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The Washington Post
October 24, 2014 Friday
'Barbarity' was too tame a word
by Stephanie Merry
Few people have heard of Polish lawyer Raphael Lemkin, but everyone
knows the term he coined: genocide. He invented the word both to
describe the crime and, he hoped, to awaken the human conscience. In
"Watchers of the Sky," Academy Award-nominated documentarian Edet
Belzberg looks back at Lemkin's crusade while revisiting acts of
genocide, from Bosnia to Darfur.
Lemkin, born in 1900, became interested in the subject of systematic
mass killing after reading about the Turkish massacre of Armenians
during and after World War I, and he was struck by a couple of things.
The first was how the Turks were able to execute able-bodied men and
expel women and children with impunity. But he was also shocked by the
unending nature of these events and how, without fear of prosecution,
governments would just keep wiping out populations. He decided to
become a lawyer in hopes that he might one day deter large-scale
massacres.
Having studied such crimes, he recognized the red flags when the Nazis
invaded Poland in 1939, and he fled to the United States. His Jewish
family members, however, insisted they would be safe if they stayed.
They weren't. After that, Lemkin tried to find a word that accurately
described what had happened, but "barbarity" and "vandalism" didn't
convey the sense of humanity - the "oneness" - he was looking for. So
he combined the Greek word for "race" (genos) with the Latin word for
"kill." Then he traveled to Germany during the Nuremberg Trials, where
he tried to convince prosecutors that genocide should be a crime.
Although that didn't happen right away, American prosecutor Benjamin
Ferencz at least used the term during the trials.
The energetic Ferencz, 94, is interviewed extensively for the film,
both about his involvement in the Nuremberg Trials and about his
memories of Lemkin, who died in 1959. (Lemkin appears in archival
interviews.) Ferencz describes the man as a perpetually disheveled
crusader who looked pathetic but turned out to be incredibly
persuasive.
After laying the groundwork of Lemkin's history, Belzberg weaves in
other stories. Samantha Power, now U.S. ambassador to the United
Nations, talks about witnessing atrocities during the Yugoslav wars of
the 1990s. Meanwhile, Emmanuel Uwurukundo���¡, the only member of his
family to survive the Rwandan genocide of 1994, talks about his past
and about his present, helping Sudanese refugees in Chad. And Luis
Moreno-Ocampo, prosecutor for the International Criminal Court,
discusses his fruitless pursuit of President Omar al-Bashir of Sudan.
Editing these unwieldy stories into a cohesive, meaningful way must
have been a massive undertaking. Editors Jenny Golden and Karen Sim
did such an impressive job that even at two hours - an eternity for a
doc - the movie never feels too long. It helps that artful touches
abound, with excerpts from Lemkin's diary appearing as if a typewriter
had just tapped out the words on screen. There are also haunting black
watercolor figures that link one scene to the next. Of course,
horrifying images also appear, ranging from the piles of dead during
World War II to video of the executions ordered by Ratko Mladic, the
Bosnian Serb military leader turned war criminal.
Ultimately, "Watchers of the Sky" is both dire and hopeful. There are
such people as Moreno-Ocampo and Power who are continuing Lemkin's
work. But it's also disheartening to know that this man's efforts to
coin a term for something horrible in order to eradicate it hasn't
progressed beyond the naming phase.
From: Emil Lazarian | Ararat NewsPress
October 24, 2014 Friday
'Barbarity' was too tame a word
by Stephanie Merry
Few people have heard of Polish lawyer Raphael Lemkin, but everyone
knows the term he coined: genocide. He invented the word both to
describe the crime and, he hoped, to awaken the human conscience. In
"Watchers of the Sky," Academy Award-nominated documentarian Edet
Belzberg looks back at Lemkin's crusade while revisiting acts of
genocide, from Bosnia to Darfur.
Lemkin, born in 1900, became interested in the subject of systematic
mass killing after reading about the Turkish massacre of Armenians
during and after World War I, and he was struck by a couple of things.
The first was how the Turks were able to execute able-bodied men and
expel women and children with impunity. But he was also shocked by the
unending nature of these events and how, without fear of prosecution,
governments would just keep wiping out populations. He decided to
become a lawyer in hopes that he might one day deter large-scale
massacres.
Having studied such crimes, he recognized the red flags when the Nazis
invaded Poland in 1939, and he fled to the United States. His Jewish
family members, however, insisted they would be safe if they stayed.
They weren't. After that, Lemkin tried to find a word that accurately
described what had happened, but "barbarity" and "vandalism" didn't
convey the sense of humanity - the "oneness" - he was looking for. So
he combined the Greek word for "race" (genos) with the Latin word for
"kill." Then he traveled to Germany during the Nuremberg Trials, where
he tried to convince prosecutors that genocide should be a crime.
Although that didn't happen right away, American prosecutor Benjamin
Ferencz at least used the term during the trials.
The energetic Ferencz, 94, is interviewed extensively for the film,
both about his involvement in the Nuremberg Trials and about his
memories of Lemkin, who died in 1959. (Lemkin appears in archival
interviews.) Ferencz describes the man as a perpetually disheveled
crusader who looked pathetic but turned out to be incredibly
persuasive.
After laying the groundwork of Lemkin's history, Belzberg weaves in
other stories. Samantha Power, now U.S. ambassador to the United
Nations, talks about witnessing atrocities during the Yugoslav wars of
the 1990s. Meanwhile, Emmanuel Uwurukundo���¡, the only member of his
family to survive the Rwandan genocide of 1994, talks about his past
and about his present, helping Sudanese refugees in Chad. And Luis
Moreno-Ocampo, prosecutor for the International Criminal Court,
discusses his fruitless pursuit of President Omar al-Bashir of Sudan.
Editing these unwieldy stories into a cohesive, meaningful way must
have been a massive undertaking. Editors Jenny Golden and Karen Sim
did such an impressive job that even at two hours - an eternity for a
doc - the movie never feels too long. It helps that artful touches
abound, with excerpts from Lemkin's diary appearing as if a typewriter
had just tapped out the words on screen. There are also haunting black
watercolor figures that link one scene to the next. Of course,
horrifying images also appear, ranging from the piles of dead during
World War II to video of the executions ordered by Ratko Mladic, the
Bosnian Serb military leader turned war criminal.
Ultimately, "Watchers of the Sky" is both dire and hopeful. There are
such people as Moreno-Ocampo and Power who are continuing Lemkin's
work. But it's also disheartening to know that this man's efforts to
coin a term for something horrible in order to eradicate it hasn't
progressed beyond the naming phase.
From: Emil Lazarian | Ararat NewsPress