Ch.I Genocide

Subject(s):

Crimes against humanity — Genocide

This chapter focuses on genocide, which developed from a category of crimes against humanity to an autonomous crime after World War II. It considers the codification as a response to the German Holocaust, the archetypal genocide. The term was coined in 1944 by Raphael Lemkin, from the Greek word γένος‎ and the combining form ‘cide’ from the Latin word caedere, in order to de-note an old practice to its modern development. The chapter mentions the US military tribunals sitting at Nuremberg that demonstrated the emerging acceptance of the concept by explicitly using the term genocide in both the indictment and the judgment in the Einsatzgruppen trial in order to characterize the activities of the German troops in Poland and the Soviet Union. Those who devise and implement genocide seek to deprive humanity of the manifold richness its nationalities, races, ethnicities, and religions provide.