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My hero: Raphael Lemkin by AL Kennedy
'He changed the world with a word and yet remains virtually unknown'
- [image: AL Kennedy]
-
- AL Kennedy
- guardian.co.uk , Friday 9 March 2012
22.55 GMT
- Article
history
[image: Raphael Lemkin]
Raphael Lemkin in 1950. Photograph: Bettmann/Corbis
Raphael Lemkinwas
a dogged campaigner with a burning faith in the power of language and
the law. He changed the world with a word and yet remains virtually unknown.
Born in 1900 in Belarus, he studied linguistics, philosophy and law. He
became obsessed with a crime that, at that point, had no name: the mass
murder of groups, simply because of their identity. He was aware of the
Turkish massacre of Armenians and of the Assyrians murdered in Iraq -
unpunished crimes that would allow Hitler to believe his final solution
could be achieved without international intervention. Lemkin identified the
stages that led to mass murder: the demonisation of a group, the
destruction of its culture, restriction of its freedoms and rights, the
small rehearsals of extermination.
In 1933 Lemkin, then working as public prosecutor in Poland, presented a
paper to the League of Nations legal committee in Madrid that described
what he then referred to as "the Crime of Barbarity" and its prevention.
His statement lost him his job, but he continued to pursue the idea that
the rule of law could save us from even the gravest crime.
When the Nazis invaded Poland, Lemkin - a Jew - was wounded defending
Warsaw. He fled, first to Sweden and then the US. Most of his family were
murdered in the Holocaust. He'd been unable to prevent what he had guessed
was coming and spent the rest of his life battling what he came to call
genocide. He named and defined humanity's ultimate crime and was the prime
mover behind the 1948 UN Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the
Crime of Genocide . He worked
himself to death to establish a legal framework that defends us all. That
politicians have consistently failed to use the tools he gave them is their
shame and not his. He was a remarkable man.
=95 AL Kennedy's *The Blue Book* (Jonathan Cape) has been longlisted for the
2012 Orange prize.
'He changed the world with a word and yet remains virtually unknown'
- [image: AL Kennedy]
-
- AL Kennedy
- guardian.co.uk , Friday 9 March 2012
22.55 GMT
- Article
history
[image: Raphael Lemkin]
Raphael Lemkin in 1950. Photograph: Bettmann/Corbis
Raphael Lemkinwas
a dogged campaigner with a burning faith in the power of language and
the law. He changed the world with a word and yet remains virtually unknown.
Born in 1900 in Belarus, he studied linguistics, philosophy and law. He
became obsessed with a crime that, at that point, had no name: the mass
murder of groups, simply because of their identity. He was aware of the
Turkish massacre of Armenians and of the Assyrians murdered in Iraq -
unpunished crimes that would allow Hitler to believe his final solution
could be achieved without international intervention. Lemkin identified the
stages that led to mass murder: the demonisation of a group, the
destruction of its culture, restriction of its freedoms and rights, the
small rehearsals of extermination.
In 1933 Lemkin, then working as public prosecutor in Poland, presented a
paper to the League of Nations legal committee in Madrid that described
what he then referred to as "the Crime of Barbarity" and its prevention.
His statement lost him his job, but he continued to pursue the idea that
the rule of law could save us from even the gravest crime.
When the Nazis invaded Poland, Lemkin - a Jew - was wounded defending
Warsaw. He fled, first to Sweden and then the US. Most of his family were
murdered in the Holocaust. He'd been unable to prevent what he had guessed
was coming and spent the rest of his life battling what he came to call
genocide. He named and defined humanity's ultimate crime and was the prime
mover behind the 1948 UN Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the
Crime of Genocide . He worked
himself to death to establish a legal framework that defends us all. That
politicians have consistently failed to use the tools he gave them is their
shame and not his. He was a remarkable man.
=95 AL Kennedy's *The Blue Book* (Jonathan Cape) has been longlisted for the
2012 Orange prize.