Every once in a while, I think about how Raphael Lemkin, a Polish (and JEWISH, this is important) man who coined the term ‘genocide’ never kept quiet about “yes, USSR, I DO mean the Holodomor counts, too!” How the USSR blocked every attempt to make the official definition include what happened to Ukrainians in the early 1930s. That the only way it got approved for the use in legal trials and such like Nuremberg was because everyone bowed to USSR’s pressure to hide their evil doing.
The man went to his grave fighting to call Holodomor a genocide. Just like the Holocaust. Just like the Armenian Genocide.
This isn’t some bullshit ‘death of the author’ or what the fuck ever. This is telling a man who had very clear rules in mind for what counts that he’s WRONG about a thing HE CAME UP WITH.
A Polish Jew creates the term ‘genocide’. Everyone tells him he’s wrong about the definition of a term he created. He knew exactly what he was doing when he created the term and gave the examples of what he knew to be considered the term he created.
Raphael Lemkin lost 49 PEOPLE IN THE HOLOCAUST and you DARE to say you KNOW BETTER THAN HIM what counts as a GENOCIDE? (Yea, 49. Only like 3 relatives survived. May all their memories be a blessing.)
The Nuremberg Trials would never have happened the way they did without Raphael Lemkin but he doesn’t fucking have the right to call something a genocide SOMEHOW.
In 1953 he published a whole speech/article that literally said “Soviet Genocide in Ukraine” aka Holodomor.
But sure, because that one little time Holodomor wasn’t included means it was never meant to be considered one.
Raphael Lemkin, in his own words on his original definition of genocide:
“Genocide does not necessarily mean the immediate destruction of a nation, except when accomplished by mass killings of all members of a nation. It is intended rather to signify a coordinated plan of different actions aiming at the destruction of essential foundations of the life of national groups, with the aim of annihilating the groups themselves. The objectives of such a plan would be disintegration of the political and social institutions, of culture, language, national feelings, religion, and the economic existence of national groups, and the destruction of the personal security, liberty, health, dignity, and even the lives of the individuals belonging to such groups. Genocide is directed against the national group as an entity, and the actions involved are directed against individuals, not in their individual capacity, but as members of the national group.”
Raphael Lemkin, of blessed memory, knew exactly what he was saying. Poland and Ukraine have always been neighbors and have both been bullied by Russia. To say nothing of having their borders shifted around that a Pole could find themselves a Ukrainian and vice versa one year then go back to the start the next year. Raphael Lemkin, coiner of the term genocide, saw the destruction of the Holodomor and the Shoah and knew they both fit his definition.
Pray tell how a nation such as Russia can overrule the man who coined the term of their crime?
Raphael Lemkin would call the war the exact thing it is: genocide. We all know it. And I for one will continue his fight to making sure everybody knows exactly what Russia represents and what they have done and will continue to do until we are believed more readily than people want to believe an ex-KGB fuckhead.