Raphael Lemkin (June 24, 1900 – August 28, 1959) was a
Polish Jewish lawyer who emigrated to the
United States in 1941. He is best known for his work against
genocide, a word he coined in 1943 or 1944 from the rooted words
genos (
Greek for family, tribe, or race) and
-cide (
Latin for killing). He first used the word in print in
Axis Rule in Occupied Europe: Laws of Occupation – Analysis of Government – Proposals for Redress (1944), and defined it as "the destruction of a nation or an ethnic group."