Raphael Lemkin

Raphael Lemkin was born in Volkovysk, Russia (now Vawkavysk, Belarus). As a lawyer in Warsaw he worked to safeguard the rights of ethnic, religious, and political groups until the Nazi occupation forced him to flee to the United States in 1941. Lemkin taught at Duke University and later joined the War Department, where he helped prepare the prosecution for the Nuremberg Trials. He coined the word genocide in 1944 and lobbied for the rest of his life to ensure that the act was recognized as a crime under international law. On December 9, 1948, the United Nations approved the Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of Genocide.