Philip Rubenstein
How Should We Remember Henry Kissinger?
Summary
It was only a matter of minutes after the announcement of Henry Kissinger’s death on 29 November 2023 that Rolling Stone magazine published an obituary under the heading “Henry Kissinger, War Criminal Beloved by America’s Ruling Class, Finally Dies.” In his lifetime, Henry Kissinger was as reviled as he was revered. His critics damned him for prolonging the Vietnam war, the secret bombing of Cambodia, the overthrow of Chile’s elected president and enabling a massacre in East Timor by Indonesia’s Suharto. His admirers praised him as the architect of detente with the Soviet Union, orchestrator of America’s opening to communist China, and broker of the peace agreement between Egypt and Israel. In this talk, Philip Rubenstein asks, who was Henry Kissinger? And how should he be remembered today?
Philip Rubenstein
Philip Rubenstein was director of the Parliamentary War Crimes Group, which, in the mid-to-late 1980s, campaigned to bring Nazi war criminals living in the UK to justice. Philip was also the founder-director of the Holocaust Educational Trust and played a role in getting the study of the Shoah onto the national school’s curriculum in the UK. These days, he works with family businesses, advising on governance and continuity from one generation to the next.
He was married. He was married more than once. And he had two children, I believe from his first marriage.
It’s terrible to say there have been benchmarks because governments and militaries do have their own benchmarks. It’s a matter of pragmatics, but certainly not one of morality.
It was still relatively possible at that time. I wouldn’t say easily, but with greater ease in 1938, before Kristallnacht. So it was not the impossibility that it later became.