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Raphael Lemkin's Axis Rule In Occupied Europe

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In 1933, A Polish Jew named Raphael Lemkin proposed two laws to be introduced at the Fifth International Conference for the Unification of Penal Law in Madrid, Spain. These "Acts of Barbarity" as he called them led to the creation of the word ‘genocide’.(Watenplec,1/7/16) In addition to the "Acts of Barbarity," he also proposed a law regarding the destruction of a people's cultural heritage which he called "Acts of Vandalism” (Watenplec,1/7/16), as well as called into question the discriminatory treatment of the Jews in Germany. However, despite his best efforts, his concerns went unnoticed. After being caught up in all that was WWII, he fled to the Baltic states, then to Russia, and eventually made his way to the United States. It was there, in 1944 that Lemkin's book Axis Rule in Occupied Europe: Laws of Occupation, Analysis of Government, Proposals for Redress was published, and in it, the word genocide appeared in print for the first time. It was after WWII when the Nuremberg trials started that people became aware that the Nazi extermination of Jews and Gypsies pre-war was not covered under the Nuremberg Charter. …show more content…

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