Raphael Lemkin , Axis Rule in Occupied Europe: Laws of Occupation, Analysis of Government

Abstract

Perhaps no crime can match genocide. Classified by the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda as a "crime of crimes", scholars such as William Schabas have asserted that, in the hierarchy of crimes, genocide "belongs to the top of the pyramid". Others have described it as the "most heinous international crime" or the most heinous and heinous of all, the greatest denial of civilization and solidarity.Therefore, the reprinting and publication of the pioneering book “The Rule of the Axis in Occupied Europe” by the Polish jurist Raphael Lemkin (1900-1959) represents a cultural event par excellence. The book coined the term “genocide” for the first time, and defined it as one of the subjects of international law. This second edition of Lemkin's book in 2008 comes at a time when the field of genocide studies has developed. ( ), a field that has not yet crystallized in Arab and Iraqi universities. Also, the book (Lemkin) was not read at all in the Arab world and no translation of the book or one of its chapters was issued despite the passage of nearly eight decades since its publication, and it was read again in the Western academic world thanks to this second edition written by the American diplomat (Samantha) Bauer), and wrote another foreword to the book, the genocidal scholar and expert in international criminal law (William Schabas).While the term "genocide" came to mean the extermination of a people, Lemkin used it more broadly to describe all programs that sought to increase the "Aryan" birth rate while working to annihilate the social, cultural, and economic independence of non-Germanic peoples during Nazi rule. When Lemkin coined the term "genocide" in 1944, he brought about a paradigm shift in both international law and the social sciences. Indeed, in the interwar period, Lemkin was struggling to establish international protection for minorities. The tragic fate of the Ottoman Armenians in 1915, in particular, confirmed his view that international law should be established to make the deliberate and systematic extermination of national or religious minorities by the state a punishable crime. Lemkin has made his mark not only in international law, but also in the social and historical sciences. With his first definition of genocide he revolutionized the academic understanding of mass violence:“By ‘genocide’ we mean the destruction of a nation or an ethnic group. . . . In general, genocide does not necessarily mean the immediate destruction of a nation, except when it is done by the mass killing of all members of the nation. Its purpose is to indicate a coordinated plan of various actions which aimed at destroying the basic foundations of the life of national groups, with a view to eliminating the groups themselves.” (Lemkin) emphasized that the destruction of national, ethnic or religious groups was often carried out through non-lethal forms of violence. Hence, genocide is nothing more than a large-scale massacre. According to Lemkin, the commission of genocide should be understood as a comprehensive social practice that affects all aspects of collective life.