Summary of Philippe Sands's East West Street

By IRB Media

Please note: This is a companion version & not the original book. Book Preview:

#1 I have a memory of my grandfather, Leon, from the 1960s, when he was living in Paris with his wife, Rita. They lived in a two-bedroom apartment with a tiny kitchen on the third floor of a worn nineteenth-century building. There was a silence about the past, and Leon encouraged me in the direction of the law.

#2 I had many happy memories of visiting my grandparents’ house, but it never seemed to me to be a place of joy. I could sense the heaviness and tension of foreboding and silence around the rooms.

#3 I sat with my mother in her bright living room in north London, two old briefcases before us. They were crammed with Leon’s photographs and papers, newspaper clippings, telegrams, passports, identity cards, letters, notes.

#4 I left London for Lviv in late October, during a gap in my work schedule, to represent Georgia in The Hague against Russia. The plane flew over the Ukrainian spa town of Truskavets, through a cloudless sky, so we could see the Carpathian Mountains and Romania.

• Language: English
• Publisher: IRB Media
• Release date: May 13, 2022
• ISBN: 9798822517196

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Insights on Philippe Sands's East West Street

Contents

Insights from Chapter 1

Insights from Chapter 2

Insights from Chapter 3

Insights from Chapter 4

Insights from Chapter 5

Insights from Chapter 6

Insights from Chapter 7

Insights from Chapter 8

Insights from Chapter 9

Insights from Chapter 10

Insights from Chapter 1

#1

I have a memory of my grandfather, Leon, from the 1960s, when he was living in Paris with his wife, Rita. They lived in a two-bedroom apartment with a tiny kitchen on the third floor of a worn nineteenth-century building. There was a silence about the past, and Leon encouraged me in the direction of the law.

#2

I had many happy memories of visiting my grandparents’ house, but it never seemed to me to be a place of joy. I could sense the heaviness and tension of foreboding and silence around the rooms.

#3

I sat with my mother in her bright living room in north London, two old briefcases before us. They were crammed with Leon’s photographs and papers, newspaper clippings, telegrams, passports, identity cards, letters, notes.

#4

I left London for Lviv in late October, during a gap in my work schedule, to represent Georgia in The Hague against Russia. The plane flew over the Ukrainian spa town of Truskavets, through a cloudless sky, so we could see the Carpathian Mountains and Romania.

#5

I went to Lviv to find Leon’s house. I had an address from his birth certificate, which was prepared in 1938 by one Boleslaw Czuruk of Lwów. The building was constructed in 1878, and was divided into six apartments. There were four shared toilets.

#6

Leon was born in this house, and his family roots led to nearby Zhovkva, known as Żółkiew when his mother, Malke, was born there in 1870. The town was famous for its cheeses, sausages, or bread.

#7

I learned that the Buchholz family, including Leon, was from Żółkiew, a town that was thriving under the Habsburgs. It was a center of commerce, culture, and learning.

#8

Żółkiew, 1890 The town was the home of Malke’s family. It was a mix of Poles, Jews, and Ukrainians. The town was laid out according to a typical pattern, with a marketplace at the intersection of two streets.

#9

In January 1913, Leon’s older sister Gusta left Lemberg for Vienna, to marry Max Gruber, a Branntweinverschleisser. Pinkas attended the ceremony, signing the marriage certificate against a backdrop of unrest in the Balkans. Serbia had allied with Bulgaria and Montenegro and gone to war against the Ottoman Empire.

#10

In September 1914, Leon moved in with Gusta and her husband, Max Gruber, in Vienna. His family was one of the tens of thousands to emigrate from Galicia to Vienna. The war caused large numbers of Jewish refugees to come to Vienna.

#11

In 1916, at the age of twelve, Leon graduated from the Franz Joseph Realschule in Vienna. He never spoke about his sisters, Malke and Laura, who had lived in Lwów, Żółkiew, and Vienna, but their family history was gradually being defined.

#12

In 1923, Leon returned to Lwów to obtain a passport. He discovered that he didn’t have Austrian nationality, as an obscure treaty signed in 1919 made him a Polish citizen.

#13

Leon’s Polish passport, 1923, declared that anyone born in Lwów before the treaty was signed in 1919 would be deemed a Polish citizen. This legal quirk would later save his life and that of my mother.

#14

Leon had become a distiller of spirits, with his own shop at 15 Rauscherstrasse, in Vienna’s 20th District. He kept one photograph from that period, taken in March 1928,