Raphael Lemkin (1900–1959)
Jurist — coined the term 'genocide' · Poland → United States
Polish-Jewish lawyer and Holocaust survivor who coined 'genocide' (1944) and campaigned to create the 1948 Genocide Convention.
Worked largely without institutional backing; lobbied governments and the UN as a private individual.
No state patronage; motivated by the loss of his own family in the Holocaust.
No institutional employer or donor network; lobbied governments as a private individual after losing family in the Holocaust. No voting record or organizational membership governed his advocacy.
The foundational authority — the entire legal field derives from his work. His original conception was broader than the Convention's eventual (narrower) text.
On the record
Verbatim quotations in this project attributed to this person.
Case: holocaust →“By 'genocide' we mean the destruction of a nation or of an ethnic group ... a coordinated plan of different actions aiming at the destruction of essential foundations of the life of national groups.”
Cases in this record
Sources & disclosures
- Raphael Lemkin — US Holocaust Memorial Museum