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MAN WHO MADE GENOCIDE A CRIME
Oman Tribune, Sultanate of Oman
Oct 29 2014
'Watchers of the Sky' tells the tale of Polish lawyer Raphael Lemkin
who strung together Greek word for race and Latin for killing to
describe attempts for racial extermination, writes 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 recognised the red flags when the Nazis
invaded Poland in 1939, and he fled to the United States. His 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 travelled 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 US 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. 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
watercolour 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.
http://www.omantribune.com/index.php?page=leisure_details&id=12988&heading=Sp ecial%20Features%20in%20Details
From: Emil Lazarian | Ararat NewsPress
Oman Tribune, Sultanate of Oman
Oct 29 2014
'Watchers of the Sky' tells the tale of Polish lawyer Raphael Lemkin
who strung together Greek word for race and Latin for killing to
describe attempts for racial extermination, writes 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 recognised the red flags when the Nazis
invaded Poland in 1939, and he fled to the United States. His 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 travelled 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 US 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. 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
watercolour 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.
http://www.omantribune.com/index.php?page=leisure_details&id=12988&heading=Sp ecial%20Features%20in%20Details
From: Emil Lazarian | Ararat NewsPress