Kingdom is in a sense the
opposing party doesn't make me anti-British. And and I think
it's exactly the same doing a case on self-determination for
the Palestinian Authority. To be clear, I would not have
done it for Hamas. This is the Palestinian Authority, an
entity which recognizes the right of Israel to exist, meant
(11:57):
that it was a no brainer. But for many people,
you know, it's crossing a line. It's inappropriate. That's not
how I function. And the reality is many of my
cases involve sensitive issues. And that's because I believe ultimately,
my social function as a barrister in these cases is
to contribute to the development of the rule of law.
That's really what it's about. So I did participate in
(12:19):
the case at the International Court of Justice, then gave
its decision, and it ruled very clearly that the Palestinian
people have a right of self-determination and that right of
self-determination has been violated and is being violated. And of course,
right now we have all the debate and the discussion
in relation to the horrors that happened on October the
7th and the horrors that have happened subsequently and are
(12:42):
continuing to this day about the creation of a Palestinian state.
And we're shortly going to have a big conference at
the UN and some countries that have not been willing
to recognize a Palestinian state because of what the court
has said on the right of self-determination, now appear to
be on the cusp of doing so. And, you know,
I understand these things are very contentious and different people
(13:04):
have very different views about it. And, um, and I
respect many of those views, but ultimately my commitment is
to the idea of the rule of law.
S1 (13:12):
Well, this is why I am so delighted to have
you on today, because I feel like we're in a
similar situation before we started recording. I'll tell the listeners,
both you and I are Jewish, and we are both
reflecting on what a febrile environment this now is to
be discussing these issues. And I just wanted to ask
you for people who are having conversations about Israel and
Gaza in particular, all the issues you've just mentioned who
(13:35):
are struggling to to converse in any sort of productive way,
because I've noticed, I guess, since October 7th in particular,
that people who advocate for Palestine or they advocate for Israel,
they seem to be really blocked from feeling compassion, perhaps
for the other side, or perhaps understanding what each other feels. And,
you know, I'm just wondering if do you have any
(13:56):
advice and tell me about any uncomfortable conversations you've had,
if any. You know, in particular, possibly from Jewish people
who have said, well, you know.
S6 (14:03):
I mean, these are as.
S2 (14:04):
You as you rightly say, these are intensely personal things.
And I think it's for each person to find their
own path. I found a path that I'm very, very
comfortable with. I mean, I was appalled by what happened
on October the 7th, and I sensed, as many others did,
that it was going to be followed by further horrors
(14:25):
as it has been. I joined with, um, half a
dozen other British Jewish lawyers, including the former president of
the British Supreme Court, David Neuberger, in writing a piece
for the Financial Times about 2 or 3 weeks after
the events of October the 7th. And we made three points.
And I stick to those three points. They are my
(14:47):
guiding lines. One what happened on October the 7th was
a crime under international law. Whatever name you give it,
it was wrong and it was criminal and it was outrageous.
Ages to Israel as a sovereign state has a right
of self-defense. It cannot possibly stand by while such things
are happening. But, and this is where things get more tricky. Three.
(15:11):
The exercise of that right of self-defense must be in
accordance with the norms of international law. That means you
cannot target civilians. You cannot starve people. You cannot seek
to purify a territory. As an Israeli minister has apparently
recently said, there was some criticism of us that we
were somehow assuming that one crime on October the 7th
(15:36):
would be followed by another crime. But that is, of course,
what has happened. I mean, there's no way to conclude
that what is happening in Gaza today is lawful. Anything
more than what happened on October the 7th is lawful.
And that is my roadmap for going forward. I use
the rules of international law to provide guidance for me
(15:57):
as to what is right for me and what is
wrong for me. But I respect that it is for
each person to find their own path.
S1 (16:05):
Okay, now I really appreciate that. I think those are
excellent points, but I did want to follow up by asking,
do you have any conversational tools or tools of narrative
or something? Because you're a very unique person. You aren't
just a barrister who's, you know, who focuses the facts,
and it's very clinical, perhaps in its way, but you're
also a storyteller. You know, you're this interesting combination of things.
And I've noticed in my own conversations with people on
(16:28):
opposite sides of the political spectrum that whatever rational point
you make on either side, there's a counter, right. So,
for instance, you know, you might say what you've just said,
and someone who's advocating for Israel would say, well, you know,
the proceedings are illegitimate. You know, that's what Israel, of course,
has argued about that case that you were involved with
at the International Court of Justice. So I'm just wondering,
is it about appealing to people's primal emotions? You know,
(16:50):
that people, no matter where they are, they deserve safety.
They deserve dignity. They deserve humanity. Like, how can we
appeal to people? Because for whatever fact you give, there's
going to be a counter fact, right? Like I often find,
that devolves into chaos and recriminations. Do you?
S2 (17:05):
Yeah.
S6 (17:06):
Yeah. Up to up to a point. I mean, to
come back to link that.
S2 (17:08):
Question to the previous question, I've ended a number of
relationships and friendships because of positions adopted by people in
relation to this particular conflict. October the 7th and subsequently.
I have no truck with extremist views on either side.
People who fail to have a position of empathy for
(17:31):
any person of innocence who gets caught up in this horror,
whether it is the people who are lined up and
executed on October the 7th, or the people in Gaza
who are on the receiving end of the horrors that
are continuing. And so, for example, when one former colleague
of mine tries to say to me that what happened
on October the 7th was not an act of execution
(17:53):
or murder, people just got caught in the crossfire. I
haven't spoken to that person since. I just I don't
want to engage with those kinds of views on either side.
I will, you know, they want to have those views.
I'm not going to change those views. I'll stick to
my to my position. And I think that the way
(18:13):
I've managed to go through, as I said, is with
a roadmap, um, you know, the argument, frankly, that what
happened at the International Court of Justice on self-determination in
Palestine is illegitimate. It's just it's just a nonsense. It's
an absolute nonsense. I go back to a conversation that
I had in relation to another case. I'm involved as
(18:33):
counsel right now in the case brought by The Gambia
against Myanmar in relation to the allegations of genocide in
relation to the Rohingya. Um, a community in Myanmar. And
five years ago, I was involved in the first aspect
of that case, and I was on a panel in, uh, uh,
George Washington University in Washington, DC with a former American
(18:57):
judge at the International Court of Justice, a wonderful man
called Thomas Bergenthal, who has written, incidentally, for your listeners,
an extraordinary book called A Lucky Child, A Book of
Great Humanity. Tom Bergenthal, at the age of ten, was
at Auschwitz and was under the care of a medical
doctor called Josef Mengele. So Thomas Bergenthal knows what it
(19:17):
means to be on the receiving end of horror. And
he said to me, can you imagine, Philippe, this is
in relation to the Rohingya case at the international court.
If in 1944, when I was in Auschwitz, there had
been a piece of paper called a convention on crimes
against humanity or genocide or against torture or whatever, and
there had been an international court and a far away
(19:38):
country had gone to that international court and said, Germany,
you cannot treat people in this way. He wasn't drawing
an analogy, but he was basically saying the existence of
these institutions and these obligations under international law, which came
out of the horrors of the 1940s, would have given
(19:59):
us hope. They may not have changed the situation and.
Institutions and the idea and the ideal of the rule
of law offers another way of. Going. And I think
that is the message that is extremely important for me.
You know, in that case, in the hearings in the,
in The Hague, uh, I was for Gambia against Myanmar.
(20:20):
I sat literally next to an San Suu Kyi who
was leading the case for Myanmar, the former Nobel Peace
Prize winner. She was the agent of Myanmar, and I
didn't like much that she said that day. But one
thing she said that really has stayed with me. She said, Mr. President,
members of the court, we don't agree on much. But
(20:41):
one thing is clear. The only language we have in
common is the language of international law. And I thought
that was very interesting. And that is emblematic of, I think,
my approach to the way forward.
S1 (20:55):
That's fascinating. And I guess I wanted to ask you,
you know, you've worked in this space as a barrister.
You've researched the history of various crimes against humanity. I'd
love to know your long view. You know, do the
perpetrators of hideous crimes against people, whether it's Jewish people
or Palestinians or Chileans, do the perpetrators of these crimes
more often than not meet their justice?
S2 (21:16):
No they don't. And it's rare for the former head
of state who's committed crimes to get the tap on
the shoulder. That is what happened to Augusto Pinochet. And
that is what is so remarkable about that story. It
was the first time in human history that a former
head of state of one country is arrested in the
territory of another country for international crimes committed elsewhere. I've
(21:39):
said this. I think many times the idea of justice,
both domestically and internationally, is a long game. And we're
in it for the long run. You can't imagine that
in 1945, these new rules were created, and then all
of a sudden, everyone keels over and says, oh, yes, absolutely.
I'm going to comply with all these new obligations. Life
just isn't like that. I take my cue from my
(22:00):
favorite poet singer in the whole world, someone I listen
to every single day.
S1 (22:05):
I'm going to guess you can. Leonard Cohen, Leonard Cohen.
I knew it only because I read an interview with you.
And I think you were playing anthem.
S2 (22:12):
Yes. And it is a line from anthem. There is
a crack in everything. That's how the light gets in.
It's the line that guides me. It's the line that
keeps us going in the darkest of times, even right now,
as we see on the ground in Gaza, images of
(22:33):
apparent starvation, which are, I think, very painful for all
people of good faith and decency. We just have to
keep going, even though it's difficult and even though it's
unlikely very often that the rules themselves, whether it's October
the 7th or subsequently, whether it's Sudan, whether it's Ukraine,
whether it's many other places in the world that the
(22:53):
rules themselves will not, with immediate effect, stop the horrors.
But they provide a modicum of hope.
S1 (23:03):
It has been an absolute pleasure speaking with you. Thank
you so much for your time.
S2 (23:08):
Oh thank you. I've really enjoyed the conversation so beautifully.
Well prepared.
S1 (23:15):
Today's episode of The Morning Edition was produced by myself
and Tammy Mills. Tom McKendrick is our head of audio.
To listen to our episodes as soon as they drop,
follow the Morning Edition on Apple, Spotify, or wherever you
listen to podcasts. Our newsrooms are powered by subscriptions, so
to support independent journalism, visit The Age or smh.com.au. Subscribe
(23:39):
and to stay up to date, sign up to our
Morning Edition newsletter to receive a summary of the day's
most important news in your inbox every morning. Links are
in the show. Notes. I'm Samantha Selinger Morris. Thanks for listening.
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