[2] Lemkin coined genocide in 1943 or 1944 from two words: genos (Ancient Greek: γένος, 'family, clan, tribe, race, stock, kin')[3] and -cide (Latin: -cidium, 'killing').

[4][5][6] The term was included in the 1944 research-work "Axis Rule in Occupied Europe", wherein Lemkin documented mass-killings of ethnic groups deemed "untermenschen" by Nazi Germany.

[7] The concept of "genocide" was defined by Lemkin to refer to the various extermination campaigns launched by Nazi Germany to wipe out entire racial groups, including European Jews in the Holocaust.

The concept of "genocide" was non-existent in any international laws at the time, and this became one of the reasons for Lemkin's view that the trial did not serve complete justice on prosecuting Nazi atrocities targeting ethnic and religious groups.

Lemkin committed the rest of his life to push for an international convention, which in his view, was essential to prevent the rise of "future Hitlers".

[12][13][Note 1] He grew up in a Polish Jewish family on a large farm near Wolkowysk and was one of three children born to Józef Lemkin and Bella née Pomeranz.

[12] As a youth, Lemkin was fascinated by the subject of atrocities and would often question his mother about such events as the Sack of Carthage, Mongol invasions and conquests and the persecution of Huguenots.

[14][16] Lemkin apparently came across the concept of mass atrocities while, at the age of 12, reading Quo Vadis by Henryk Sienkiewicz, in particular the passage where Nero threw Christians to the lions.

In his writings, Lemkin demonstrated a belief central to his thinking throughout his life: the suffering of Jews in eastern Poland was part of a larger pattern of injustice and violence that stretched back through history and around the world.

[18] After graduating from a local trade school in Białystok Lemkin began the study of linguistics at the Jan Kazimierz University of Lwów (now Lviv, Ukraine).

Makarewicz, a national-conservative who believed that Jews and Ukrainians should be expelled from Poland if they refused to assimilate, answered that the doctrine of state sovereignty gave governments the right to conduct internal affairs as they saw fit: "Consider the case of a farmer who owns a flock of chickens.

In 1934 Lemkin, under pressure from the Polish Foreign Minister for comments made at the Madrid conference, resigned his position and became a private solicitor in Warsaw.

While in Warsaw, Lemkin attended numerous lectures organized by the Free Polish University, including the classes of Emil Stanisław Rappaport and Wacław Makowski [pl].

Some documents Lemkin analysed had been signed by Hitler, implementing ideas of Mein Kampf on Lebensraum, new living space to be inhabited by Germans.

[citation needed] After arriving in the United States, at the invitation of McDermott, Lemkin joined the law faculty at Duke University in North Carolina in 1941.

This book included an extensive legal analysis of German rule in countries occupied by Nazi Germany during the course of World War II, along with the definition of the term genocide.

In 1945 to 1946, Lemkin became an advisor to Supreme Court of the United States Justice and Nuremberg Trial chief counsel Robert H. Jackson.

[50] In 1951, Lemkin only partially achieved his goal when the Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide came into force, after the 20th nation had ratified the treaty.

[33][54] Between 1953 and 1957, Lemkin worked directly with representatives of several governments, such as Egypt, to outlaw genocide under the domestic penal codes of these countries.

Lemkin also worked with a team of lawyers from Arab delegations at the United Nations to build a case to prosecute French officials for genocide in Algeria.

[72] On 20 November 2015, Lemkin's article Soviet genocide in Ukraine was added to the Russian index of "extremist publications", whose distribution in Russia is forbidden.