Jonathan lemken biography
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A Journal of Ideas
Book Reviews
Raphael Lemkin spent his life trying to get the world to pay attention to genocide. He died with hardly anyone knowing how much we owed him.
By Mike AbramowitzTagged GenocideHuman Rights
Totally Unofficial: The Autobiography of Raphael Lemkin Edited by Donna-Lee Frieze • Yale University Press • 2013 • 328 pages • $35
When Samantha Power worked at the White House during the first term of the Obama Administration, she had on her office wall a framed portrait of a little-known Polish lawyer named Raphael Lemkin. It was Power, perhaps more than anyone else, who had introduced Lemkin to a new generation with the publication of her 2002 book, A Problem from Hell, which includes several chapters on the inspirational story of the Holocaust escapee who coined the word “genocide” and successfully lobbied the new United Nations to approve the Genocide Convention in 1948.
Not only a sign of Power’s personal passion, Lemkin’s “presence” in the Obama White House also signaled a revival of interest in an important figure who died penniless, obscure, and mostly friendless more than 50 years ago. The first full-scale biography of Lemkin came out in 2008, followed in 2009 by a major scholarly con
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Editors
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Jonathan lemken biography
James Dennis (Jim) Warren
Mother – Helen C. Warren
2005), Jonathan Lemkin (1990-2005)