- Person
- Raphael Lemkin
- Lived
- 1900–1959
- Field
- International law
- From
- Polish-American
The story
Raphael Lemkin was a Polish Jewish lawyer who had worried for years that international law had no name for the deliberate destruction of whole peoples. As a student he had been troubled that no court could try the organisers of the Ottoman Empire's destruction of the Armenians, and in 1933 he had proposed, without success, that such acts be made a crime. When Germany invaded Poland in 1939, he fled, reaching Sweden and then the United States in 1941, where he taught at Duke University and advised the US government on occupied Europe.
In his 1944 book Axis Rule in Occupied Europe, published by the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, he documented the laws of Nazi occupation and introduced a new word, "genocide", built from the ancient Greek genos, meaning race or tribe, and the Latin -cide, meaning killing. He defined it broadly. Genocide, he wrote, did not always mean the immediate killing of a whole nation, but a coordinated plan to destroy the essential foundations of a group's life: its institutions, culture, language, religion and economic existence, as well as the security, dignity and lives of its members.
Naming the crime was only the start. Lemkin joined the American team preparing the Nuremberg trials and succeeded in having the word included in the indictment of the Nazi leaders. While in Nuremberg he learned that 49 members of his family, including his parents, had been murdered. He then devoted himself to persuading the new United Nations to outlaw genocide, lobbying national delegations and influential leaders without pause. In 1946 the General Assembly recognised genocide as an international crime and called for a treaty.
His campaign succeeded. On 9 December 1948 the UN General Assembly unanimously adopted the Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide, with many of its clauses based on his proposals. It defines genocide as acts committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnic, racial or religious group. Lemkin spent the rest of his life urging countries to pass laws supporting it, and he died in 1959, impoverished and exhausted by the effort.
His word is now part of everyday language and of international law. The convention entered into force in 1951 and has been joined by most of the world's nations, and its definition has been adopted by international courts, including the International Criminal Court.
Why it matters
Lemkin's word and the convention he championed gave the world a legal duty to prevent and punish genocide, the basis for later international tribunals.
About Raphael Lemkin
Polish-Jewish jurist who coined the word “genocide” in 1944 and campaigned almost single-handedly until the United Nations outlawed the crime in 1948.
More about Raphael Lemkin
- Raphael Lemkin advised the US war effort on occupied EuropeFrom 1942 Raphael Lemkin worked for the US War Department in Washington and advised the Board of Economic Warfare, bringing his expertise on Nazi occupation law to the Allied cause.
- Raphael Lemkin asked why mass murderers went unpunishedAs a young student, Raphael Lemkin challenged the idea that state sovereignty let governments kill their own people, replying to his professor: "But the Armenians are not chickens."
- Raphael Lemkin collected Nazi decrees as evidenceAfter fleeing Poland in 1939, Raphael Lemkin gathered and analysed Nazi decrees in Stockholm's libraries, uncovering a deliberate plan to destroy whole nations.
- Raphael Lemkin kept campaigning until the treaty took effectAfter the 1948 vote, Raphael Lemkin kept lobbying until the Genocide Convention came into force in 1951, and then helped countries write genocide into their own laws.
- Raphael Lemkin got "genocide" into the Nuremberg indictmentAdvising US chief prosecutor Robert H. Jackson in 1945–1946, Raphael Lemkin succeeded in having the new word "genocide" included in the indictment of the Nazi leaders at Nuremberg.
- Raphael Lemkin's idea came of age in the 1990sLittle known when he died in 1959, Raphael Lemkin was rediscovered in the 1990s as international courts began prosecuting genocide in the former Yugoslavia and Rwanda.
- Raphael Lemkin proposed outlawing "barbarity" in 1933In 1933, years before the Holocaust, Raphael Lemkin proposed to an international law conference in Madrid that the destruction of groups be made a crime under international law.
Sources
- Coining a Word and Championing a Cause: The Story of Raphael Lemkin United States Holocaust Memorial Museum
- Raphael Lemkin Jewish Virtual Library
- Raphael Lemkin Wikipedia
- Genocide Convention Wikipedia
Another act of tikkun olam. This is part of tikkun olam, the Jewish idea of repairing the world, and every one of us can add to it.