Raphael Lemkin
Raphael Lemkin (1900-1959) was a Polish lawyer. He is best known for his work against genocide, a word that he defined in 1944, from the roots genos (Greek for family, tribe or race) and -cide (Latin for killing). He used the word first in print in Axis Rule in Occupied Europe: Laws of Occupation - Analysis of Government - Proposals for Redress.
Lemkin was originally born in Poland, and fled to the UK shortly after the Nazi invasion of Poland in 1939. He lost 60 of his close relatives in the Holocaust; they were among over 3 million Polish Jews annihilated during the Nazi occupation.
After the Holocaust, Lemkin campaigned for the international laws defining and forbidding genocide (in the non-political sense), and achieved his goal in 1951 when the Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide came into effect.
