page_title: Raphael Lemkin
section_title: Career in interwar Poland
hierarchical_section_title: Raphael Lemkin / Life / Career in interwar Poland
caption_attribution_description: English: Plaque (Polish/English), 6 Kredytowa Street, Warsaw, Poland Polski: Tablica pamiątkowa przy ul. Kredytowej 6 w Warszawie
context_page_description: Raphael Lemkin was a lawyer of Polish-Jewish descent who is best known for coining the word genocide and initiating the Genocide Convention. Lemkin coined the word genocide in 1943 or 1944 from genos and -cide. His work inspired Jessie Bernard whose American Community Behavior contains one of the earliest sociological studies of genocide.
context_section_description: From 1929 to 1934, Lemkin was the Public Prosecutor for the district court of Warsaw. In 1930 he was promoted to Deputy Prosecutor in a local court in Brzeżany. While Public Prosecutor, Lemkin was also secretary of the Committee on Codification of the Laws of the Republic of Poland, which codified the penal codes of Poland, and taught law at Tachkemoni College in Warsaw. Lemkin, working with Duke University law professor Malcolm McDermott, translated The Polish Penal Code of 1932 from Polish to English.
  In 1933 Lemkin made a presentation to the Legal Council of the League of Nations conference on international criminal law in Madrid, for which he prepared an essay on the Crime of Barbarity as a crime against international law. The concept of the crime, which later evolved into the idea of genocide, was based on the Armenian Genocide and prompted by the experience of Assyrians massacred in Iraq during the 1933 Simele massacre. In 1934 Lemkin, under pressure from the Polish Foreign Minister for comments made at the Madrid conference, resigned his position and became a private solicitor in Warsaw. While in Warsaw, Lemkin attended numerous lectures organized by the Free Polish University, including the classes of Emil Stanisław Rappaport and Wacław Makowski.
  In 1937, Lemkin was appointed a member of the Polish mission to the 4th Congress on Criminal Law in Paris, where he also introduced the possibility of defending peace through criminal law. Among the most important of his works of that period are a compendium of Polish criminal fiscal law, Prawo karne skarbowe (1938) and a French-language work, La réglementation des paiements internationaux, regarding international trade law (1939).
caption: 2008 plaque commemorating Lemkin's prewar residence, 6 Kredytowa Street, Warsaw, Poland
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