• Thomas Buergenthal
• Castan Centre for Human Rights Law

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08 October 2009Justice Thomas Buergenthal, International Court of Justice and former child prisoner, presented this 2009 Castan Centre Annual Lecture in association with Holding Redlich and the Melbourne Writers Festival.

Justice Thomas Buergenthal, formerly of the UN Human Rights Committee and the Inter-American Court of Human Rights, is currently a judge at the International Court of Justice in The Hague. He was imprisoned as a child in Nazi concentration camps.

At the age of seven Buergenthal was imprisoned in Nazi ghettos and camps, being rescued by Soviet and Polish troops when he was eleven. Separated from his parents in Auschwitz and surviving the 'Death March' of 1945 he was miraculously reunited with his mother a year and a half later. The rest of his family and almost all of his friends were killed. After experiencing the turmoil of Europe's post-war years - from the Battle of Berlin, to a Jewish orphanage in Poland - Buergenthal went to America in the 1950s at the age of seventeen. He eventually became one of the world's leading experts on international law and human rights. His story of survival and his determination to use law and justice to prevent further genocide is an epic journey through 20th century history. Buergenthal gives his perspective - as a child - on life in the camps. And, uniquely, he shows how his past has informed his understanding of the modern day war-crimes he sees as a judge. His book is both a special historical document and a great literary achievement, comparable only to Primo Levi's masterpieces.