22/6/2001
Raphael Lemkin
Internationally
acclaimed as the man who coined the term 'genocide', Raphael Lemkin
was born to Jewish parents in Eastern Poland in 1901. It is ironic
that it was not the persecution of his own people which led Lemkin
to not only invent the phrase but to dedicate his life to fighting
its reality. This struggle did not start, as might be expected,
after the atrocities of the Second World War but some years before
they had even begun.
Raphael
Lemkin was educated at home together with his two brothers. He studied
philology at the University of Lwow before deciding on a career
in law. He gained a doctorate from the University of Heidelburg
in Germany and in 1929 began teaching at Tachkimoni College in Warsaw.
He became a public prosecutor and for the next five years represented
Poland at conferences all over the world. A prominent international
figure Dr Lemkin also served on the on the Polish Law Codification
Committee and helped draft the criminal code of a newly independent
Poland.
In
1933 Dr Lemkin was deeply disturbed by the massacre of Christian
Assyrians by Iraqis. His distress was compounded by earlier memories
of the slaughter of Armenians by Turks during the First World War
and the international jurist began to examine these acts as crimes
in an effort to deter and prevent them. He presented his first proposal
to outlaw such 'acts of barbarism' to the Legal Council of the League
of Nations in Madrid the same year. However, the proposal failed
and his work incurred the disapproval of the Polish government,
which was at the time pursuing a policy of conciliation with Nazi
Germany. He was forced to retire from his public position in 1934.
Undeterred Dr Lemkin continued his work in private law practice
until the German invasion of Poland in 1939 led him to experience
at first hand the very acts that he was working to prevent.
Dr
Lemkin was wounded whist fighting the Nazis outside Warsaw. He hid
in the Polish forests for six months before finally escaping to
Sweden by way of Lithuania and the Baltic Sea. The exile was to
save him. He and his brother Elias were the only members of the
forty-strong Lemkin family that were to survive the Nazi occupation.
Now
a refugee in Sweden Dr Lemkin worked as a lecturer at the University
of Stockholm, using his time in exile to study Nazism from the standpoint
of jurisprudence. He analysed the legal decrees that had allowed
the Nazi occupation and identified the instruments that had worked
to systematically eliminate a people. He labelled this premeditated
crime 'genocide' from the Greek prefix genos meaning race and the
Latin suffix cide meaning killing. His work was later published
in 1944 in the landmark book Axis Rule in Occupied Europe. His analysis
was used as one of the bases for determining the Nuremberg trials
programme in 1945, where he served as. legal adviser to the US Chief
Prosecutor.
The
recognition of genocide in the Nuremberg trials was a considerable
achievement. However since the trials handled cases of war guilt
only and genocide in times of peace was not punishable under those
terms, Dr Lemkin resolved to carry on his campaign for the establishment
of genocide as a crime under international law. He presented a draft
convention on the prevention and punishment of genocide to the Paris
peace conference in 1945. As in 1933, his proposal failed. He had
no funding, no office, nor did he represent any government or accredited
organisation. Yet with the dogged determination that had become
characteristic of Dr Lemkin's life, he continued his struggle.
His
persistent and persuasive lobbying paid off the following year when
a further resolution in favour of an international convention was
put before the United Nations. The resolution was approved and Dr
Lemkin became an adviser in the writing of an international treaty
to that effect. On December 9th 1948, the Convention on the Prevention
and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide was adopted unanimously
by the United Nations General Assembly. It represented a triumph
in the struggle that Dr Lemkin had begun some 15 years earlier.
Once
the convention was in place Dr Lemkin continued to lobby relentlessly
for its ratification. He did so until his death in 1959. Dr Raphael
Lemkin was twice nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize for his work
and was honoured with a number of other awards. These included the
Grand Cross of Cespedes from Cuba in 1950 and the Stephen Wise Award
of the American Jewish Congress in 1951. On the 50th anniversary
of the Convention entering into force Dr Rapael Lemkin was also
recently honoured by UN Secretary-General as an inspiring example
of moral engagement.
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