Raphael Lemkin – the man who coined the term “genocide”

The crimes of barbarity and vandalism
 

Even before the conference in Madrid, Raphael Lemkin had already differentiated between two types of crime: barbarity as the annihilation of national or religious groups, and vandalism as the destruction of all cultural goods, which aimed to both eradicate the traditions of the persecuted groups and to destroy their intellectual and spiritual life. He explained the necessity of introducing both terms into the penal code as follows: “Is not the destruction of a religious or racial collectivity more detrimental to mankind than destroying a submarine or robbing a vessel? When a nation is destroyed, it is not the cargo of the vessel that is lost but a substantial part of humanity, with a spiritual heritage in which the whole world partakes. These people are being destroyed for no other reason than that they embrace a specific religion or belong to a specific race. They are destroyed not in their individual capacity but as members of a collectivity of which the oppressor does not approve. The victims are the most innocent human beings of the world.”[6]

However, the concept received a cool reaction, both in Madrid and at home in Poland. The Polish government refused to allow Lemkin to travel to Spain. Although his theories made an impact at the conference, they attracted support from only a limited number of people. The warnings regarding the political situation in the Third Reich and the discrimination of the Jews were not only met with incomprehension, but were even regarded in Poland as being an “insult to our German friends.”[7] Shortly afterwards, Raphael Lemkin was recalled from his post as state prosecutor. However, rather than deterring him, this had the opposite effect: he continued with his attempts to disseminate his ideas, seeking support by participating in numerous conferences in Europe and throughout the world.

Life in exile
 

Lemkin’s work was interrupted by the invasion of Poland by Nazi Germany. During the first few days of September, he left Warsaw and fled eastwards. When the eastern regions were occupied by the Soviets, he managed to reach Vilna (Vilnius), and finally, Kaunas in Lithuania, where, thanks to his contacts made at international conferences, he was able to obtain a visa to travel to Sweden. In 1940, he travelled to Stockholm via Riga. After just a few months, during which time he learned Swedish, he began giving lectures on law at the university in Stockholm. During this period, he observed the continuing de-humanisation of the Jewish population by the National Socialists, as well as the destruction caused by the war, from the perspective of a neutral country. In 1941, Lemkin was offered a post at Duke University in North Carolina. The journey to the US took him first to Moscow, from where he boarded the last train of the Trans-Siberian Railway to Vladivostok [before Germany attacked the Soviet Union - translator’s note]. From there, he travelled by ship to Japan, and thence to the US. In addition to working at the university, he was also a member of the US President’s Board of Economic Warfare. In 1942, Lemkin began an information campaign in the US on the National Socialist crimes in Europe. In this context, he translated the National Socialist decrees into English and analysed them on this basis. He showed that German law had fallen prey to the nefarious and destructive goals of Adolf Hitler. In 1942, he became an advisor on the Board of Economic Warfare in Washington, an authority created by President Franklin D. Roosevelt during the Second World War. Here, Lemkin continued his work on disseminating the truth about the crimes occurring in Europe; at this time, he was still using the terms “barbarity” and “vandalism”. Meanwhile, he became increasingly convinced that the unprecedented nature of the murders being committed in this war made it necessary to create a new word that better described the nature of these crimes.[8] 

The definition of genocide
 

In 1944, Raphael Lemkin published his book “Axis Rule in Occupied Europe”. He gave one chapter the title “Genocide - A New Term and New Conception for Destruction of Nations”. This publication was an extremely thorough documentation of the Nazi crimes, even though at that time, the author was not yet even aware of the full extent of the crimes. Even so, the book was a milestone. For the first time ever, it defined one of the worst crimes against humanity: genocide, or the intended annihilation of population groups or entire nations on the basis of their being different. For Lemkin, the concept of genocide was very broad, and also included measures intended to destroy the identity of those being persecuted. In other words, it also extended to cultural, religious, political, social, and economic aspects. The publication of the book was received positively by the “Washington Post”, the “New York Times” and others, and the word “genocide” began to be used in international legal terminology and in everyday language. 

Accordingly, in November 1945, when the main war crimes trial began before the International Military Tribunal, Raphael Lemkin was called to serve as an advisor to Chief United States Prosecutor Robert H. Jackson. In Nuremberg, Lemkin received information about other members of his family who had been murdered during the war, some of them in concentration camps and the Warsaw ghetto. In total, he lost 49 relatives, including his parents who died in Treblinka concentration camp.

For Lemkin, the Nuremberg Trials were only a partial success. The term “genocide” was used in the bill of indictment, but not in the judgement, since crimes against humanity were not recognised as a separate legal category. Lemkin was unable to hide his disappointment at the outcome, and commented on this decision in his autobiography: “The Nuremberg judgement only partly relieved the world’s moral tensions. Punishing the German war criminals created the feeling that, in international life as in civil society, crime should not be allowed to pay. But the purely juridical consequences of the trials were wholly insufficient. [...] The Allies decided their case against a past Hitler but refused to envisage future Hitlers. They did not want to, or could not, establish a rule of international law that would prevent and punish future crimes of the same type”.[9]

Following the unsatisfactory judgement issued by the Nuremberg court, Lemkin continued to fight for the official recognition of the term “genocide” by the United Nations. Finally, after a great deal of effort, he succeeded. On 9 December 1948, the UN General Assembly unanimously approved the “Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide”. Lemkin then pushed for the ratification of the convention by appealing to the community of states to agree to the international treaty. The Convention finally came into law on 12 January 1951. Since then, it has been ratified by 147 states. However, the Convention was not applied until a long time later, towards the end of the 20th century, when it was used against the perpetrators of genocide in the former Yugoslavia and in Rwanda.