THE JUDGMENT CAME as a relief to Lauterpacht. His arguments on crimes against humanity, endorsed by the tribunal, were now a part of international law. The protection of the individual, and the idea of individual criminal responsibility for the worst crimes, would be a part of the new legal order. The sovereignty of the state would no longer provide absolute refuge for crimes on such a scale, in theory at least.
Shortly after the judgment, he received a note from Shawcross. “I hope you will always feel some satisfaction in having had this leading hand in something which may have a real influence on the future conduct of international relations.” If he felt any such satisfaction, he never mentioned it publicly or even privately. Not to his son, not to Inka.
Lemkin’s reaction was different. He was devastated by the silence on genocide, compounding his earlier sense of the “Nuremberg nightmare.” There was no mention in the judgment even that it had been argued, or that it was supported by three of the four prosecuting powers. (My own experience before international courts is that the summary of the arguments made, even if without success, offers some comfort; it also opens the door to future arguments in other cases.) Lemkin was equally horrified that the crimes committed before the war were entirely ignored.
Later Lemkin met Henry King, a junior American prosecutor, who described the Pole as “unshaven” and “disheveled,” his clothing in tatters. Lemkin confided that the verdict was “the blackest day” of his life. It was worse even than the moment he learned, a month earlier, that Bella and Josef had perished.
Leon received news of the judgment in Paris. The following morning, Lucette, a young girl who lived nearby, collected my mother, Leon’s eight-year-old daughter, and walked her to school. Lucette observed Leon in prayer, a ritual he went through every morning, to offer a sense of connection, he would tell my mother, a sense of “belonging to a group that had disappeared.”
Leon never told me what he thought of the trial or the judgment, whether such a thing could ever be adequate as a means of accountability. He was delighted, however, by my choice of career.