Raphael Lemkin

Lemkin was the activist who coined the term "genocide." Born in 1911, Lemkin was from a Jewish family living in Poland. As a child, he was fascinated by accounts of atrocity. After the Armenian genocide, Lemkin, who became a lawyer, became interested in trying to pass an international ban prohibiting the destruction of nations, races and religious groups. In 1939, he escaped from Nazi occupied Poland and wound up in the United States in 1941.

He began campaigning tirelessly within the United States for help for the European Jews and for an international law to be created banning such atrocities. He decided that a word need to be created that would cover the range of activities that was part of the destruction of a group. He settled on "genocide" from the Greek geno, meaning race or tribe, and the Latin cide, meaning killing. In 1946, he began lobbying at the UN...