Raphael Lemkin
Polish Jewish lawyer (1900-1959) · United States · On the map · Academics · Died at 59
Raphael Lemkin was a Polish Jewish lawyer who is known for coining the term "genocide" and for campaigning to establish the Genocide Convention, which legally defines the act.
Raphael Lemkin is read about 367 times a day, in 41 languages.
A typical day, 30 days to 9 November 2026
The middle day of the days counted, so one week of news cannot move it. The line under it is the last 111 days, one point a day.
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About this person
Following the German invasion of Poland in 1939, he fled the country and sought asylum in the United States, where he became an academic at Duke University and campaigned vigorously to raise international awareness of the atrocities that the Axis powers were committing across occupied Europe. It was amidst this environment of World War II that Lemkin coined the term "genocide" to describe Nazi Germany's extermination policy.
