Philippe Sands represented Human Rights Watch in Pinochet’s trial. He returns to the case to reveal a shocking and previously untold story linking the horrors of the 1940s with the present day.

The house at 38 Londres Street is home to the legacies of two men whose personal stories span continents, nationalities and decades of atrocity: Augusto Pinochet, President of Chile, and Walther Rauff, a Nazi SS officer responsible for the use of gas vans.

On the run from justice at the end of the Second World War, Rauff crosses the ocean to southern Chile. He settles in Punta Arenas, Patagonia, managing a king crab cannery at the end of the world. But there are whispers about this discreet and self-possessed German – rumours of a second career with Pinochet’s secret intelligence service, the dreaded DINA.

In 1998, Pinochet is in a London medical clinic when the police enter his room and arrest him on charges of crimes against humanity and genocide. A young Philippe Sands is called to advise the former head of state on his claim to immunity, but will instead represent a human rights organisation against him.

Years later, Sands makes a discovery which reignites his interest in the case and leads to a decades-long investigation into Pinochet’s crimes, his unexpected connection to Rauff and the former Nazi’s possible connection to Chile’s disappeared. He returns to How To Academy to tell that story.

Tickets to this online event are free for members of How To +.

Praise for Philippe Sands’ 38 Londres Street:

“An extraordinary achievement . . . I read with open mouth and thumping heart. Sands brilliantly traces the atrocious trail of blood that leads from the death camps of Nazi Germany to the torture rooms of Pinochet’s Chile. 38 Londres Street takes its place as one of the most unforgettable and important records of the systematic pitiless cruelty of which tyrannies are capable” – Stephen Fry