- Person
- Raphael Lemkin
- Lived
- 1900–1959
- Field
- International law
- From
- Polish-American
The story
Raphael Lemkin left Warsaw on 6 September 1939, days after Germany invaded Poland. He headed north-east towards Wolkowysk, near his family's home, and was soon caught between two invading armies, the Germans from the west and the Soviets from the east. He barely escaped capture and travelled through Lithuania to reach neutral Sweden by early spring 1940, where he found work lecturing at Stockholm University.
There he began a remarkable piece of detective work. Curious about how Nazi rule was being imposed, and believing that official documents often reveal goals they never state openly, he started to collect the decrees and ordinances the Nazis were issuing in the countries they occupied. He spent long hours in Stockholm's central library gathering, translating and analysing them, looking for patterns in German behaviour. His command of many languages was a great asset.
Some of the documents were signed by Hitler himself and put into practice the idea from Mein Kampf of seizing Lebensraum, new living space to be settled by Germans. As the evidence built up, Lemkin came to see that the wholesale destruction of the nations under German control was not a side effect of war but an overall aim. He later argued that Hitler's main goal was to reshape the population of Europe so that Germany would dominate the continent even if it lost the war.
Lemkin took the collection with him when he accepted an offer to teach at Duke University in the United States in April 1941. The Duke librarian helped him expand it, and he used the documents in his classes at Duke and at the War Department's School of Military Government. Meanwhile his family in Poland was trapped: 49 of his relatives were murdered in the Holocaust.
The research became the basis of Axis Rule in Occupied Europe, published in November 1944. Its longest part consisted of translations of the laws and decrees issued in occupied Europe, and in it Lemkin introduced the word "genocide". By building his case on the Nazis' own laws, he produced evidence that was hard to dismiss as wartime propaganda, and he gave the world both proof of a plan to destroy peoples and a legal language with which to confront it.
Why it matters
By documenting the Nazis' own laws, Lemkin produced hard evidence of a plan to destroy peoples, giving the world proof and a legal language to confront it.
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 named genocide and made it a crimeRaphael Lemkin coined the word 'genocide' in 1944, then campaigned until the United Nations adopted the Genocide Convention on 9 December 1948.
- 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
- Raphael Lemkin Wikipedia
- Axis Rule in Occupied Europe Wikipedia
- Coining a Word and Championing a Cause: The Story of Raphael Lemkin United States Holocaust Memorial Museum
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