Raphael Lemkin on the Armenian Genocide

From a letter to Mrs. Thelma Stevens, Methodist Women’s Council, July 26, 1950

“This Convention is a matter of conscience and is a -*test*-('") of our personal relationship to evil. I know it is very hot in July and August for work and planning, but without becoming sentimental or trying to use colorful speech, let us not forget that the heat of this month is less unbearable to us than the heat of the ovens of Auschwitz and Dachau and more lenient than the murderous heat in the desert of Aleppo which burned to death the bodies of hundreds of thousands of Christian Armenian victims of genocide in 1915.”

From “Totally Unofficial, The Autobiography of Raphael Lemkin.”

“In 1915 the Germans occupied the city of W. and the entire area. I used this time to read more history, to study and to watch whether national, religious, or racial groups are being destroyed. The truth came out only after the war. In Turkey, more than 1,200,000 Armenians were put to death for no other reason than they were Christians… . After the end of the war, some 150 Turkish war criminals were arrested and interned by the British Government on the Island of Malta. The Armenians sent a delegation to the peace conference in Versailles. They were demanding justice. Then one day, the delegation read in the newspapers that all Turkish war criminals were released. I was shocked. A nation was killed and the guilty persons were set free. Why is a man punished when he kills another man? Why is the killing of a million a lesser crime than the killing of a single individual?


“I identified myself more and more with the sufferings of the victims, whose numbers grew, as I continued my study of history. I understood that the function of memory is not only to register past events, but to stimulate human conscience. Soon contemporary examples of genocide followed, such as the slaughter of Armenians in 1915. It became clear to me that the diversity of nations, religious groups and races is essential to civilization because every one of those groups has a mission to fulfill and a contribution to make in terms of culture… . I decide to become a lawyer and work for the outlawing of Genocide and for its prevention through the cooperation of nations.”

“…A bold plan was formulated in my mind. This consisted [of] obtaining the ratification by Turkey [of the proposed UN Convention on Genocide. Ed] among the first twenty founding nations. This would be an atonement for [the] genocide of the Armenians. But how could this be achieved?… The Turks are proud of their republican form of government and of progressive concepts, which helped them in replacing the rule of the Ottoman Empire. The genocide convention must be put within the framework of social and international progress. I knew however that in this conversation both sides will have to avoid speaking about one thing, although it would be constantly in their minds: the Armenians.”

[Source: With permission of the Rare Books and Manuscripts Division, New York Public Library, Astor, Lenox and Tilden Foundations.

cited in:
Encyclopedia of Genocide Volume I: A-H edited by Israel W. Charny. (ABC-CLIO; Denver, Colorado; 1999) pp. 79.]

I found it online here: http://www.crda-france.org/0en/9genocide1915/e_lemkin1.htm (which saved me the time from OCR'ing, I just edited in the reference to Encyclopedia of Genocide and cleared up the source.)

Did you not get a job yet?

Great news vre Niko!!!

Are you planning to quit your vocation of being a fascist Kemalist living in the USA?

I live in the USA just like you and have no problem to find sources like the Encyclopedia of Genocide which completely contradict Kemalist official history.

Yes, I live in the States. I'm too busy to verify your silly sources, as I have a job and I usually come here to decompress. On the other hand you come here to compress. Soon you will blow a hole in your ass and all the hot air will come out. What's your blood pressure reading?

It's actually available in Turkey.