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Lemkin’s Lobby

Never in history had states even resolved to prevent atrocities. But enforcement was another matter entirely. Lemkin needed to make two things happen. First, twenty UN member states that had voted for the ban in the General Assembly had to ratify it domestically in order for the treaty to become official international law. And second, the United States, the world’s most powerful democracy, would have to take the lead in enforcing the genocide ban. In the absence of U.S. participation, the League of Nations had been impotent, and the sponsors of all new initiatives at the nascent UN were determined to involve the United States at every turn. “This treaty is like a ship carrying survivors,” Lemkin wrote to himself. “It cannot be permitted to sink.”¹

When it came to tallying twenty domestic ratifications, Lemkin again became a one-man, one-globe, multilingual, singleissue lobbying machine. Sifting through Lemkin’s papers, one is awed by the quantity of correspondence he maintained. He sent letters out in English, French, Spanish, Hebrew, Italian, and German. Long before computers or photocopiers, he handcrafted each letter to suit the appropriate individual, organization, or country. Occasionally, Lemkin commandeered a student assistant from Yale Law School or a volunteer from one of the Jewish groups with which he periodically allied himself, but these helpers rarely lasted under the employ of such a stringent taskmaster. Lemkin used friends, friends of friends, and acquaintances of acquaintances to familiarize himself with a country. When he wanted to know which buttons to press in Uruguay, a country he had never visited, he sent an elaborate set of questions to a distant contact. He inquired into the status of its ratification drive and asked how it approved international treaties. He wrote to the leaders of the most influential political parties, the heads of the private women’s or civic groups, and the editors of prominent newspapers. He usually asked his contact to gauge the influence of the local Jewish community. He varied his pitch. If a country had not yet ratified the convention, he appealed for haste in doing so and often attached sample legislation from Denmark, an early implementer. If a country had experienced genocide in the past, he reminded its citizens of the human costs of allowing it. But if a country had committed genocide in the past, as Turkey had done, Lemkin was willing to keep the country’s atrocities out of the discussion, so as not to scare off a possible signatory.

Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide