The word “genocide” was coined by secular Jew and Polish attorney Raphael Lemkin in 1948. To him the term meant not only physical obliteration of a certain group of people, but their cultural annihilation as well. The legal concept that emerged from the 1948 UN Convention on Genocide, however, was so narrowly defined that it has rarely served as legal redress for the many, horrific mass murders since World War II. Linda Kinstler is a junior fellow at Harvard’s Society of Fellows and the author of “Come to This Court and Cry: How the Holocaust Ends.” In a piece titled “The Bitter Fight Over the Meaning of Genocide,” Kinstler explores the history of the concept and how the horror unfolding in Gaza today is spurring activists to reclaim Lemkin’s original and much broader concept. Patricia Kullberg, our Well Read Red, reads excerpts from the article, which was published in the New York Times on August 29 of this year. The full article can be read here.
Photo by Alisdare Hickson and licensed for public use: https://www.flickr.com/photos/alisdare/53248367523