November 9, 1948 Raphael Lemkin Coins the Term “Genocide”

by | Jul 11, 2017 | Holocaust, Presence in the Land, State of Israel

Raphael LemkinRaphael Lemkin escaped the Nazi invasion of Poland coined the term “genocide,” served as an adviser to the U.S. War Department and became a law professor at Yale.

Thanks to Lemkin’s efforts, on Nov.9, 1948, the 10th anniversary of Kristallnacht, the United Nations General Assembly unanimously adopted a “Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide.”

Cleaving closely to his proposal, it described genocides as “ acts committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part , a national, ethnical, racial or religious group, as such.”

Source: The Father of Genocide: Wall Street Journal