Raphael Lemkin and the Genocide Convention: Living Legacy of a Lonely Lawyer A landmark conference explores Dr. Lemkin’s relentless work against genocide. by AVIVA CANTOR hen a journalist entered the intent to destroy, in whole or in part, adoption of the Genocide Convention, partially destroyed home a national, ethnical, racial or religious which took place in December 1948. It in a Bosnian village, he saw group” (see box on p. 14). went into force in January 1951, when Wa strange sight: There were three dead The Convention was unfortunately ratified by 20 nations, of which Israel old men slumped at the table, but there not employed to stop the atrocities in was the second. were five small coffee cups on it. What Bosnia. But it did provide the basis for It was only in 1988 that it was rati- had happened here? The old men were the creation of the International Crimi- fied by the United States, when Presi- having coffee late one morning. The nal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia dent Reagan signed it. By that time, door was flung open. Two young men (ICTY) in 1993, which indicted, arrested Lemkin was already dead and buried for burst in with submachine guns: Serbian and tried more than 155 Serbians, includ- close to 30 years. militiamen. The Muslim men welcomed ing two major perpetrators (see box on p. 15). In November 2009, a few months them — they were the sons of their The term genocide was coined, after his 50th yahrzeit, the Center for neighbors — and one of them got them conceptualized and defined by one man Jewish History (CJH) in Manhattan held cups of coffee and invited them to join who drafted the Convention text and a conference, “Genocide and Human Ex- them at the table. sacrificed his personal life and health perience: Raphael Lemkin’s Thought and The militiamen shot the old men to make it part of international law. His Vision.” Co-sponsored with the Ameri- dead. They left their coffee untouched. name was Dr. Raphael Lemkin. can Jewish Historical Society (AJHS) and This atrocity among so many others A lawyer by profession and multi- Yeshiva University Museum (YUM), it occurred during the Bosnia War of 1992- linguist by avocation who escaped Po- brought together a group of historians, 1995, when many Serbian actions were land at the beginning of the Holocaust, political scientists, jurists, anthropolo- considered genocide under the terms of Lemkin (1900-1959) lobbied tirelessly gists and philosophers from all over the the United Nations Convention on the inside and outside the U.N. for the world. The conference, organized by Prevention and Punishment of the Crime CJH director of Special Projects Judith of Genocide. The Convention (Article 2) defines genocide as any of five actions “committed with 12 Na’amat WOmaN SUMMER 2010 The term genocide was coined, conceptualized and defined by one man who drafted the text of the U.N. Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide and sacrificed his personal life and health to make it part of international law. Siegel, was accompanied by an exhibition, public prosecutor in Warsaw. “Letters of Conscience: Raphael Lemkin In 1933, Lemkin, who had al- and the Quest to End Genocide.” ready grasped that the Nazis would inflict “unprecedented” atroci- Lemkin’s Life ties on ethnic minorities, wrote Raphael Lemkin was born on June 24, a paper for a League of Nations’ 1900 and raised on a farm 50 miles from international conference in Ma- Bialystok in czarist Poland. His father, drid, proposing laws against the Raphael Lemkin’s War Department and Joseph, was a farmer; his mother, Bella obliteration of national, religious and ra- United Nations identification cards. Pomerantz, was an intellectual, artist cial groups and the destruction of their Raphael Lemkin Papers, American Jewish Historical Society, and student of philosophy who home- cultural works. The Polish government, New York, NY schooled him and was his greatest trying to cultivate/placate the Germans, childhood influence. When he was 6 refused to let him attend (his paper was Lemkin was in Nuremberg in 1946, years old, pogroms in the Bialystok re- read aloud but the proposal was tabled), working as an adviser on the staff of the gion involving fiendish mutilation ritu- and he was forced out of his job. chief prosecutor in the trials of Nazi als resulted in the murder of 70 Jews When World War II broke out in war criminals. He became greatly dis- and grave injuries to 90 others. September 1939, Lemkin fled Warsaw tressed that the term genocide was not At the age of 11, Lemkin read in and eventually found refuge in Sweden, used in the Final Judgment. Even more Henryk Sienkiewicz’s Polish master- where he taught law at the University of significant to him, the Tribunal’s Char- piece about the Roman Empire, Quo Va- Stockholm. He persuaded the Foreign ter and Judgment specified that “acts dis, of the throwing of Christians to the Ministry to instruct consular officials to committed before the outbreak of the lions, and later, accounts of massacres provide documentation of German or- War were not punishable offenses.” He of the Carthaginians and the French ders of mass murders in countries they was disturbed that these documents en- Huguenots. He asked his mother why occupied. shrined the principle that what a gov- there is no law against killing “defense- This material formed the basis of ernment does to its own citizens does less people just because they are differ- his 712-page book, Axis Rule in Occupied not fall under international law. Lemkin ent from you.” She told him he must Europe (see box on p. 15), the first all- was unhappy about this as precedent, “study more and think more and find encompassing work on the enormity said William A. Schabas of the Irish the answer for yourself.” He resolved to of Nazi brutality and destruction. Pub- Center for Human Rights at the Na- look for answers. lished in the U.S. in 1944, it was also the tional University of Ireland, “because Lemkin entered the John Casimir first work in which Lemkin both used he looked to the future.” University of Lvov in 1920, planning to the word “genocide” he had coined and The Final Judgment was rendered in major in philology. He already knew sev- wrote of the need for an international October, after a summer in which Lem- en languages; he later added three more. treaty to prevent its recurrence. kin traveled in Europe and met people in A professor, in response to Lemkin’s By this time, Lemkin had made his DP camps, including former colleagues, question about the slaughter of 1.5 mil- way to the U.S. to teach law at Duke and heard their horrific stories. In Sep- lion Armenians during World War I, told University in North Carolina and work tember, his distress worsened when he him that international law precludes in- for government agencies in Washington found out that 49 members of his fam- terference in the sovereign affairs of a D.C. He tried, unsuccessfully, to get of- ily, including his parents, had been mur- country. The young student began to ficials — including President Roosevelt dered, wrote the late William Korey, think that a law to stop the murder of a and Vice President Wallace — interested former director of International Policy group must be created, and switched his in taking action against the mass mur- Research of B’nai B’rith. “The death of field to law. He subsequently became a ders of European Jews. his beloved mother who had played such SUMMER 2010 Na’amat WOmaN 13 Lemkin tried, unsuccessfully, to get officials — including President Roosevelt and Vice President Wallace — interested in taking action against the mass murder of European Jews. a key role in his early life was especially two large battered briefcases from del- them of their history” and results in shattering” to him, said independent egate to delegate. their “spiritual death.” researcher Jim Fussell, who is writing a He succeeded in getting enough After the GA voted to adopt the biography of Lemkin. delegates to sponsor a resolution to de- Convention in December 1948, it still The Nuremberg Judgment, Lem- clare genocide an international crime had to be ratified by 20 states to go into kin later wrote in his incomplete and and to instruct a U.N. body to draw up force. Lemkin, after being hospitalized unpublished Totally Unofficial: The Au- a draft of a convention for the next GA again, leaped once more into his “lone- tobiography of Dr. Raphael Lemkin, was session. In the course of a six-week pe- ly crusade,” wrote Korey, and lobbied “the blackest day” of his life. It com- riod, he successfully lobbied all the del- without respite at the U.N. He had to pounded the trauma of his parents’ and egates to get the resolution passed. On borrow money for food and often went relatives’ murders, and left Lemkin in appointment by the secretary-general, hungry. He could hardly stand on his “extreme psychic pain,” said Schabas. Lemkin did the major drafting of the feet at Lake Success and “had to look He developed dangerously high fever Convention, during which time he took for support of a wall or a seat.” and high blood pressure. a leave from his teaching job at Yale Because of Lemkin’s unrelenting He checked himself out of the hos- University Law School. advocacy — facilitated by his being pital after hearing on the radio that the Prof.