by The United States Holocaust Memorial Museum
This timeline notes the major conceptual and legal advances in the development of “genocide.” It does not attempt to detail all cases which might be considered as genocides. Rather, the timeline focuses on how the term has become a part of the political, legal, and ethical vocabulary of responding to widespread threats of violence against groups.
1900: Raphael Lemkin
Raphael Lemkin, who would later coin the word genocide, was born into a Polish Jewish family in 1900. His memoirs detail early exposure to the history of Ottoman attacks against Armenians (which most scholars believe constitute genocide), antisemitic pogroms, and other histories of group-targeted violence as key to forming his beliefs about the need for legal protection of groups.
![Raphael Lemkin (right) with Ambassador Amado of Brazil (left) before a plenary session of the General Assembly at which the Convention ... [LCID: lemkin1]](https://encyclopedia.ushmm.org/images/large/38c2919b-89d7-4b02-a7d2-b71d8b21d70b.jpg)
1933: Rise of Adolf Hitler
With the appointment of Adolf Hitler as Chancellor on January 30, 1933, the Nazi Party took control of Germany. In October, German delegates walked out of disarmament talks in Geneva and Nazi Germany withdrew from the League of Nations. In October, at an international legal conference in Madrid, Raphael Lemkin (who later coined the word genocide) proposed legal measures to protect groups. His proposal did not receive support.
1939: World War II
World War II began on September 1, 1939. Germany invaded Poland, triggering a treaty-mandated Anglo-French declaration of war on Germany. On September 17, 1939, the Soviet army occupied the eastern half of Poland. Lemkin fled Poland, escaping across the Soviet Union and eventually arriving in the United States.
1941: A Crime Without a Name
On June 22, 1941, Nazi Germany invaded the Soviet Union. As the German forces advanced further east, SS, police, and military personnel carried out mass shootings of Jewish men, women, and children, as well as other perceived enemies. The British became aware of these atrocities through intercepted radio communications. They moved British Prime Minister Winston Churchill to state in August 1941: “We are in the presence of a crime without a name.”
1944: Genocide Coined…
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