3 ms·
I thought Lemkin coined the word with the Armenian genocide in mind. In 1943, the scale of the Holocaust was unknown among the public, and even Western intelli
by Svip 6y ago
I thought Lemkin coined the word with the Armenian genocide in mind. In 1943, the scale of the Holocaust was unknown among the public, and even Western intelligence to some extend. Lemkin was in the US by then, so the information available to him about the scale of Nazi atrocities in Eastern Europe would be largely unavailable to him.
- skissane 6y agoIt was both - the Armenian genocide, and the Nazi crimes, which Lemkin was dedicated to documenting as they occurred, including in his 1944 book Axis Rule in Occupied Europe. He might not have been fully aware of the scale of the Nazi crimes, but he was already viewing them through the framework of “genocide”