After the success of the International Symposium on Primo Levi we are pleased to share with our subscribers an invitation to this important event. Almost 90 years ago, as a young linguistics student in Poland, Raphael Lemkin was intrigued - and deeply troubled - about the case of an Armenian youth accused of murdering the Turkish official responsible for the 1915 genocide of the Armenian community in the Ottoman Empire. Perplexed by the question of why it is a crime for one man to murder another, but not a crime for a government to kill more than a million people, Lemkin devoted the rest of his life to studying, educating, theorizing, writing, and actively campaigning to protect the existence (in every manifestation) of ethnic, racial, religious and national groups under international law. He accomplished it all through lectures, government service, international legal work and tireless advocacy. This crime had no name; Lemkin gave it one - Genocide - and devoted the rest of his life to the drafting, lobbying and ratification process of the United Nations Genocide Convention in 1948.
What, Lemkin asked, are the economic, social and cultural consequences of genocide? How shall nations be made to be held responsible for their actions? How many ways are there to destroy a people?
When Lemkin died in 1959, he left a vast trove of correspondence and papers documenting his work as well as extensive treatises on the meaning and impact of genocide. Many of those papers are today located in the archives of the American Jewish Historical Society at the Center for Jewish History in New York City. Additional collections may be found at the New York Public Library and the American Jewish Archives in Cincinnati, and they cast a brilliant light on his intellectual gifts and his courageous activities.
Today, genocide manifests itself in all corners of our world. As new generations of scholars, human rights advocates, diplomats and activists wrestle with the issues of addressing, preventing and dealing with the aftermath of this phenomenon, many have returned to Lemkin's writings as a source for understanding and coping with the myriad challenges of international law and human rights.
Genocide and Human Experience: Raphael Lemkin's Thought and Vision brings together an international group of historians, political scientists, anthropologists, philosophers and legal authorities to focus a lens on genocide through the exclusive examination of Raphael Lemkin. We hope that out of this intersection of historical and contemporary interpretation will emerge some clearer understandings of both the extraordinary courage and dynamic intellect of one individual, and the challenges that lay before us as we confront the evil of genocide in the modern world.
Admission information: www.smarttix.com | 212-868-4444
LINKSBrowse the Lemkin's PapersFacing History and OurselvesMichael Ignatieff on Raphael LemkinAbout Raphael LemkinRaphael Lemkin (1901-1959) was born in Poland and studied philology at the University of Lw�w and at the University of Heidelberg. After receiving his degree in law, he became public prosecutor for the District Court of Poland (1929-1934).
In 1941 he was invited to lecture at Duke University and began to write the first version of
Axis Rule in Occupied Europe. Lemkin became consultant on international law to the Judge Advocate General of the U.S. Army in 1945, and was appointed legal advisor to the U.S. Chief Prosecutor at the Nuremberg trials (1945-1946). On December 9, 1948 the Genocide Convention was unanimously adopted and on October 15, 1950, it became international law.
The conference is made possible through the support of the
David Berg Foundation, the
Einhorn Family Charitable Trust, and the
Pershing Square Foundation.
