–and coins the word Genocide.
It combines the Greek word genos (race), with the Latin word cide (killing).
Born into a Jewish family in 1900 in Bezwodne in Imperial Russia (now Belarus), by age 14 Lemkin had mastered nine languages. Entering law, from 1929–1934 he was the Public Prosecutor for the district court of Warsaw (Poland).
Lemkin moved to the United States during the war, and taught at Duke University (which had facilitated his wartime visa), and then at the University of Virginia, leading into the writing of his post–war preeminent work noted above.
He lost (all) 49 relatives in the Holocaust.