June 24, 1900 birth of Raphaël Lemkin, who creates the concept of "Genocide".

Photo credits: DR 

Polish jurist of Jewish origin, Raphaël Lemkin was born on 24 June 1900 in Ozerisko. Prosecutor, professor at the Free University of Poland in Warsaw, he began thinking in the 1930s about the necessary evolution of criminal laws to prevent atrocities and the destruction of groups, recognized internationally. Marked by the mass violence against the Armenians by the Ottoman Empire, Raphaël Lemkin then advanced the notion of "crime of barbarism". Faced with the Nazi and Soviet occupation, he left Poland in 1940 and took refuge in Stockholm, then in the United States in 1941. He joined the War Department, while pursuing an academic career.

In 1944, Raphaël Lemkin finally proposed the concept of "genocide" in a book entitled "Axis Rule In Occupied Europe: laws of occupation, analysis of government, proposals for redress". He became an advisor to Robert H. Jackson, member of the Supreme Court of the United States.United and Head of the American delegation to the Nuremberg Tribunal.

His long struggle led to the adoption by the United Nations on 9 December 1948 of the Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide. He died on 28 August 1959 in New York.