Scott Gilmore was majoring in Jewish studies at Montreal’s McGill University when he discovered the potency of Yiddish literature to confront crimes against humanity — and realized his life’s calling.

“I found writers who grappled with how to speak the unspeakable and make meaning out of atrocity,” says Gilmore, now a staff attorney for the San Francisco-based Center for Justice and Accountability. “I focused on modernist Yiddish literature as a response to political violence and mass trauma. It’s a mission I struggle with myself as a war-crimes lawyer.”

…

Gilmore and Beth Van Schaack, a visiting professor in human rights at Stanford Law School, told about 50 audience members at the JCC that the Colvin suit was one of the few ways of holding the Assad government accountable.

Russia blocks any cases against Syria from reaching the International Criminal Court, so the Colvin case was filed under a U.S. law that allows suits against entities the State Department designates as state sponsors of terrorism.

“It’s a narrow case, it’s a single victim, but it’s emblematic of what’s we’re seeing” on a large scale in Syria, Van Schaack said.

Read More