“At the time of his death, he was fifty-nine and penniless…Seven people attended [his] funeral.”(Power, p. 78)
Devoting his entire adult life to fighting ethnic atrocities, Raphael Lemkin was an unstoppable force. Yet if one measures his impact by his recognition upon death, he faded into obscurity. Fortunately for me, a reading of Samantha Power’s “A Problem from Hell”: America and the Age of Genocide brings his life and efforts back into the perspective.1 This Pulitzer Prize winning book outlines the multiple failures of humanity to respond or rein in our all-too-frequent episodes of inhumanity and our all-too-frequent turning a blind eye to these episodes. Raphael Lemkin could not do that, nor should we.
Born in 1900 in Poland, Lemkin quickly recognized as a young adult how mass murders are easily dismissed. Mehmed Talaat, the mastermind behind the Armenian massacre where over 1 million were killed in 1915, was assassinated by Soghomon Tehlirian to avenge the death of his family. Lemkin asked one of his professors why Talaat was not brought to justice prior to his assassination. He was told that there was no law under which such crimes could be prosecuted. Lemkin is quoted as saying, “It is a crime for Tehlirian to kill a man, but it is not a crime for his oppressor to kill more than a million men? This is most inconsistent.”(Power, p. 17)
Thus, he embarked on a journey to right these wrongs. He witnessed his fellow Jews starting to be rounded up in Poland and Germany for execution, and he fled to the United States. His at times singular crusade to speak out about such crimes culminated in a book in which he coined the term ‘genocide’ for the first time in 1944. While the term itself subsequently raised significant controversy, his intent was that genocide was “a coordinated plan of different actions aiming at the destruction of essential foundations of the life of national groups, with the aim of annihilating the groups themselves.”(Power, p. 43)
Raphael Lemkin
It really wasn’t until the liberation of the concentration camps in Germany that the breadth of WWII’s destruction was realized. Estimates of 6 million Jews and 5 million others being exterminated surfaced. The cause of recognizing genocide for what it was and looking at ways to prohibit it via enforceable laws became tangible goals for Lemkin. A Genocide Convention (for the Prevention and Punishment) was ratified by the fledging United Nations in 1948. But the United States steadfastly refused to ratify the Convention for four decades!
Senator William Proxmire (Wisconsin) took up the cause in the US Senate as politician after politician worried about “national sovereignty” over human dignity. He wanted America to stand up for its most cherished values. Between 1967 and 1986, Proxmire gave 3,211 speeches on the Senate floor about the importance of the adoption of the Genocide Convention. One cannot say that the atrocities of WWII will never happen again without being willing to set standards that will lead to some enforcement. The United States finally became a signatory of the Genocide Convention in 1988.
Senator William Proxmire
Raphael Lemkin toiled tirelessly from the 1930s until his death in 1959. Yes, he was penniless (he exhausted all of his resources in his fight to get the Genocide Convention ratified) and was virtually unrecognized (only 7 people at his funeral). His name even now is definitely not well-recognized. I have to admit that I had never heard of him before now. Yet, I would argue that his impact was immeasurable. Look how Senator Proxmire took up the banner and carried it for 19 years.
All of the above might just seem like some type of interesting history lesson. Unfortunately, genocide continues to be a part of life on our planet. Armenians (1915), Jews (1930s-1945), Cambodians (mid 1970s), Iraqi Kurds (1987-1988), Rwandan Tutsis (1994), and Bosnians (1992-1995) represent just some of the recent examples of ethnic groups eliminated in the name of some group’s perceived superiority or some nation’s professed sovereignty. We have not served these people well when the memory of their struggles goes ignored in the years to follow.
But the real question might be – Why this history lesson? Why am I bringing up all of these past problems? Certainly, we have learned our lessons and will never led genocide happen again? I would argue no – we have not learned our lessons; genocide will happen again; and we have enabled it to happen with a variety of current circumstances.
First, the lessons of genocide seem to be brushed under the table as the evil acts of others. The lessons of genocide involve us, and we need to pay heed.2 The acceptance and perpetration of lies prepares a fertile soil for evil doing. Lies have a cost because they multiply, because they tear at our moral fabric, and because they can become unrecognizable. We are currently in the midst of some of the most pernicious lies that threaten to erode our democracy just like the lies surrounding the Chernobyl disaster in 1986 that tore down the Soviet Union. History gives us a blueprint to correct our course.
Second, the lessons of genocide can so easily be learned by all of us if we are willing to listen.3
- Be aware of unproven media hype—propaganda can be our own worst enemy;
- Never dehumanize your fellow man—it’s far too easy to paint a “broad-brush” and identify others as less worthy than us or say that an entire group of people are all the same because a small group of them does bad things.
- Treat the family of man as we would treat our family;
- See that one person can make a difference—like Raphael Lemkin;
- See that one person can make a difference but we need the help of a team—it truly takes a team to accomplish significant work; and
- Reach out to others and solicit their assistance—we should never be shy in terms asking for help to do what is right.
Finally, the lessons of genocide would have us ignore current trends in politics. Attempts to impose certain religious preferences in public settings, attempts to ban certain books in a free society, and attempts to “whitewash” uncomfortable aspects of our history all lead us away from healthy introspection. Healthy introspection is how we learn what we have done right, how we learn what we need to improve, and how we learn how to be better citizens. Without an honest assessment of our history and our current course, we have lost our moral compass – and genocide-like thinking can creep into our culture. It is a slippery slope and one we do not want to be on. I think that we are precariously close without the proper acceptance of our checkered past.4
Raphael Lemkin was right to be on a crusade and warn us all about the possibilities of genocide. Senator Proxmire was right to be on a similar crusade. It is up to us now to continue the diligent journey to protect humanity for its own inhumanity.
- Power S: “A Problem from Hell”: America and the Age of Genocide. Basic Books, New York. 2013, 620 pp.
- https://mychildrenschildren.com/never-again-not-really/
- https://mychildrenschildren.com/the-everyday-lessons-of-genocide/
- https://mychildrenschildren.com/racial-inequity-it-cannot-be-whitewashed/