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Raphael Lemkin

Raphael Lemkin
Rafał Lemkin
Born(1900-06-24)24 June 1900
Bezwodne, Volkovyssky Uyezd, Grodno Governorate, Russian Empire
(now Zelʹva District, Grodno Region, Belarus)
Died28 August 1959(1959-08-28) (aged 59)
New York City, U.S.
NationalityPolish
EducationUniversity of Lwów
OccupationLawyer
Known for

Raphael Lemkin (Polish: Rafał Lemkin; 24 June 1900 – 28 August 1959) was a Polish lawyer of Jewish descent who is known for coining the term genocide and campaigning to establish the Genocide Convention. During the Second World War, he campaigned vigorously to raise international awareness of atrocities in Axis-occupied Europe. It was during this time that Lemkin coined the term "genocide" to describe Nazi Germany's extermination policies.[1]

As a young law student deeply conscious of antisemitic persecution, Lemkin learned about the Ottoman empire's genocide of Armenians during World War I and was deeply disturbed by the absence of international provisions to charge Ottoman officials who carried out war crimes.[2] Following the German invasion of Poland, Lemkin fled Europe and sought asylum in the United States, where he became an academic at Duke University.[2]

Lemkin coined genocide in 1943 or 1944 from two words: genos (Greek: γένος, 'family, clan, tribe, race, stock, kin')[3] and -cide (Latin: -cidium, 'killing').[4][5][6] The term was included in the 1944 research-work "Axis Rule in Occupied Europe", wherein Lemkin documented mass-killings of ethnic groups deemed "untermenschen" by Nazi Germany.[7] The concept of "genocide" was defined by Lemkin to refer to the various extermination campaigns launched by Nazi Germany to wipe out entire racial groups, including European Jews in the Holocaust.[8][9]

After the Second World War, Lemkin worked on the legal team of Robert H. Jackson, Chief US prosecutor at the Nuremberg Tribunal. The concept of "genocide" was non-existent in any international laws at the time, and this became one of the reasons for Lemkin's view that the trial did not serve complete justice on prosecuting Nazi atrocities targeting ethnic and religious groups. Lemkin committed the rest of his life to push for an international convention, which in his view, was essential to prevent the rise of "future Hitlers". On 9 December 1948, the United Nations approved the Genocide Convention, with many of its clauses based on Lemkin's proposals.[10][11]

  1. ^ "Raphael Lemkin and the Genocide Convention | Facing History & Ourselves". www.facinghistory.org. 12 May 2020. Archived from the original on 20 July 2023.
  2. ^ a b "Coining a Word and Championing a Cause: The Story of Raphael Lemkin". Holocaust Encyclopedia. United States Holocaust Memorial Museum. Archived from the original on 23 June 2023. Retrieved 23 September 2021.
  3. ^ γένος, Henry George Liddell, Robert Scott, A Greek–English Lexicon, on Perseus
  4. ^ Ishay 2008.
  5. ^ Jenkins 2008, p. 140.
  6. ^ Hyde, Jennifer (2 December 2008), Polish Jew gave his life defining, fighting genocide, CNN, retrieved 2 December 2008
  7. ^ "Coining a Word and Championing a Cause: The Story of Raphael Lemkin". Holocaust Encyclopedia. United States Holocaust Memorial Museum. Archived from the original on 23 June 2023. Retrieved 23 September 2021. He moved to Washington, DC, in the summer of 1942, to join the War Department as an analyst and went on to document Nazi atrocities in his 1944 book, Axis Rule in Occupied Europe. In this text, he introduced the word "genocide."
  8. ^ "What is Genocide?". Holocaust Encyclopedia. United States Holocaust Memorial Museum. Archived from the original on 30 June 2023. Retrieved 7 February 2017. In 1944, Polish Jewish lawyer Raphael Lemkin coined the term "genocide" in a book documenting Nazi policies of systematically destroying national and ethnic groups, including the mass murder of European Jews
  9. ^ "Raphael Lemkin and the Genocide Convention | Facing History & Ourselves". www.facinghistory.org. 12 May 2020. Archived from the original on 20 July 2023. Lemkin himself had fled to the United States, where he struggled to draw attention to what Nazi Germany was doing to European Jews—massacres that British Prime Minister Winston Churchill called "a crime without a name." In 1944, Lemkin made up a new word to describe these crimes: genocide. Lemkin defined genocide as "the destruction of a nation or an ethnic group."
  10. ^ "Coining a Word and Championing a Cause: The Story of Raphael Lemkin". Holocaust Encyclopedia. United States Holocaust Memorial Museum. Archived from the original on 23 June 2023. Retrieved 23 September 2021.
  11. ^ "Raphael Lemkin and the Genocide Convention | Facing History & Ourselves". www.facinghistory.org. 12 May 2020. Archived from the original on 20 July 2023.

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