Genocide: A Global Crisis

Exploring the Roots of the Term: "Genocide"

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Origins:

In his 1933 rough proposal to the League of Nations, while forming the concept of genocide he refers to it as “barbarism”:

“Whosoever, out of hatred towards a racial, religious, or social collectivity, or with a view of the extermination thereof, undertakes a punishable action against the life, bodily integrity, liberty, dignity, or economic existence of a person belonging to such a collectivity, is liable, for the crime of barbarity.”

Then he incorporated “vandalism” in another condemnation of ‘cultural’ genocide:

“Whosoever out of hatred…commits the extermination [of a racial, religious, or social collectivity] destroys its cultural or artistic work, and will be liable for the crime of vandalism."

Just over one year later, while consulting for the US War Department in 1944, he publishes the Axis Rule in Occupied Europe, the first document that introduces the world to the term of “genocide:"

“The practices of extermination of national and ethnic groups as carried out by the invaders [the Nazis] is called by the author ‘genocide…’"

Derived from the Greek word genos: tribe, race
Latin cide means killing (as in homicide, suicide, etc.)

Why did Lemkin abandon “social and political groups” in his final definition of ‘genocide?’

Scholars have presented theories that generally suggest:

Lemkin thought that by including social and religious groups, his definition would become too broad and loosely-defined, and thus it would lose its potency.
Lemkin’ publications were government sponsored and he acknowledged that the Soviet Union’s approval was necessary to the United States in their political war launched against Hitler and his Nazis.

Trials of Failure on the Rocky Path to Success

Lemkin continued fighting restlessly to promote the term ‘genocide’ at the Nuremburg trials (Fall of 1946). Genocide was brought up throughout the deliberations of the trial, but it was not noted in the final ruling.

According to Norman Naimark:

“The justices were much more interested in the condemnation of the Nazis as aggressors in the international system than they were in condemning the mass murder of Jews.”

Lemkin continued pushing for a widely-applicable legal definition of genocide with various manifestations. He tried to communicate the idea of genocide that transcended physical extermination of a population, but rather also represented the cultural, socioeconomic, and political purging or oppression of a collective set of people.

He even confronts Soviet crimes blatantly in his original formulation of ‘genocide’ as a broad concept in the 1950s, though this was driven by strictly strategic political motives.

At the relatively embryonic United Nations, Lemkin urged the formation of an international convention addressing and officially condemning genocide. The denunciation of the Nazi regime’s Final solution by the Great Powers (allies) (including the Soviet Union) was absolutely indispensable to the success of the genocide convention

December 22, 1946: Unanimous passage of the General Assembly Resolution 96 (I)

Genocide is condemned as an international crime “committed on religious, racial, political, or any other grounds.”

In July of 1947, a draft is brought forth by the Secretariat of the UN to cite the purpose of the convention as the intent to “prevent the destruction of racial, national, linguistic, religious, or political groups of human beings." In short: all of the primary drafts included “political groups” in the official definition of genocide.

Convention for Global Peace Tailored to Nationalistic Agendas

The US, eager to secure the favor and support of the Soviet Union darted away from asking questions about the Soviet’s Katyn Massacre of Poles.

The Soviets argued against the inclusion of “political groups” in the convention, saying that it would dilute the strength of the definition by adding trivial groups.

The Polish delegate, however, counter-attacked this suggestion by proposing that the UN should also target the extermination on account of political ideology. The Polish delegate pointed to the execution of “hostages” (POW) in Spain and Greece.

The New York Times reported that countries such as Argentina, Brazil, the Dominican Republic, Iran, and South Africa were concerned about their own culpability if the convention decided to oppose the persecution of political insurgents.

While representatives for the Soviet Union proposed a focus on indicting cultural oppression, US quickly rejected this proposal to protect themselves from accountability for US racism and native American marginalization.

In an attempt to reach an unanimous and precedent-setting decision, the drafting committee finally removed political groups from the protection of the UN Genocide Convention.

The Birth of the Term: Genocide

The UN General Assembly (1948) officially accepts the establishment of the UN Genocide Convention, which unanimously defined genocide as

A range of any “acts committed with the intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial, or religious group, as such.”

Footnotes:

1. Norman M. Naimark, Stalins Genocides (Princeton: Princeton Univ. Press, 2012).

Primary Source:

Naimark, Norman M. Stalins Genocides. Princeton: Princeton Univ. Press, 2012, 15-29.

Rapheal Lemkin

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In 1940, Rapheal Lemkin was a Jewish lawyer who fled Nazi persecution and found asylum in the United States, where he would later become famous for coining the term ‘genocide.'