Genocide means the total or partial destruction of a national, ethnic, racial or religious group.
The term genocide appears during the Second World War, when the Polish jurist Raphael Lemkin characterizes, in 1944, "the practice of extermination of nations and ethnic groups".
The term "genocide" was later used retrospectively for the systematic massacre of the Herero and Nama in South-West Africa (1904-1908), that of the Armenians by the Turks (1915-1916), and finally that of the Tutsi in Rwanda (1994).
The Shoah Memorial today approaches through its exhibitions and activities the history of these three other genocides of the 20th century.
