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GENOCIDE', RACE MURDERBy BRONISLAW MATECKI (FolUh Economic* Professor and Government Official)' .LOND ON “Crime without name.” ' . •.•That is how Winston Churchill, in a broadcast made, in 1941, described the terrifying accumulation ol • wellrpianned barbarities committed by the Nazis on the living bodies of many a European nation and race. Britain's war. ieader, whose unique eloquence failed him when he searched for a word to convey the suffering of peoples. tortured by the* German oppressor, finds now the: name of this-nameless crime : in v the' indictment; of the Nazi war; leaders—genocide.Count Three : of the'Indictment reads in part: ‘“‘.h:. . They (the defendants)’ conducted deliberate and systematic/genocide:-. . ..in order to destroy-: particular^ racesand classes ' .of /-people';/;* .»*'Genocide, the word coined to fit the crime;'iseems-likely not only to play Jti;.part' in.;the Nuernberg trials, but may change the aspects of international law in war and in peace.;.- .. • • •The creator of the word, Prof. Raphael Lemkin, a noted scholar of international law, formerly a public prosecutor in Poland and now a faculty member at Duke University in North Carolina, says he had' no linguistic- ambitions ’• in writing the name, that he aimed at a legal and humanitarian concept which, , if generally accepted, would mitigate mankind s misery.- ■?■ ; ;•WHY THE NAME . I Genocide has two roots — the Greek genus,”. nation or race; the Latin cide,” a', suffix, made from caederekilling.; Put. them .-together and there is genocide — killing a nation” or. “murderer of a nation. ... .. j In his book, Axis Rule in Occupied Europe (published by the Carnegie. lEndowment for International Peace, Washington, D.C.). Dr. Lcmkln writes hitherto-used terms for‘attacks upon nations as a whole are inadequate;-. ; '• ‘'Denationalization,!.' he declares, does not convey biological destruction and, In addition; sometimes is used in the sense of deprivation of citizenship. This author,finds terms like Germanization,” “ItBi-1001x01100” or VMagyarlzatlon; fail to convey physicalannihilation and are to be applied only in such , special cases. wherc one nation attacks the. national • pattern of the other.':Genocide, on the other hand, means what it says: A murderous attack upon a nation or a group weaker than the oppressor. It does not - necessarily mean the immediate destruction of a nation—except when accomplished by the mass killing of all its members. It is intended rather to imply a coordinated campaign for the destruction of . the essential foundations, of the life- of national, religious and ethnic-groups with the purpose,of annihilating the groups themselves.'Thus genocide was practiced by the Germans upon Jews, Gypsies, Poles, Russians, and other- Slavs and, to' a ‘lesser extent, upon Frenchmen, Belgians ana Luxem-bourgers.HOW IT WORKS .Genocide is directed , against a group as an entity, and the actions involved are directed against individuals, not in their individual capacity, but as members of such groups./;.; '•••; ■ // s./.‘ Lemkin finds ; in the Hague Conventions a legal basis for the punishment of genocide in war. More’ important than punishment, however, he declares, is prevention—effective only when impartial .investigators ore allowed to study the victims’ cases..Further, he advocates 'prosecution for genocide in peacetime. /.World .War :II, writes the professor, taught that not only minorities but whole nations and races, if wenk; may be attacked with a view toward annihilation.;
Newspaper Details
Paris News
Paris, Texas, US
Thu, Nov 29, 1945
Page 11
Full Page
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History M.
OH, USA 10 Jan 2017
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