People rarely look into the creation of a word. We use words like genocide without knowing there origin. The class was assigned reading in Samantha Power's book A Problem From Hell and learned about the story behind such a powerful word. Power wrote a great overview of the word and it's creator Raphael Lemkin.
Lemkin led an interesting and sad life. He was able to predict the awful crimes that the Nazis would commit but no one would listen to him. Most of his family would later die because of there Jewish beliefs. This pushed Lemkin in to work.
After the Holocaust Lemkin took Churchill's words to heart. Lemkin began the search for a word. He was able to come up with a term for the crime but couldn't get officials to recognize it or it's meaning. He worked non-stop for several years until it was accepted.
Lemkin played a huge role in the genocide law of today.
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