Raphael Lemkin

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 outrage against atrocities in Axis-occupied Europe. It was during this time that Lemkin coined the term "genocide" to describe Nazi Germany's extermination policies against Jews and Poles.[1]

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Raphael Lemkin
Rafał Lemkin
Raphael Lemkin
Born	(1900-06-24)24 June 1900 Bezwodne, Volkovyssky Uyezd, Grodno Governorate, Russian Empire (now Zelʹva District, Grodno Region, Belarus)
Died	28 August 1959(1959-08-28) (aged 59) New York City, U.S.
Nationality	Polish
Occupation	Lawyer
Known for	Coining the term genocide Drafting the Genocide Convention

As a young law student deeply conscious of antisemitic persecution, Lemkin learned about Ottoman empire's massacres 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. Following German invasion of Poland, Lemkin fled Europe and sought asylum in 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: -cīdium, '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] In particular, the concept of "genocide" was defined by Lemkin to refer to the vicious extermination campaign launched by Nazi Germany to wipe out Jews in the Holocaust.[8][9]

After the Second World War, Lemkin worked in 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, United Nations approved the Genocide Convention, and many of its clauses were based on Lemkin's proposals.[10][11]