Frankfurt Book Fair: He fights against silence

Philippe Sands, 65, British-French lawyer and writer with Jewish-Ukrainian roots, is this year's winner of the German Book Trade's Peace Prize. He has tried Serbian war crimes cases at international courts; he caused the immunity of former Chilean dictator Augusto Pinochet to be lifted; he ensured that Britain had to return the Chagos Archipelago to Mauritius; He represented the Rohingya people against the then head of government of Myanmar, Aung San Suu Kyi (a Nobel Peace Prize winner), and also the Palestinian Authority.

No one can explain international law in such simple, clear terms as Sands.

His grandfather comes from Lemberg, Lviv, in the Ukraine, escaped the Holocaust, and when Sands received an invitation to give a lecture there 16 years ago, he discovered who else came from there: the two men who once helped create international law by inventing the terms “crimes against humanity” and “genocide”. No one can explain international law in such simple, clear terms as Sands. “Peace needs justice,” he says in the Paulskirche. "Justice needs rules. Rules need law. And law and order apply universally, not selectively."

These are sentences that make everyone clap, including the Federal President and the Federal Minister of Justice in the front row, who have the brochure with the speeches in their seat and therefore perhaps know what is about to come. Four paragraphs later, Sands is no longer with Pinochet, with the destruction of nature, with Myanmar. In this speech, these examples are actually only – if you can put it like that – a prelude. He wants to talk here about Israel's actions in the Gaza Strip and about Germany's behavior towards it. "Germany knows about ethnic cleansing. Then why the silence?" asks Sands.

Everything claps. Only the Federal Minister of Justice and the Federal President keep their hands on their thighs.

Silence and the fact that you have to overcome it - that is basically the theme of this man's life, and also here in Paul's Church. He says: “Silence – and silence about crime – is what I challenge and write about.” The silence about international crimes must be broken, and that includes crimes “perhaps committed by a state that was founded to protect individuals who suffered acts in the name of the German state.” The German silence on Gaza and the West Bank is “still loud today”. The entire audience claps, in the front row the mayor of Frankfurt (who was born in Syria in 1983) claps, only the Federal Minister of Justice and the Federal President, both to his right, keep their hands on their thighs.

Clapping is always a statement. A private person only claps for himself, not for anyone else. Officials, on the other hand, also represent their country when they clap, and a sequence with the head of state clapping at this point: That would have been newsworthy. So Frank-Walter Steinmeier seeks salvation in, well, silence. And then, very affectionately, offers him her arm. The two of them had a topic when they left.