Thread by @historyarmenia

Lemkin came up with the 1st installments of the concept in the 30s based on the events in 1915 & onwards. Already in 1933 he published articles like "Les actes constituant un danger general (interétatique)consideres comme delites des droit des gens" and ⬇️
preventgenocide.org/fr/lemkin/madr…

https://twitter.com/MaximeGauin/status/1601927397644935169

"Akte der Barbarei und des Vandalismus als delicta juris gentium", which show his first wranglings with the concept. Although he hasn’t settled on the specific term, it is clear that it predates WW2.

preventgenocide.org/de/lemkin/anwa…

Also, in his unpublished & unfinished autobiography he indicates that the horrors of 1915 have motivated him in developping the concept of Genocide. He also planned to publish a history of Genocide, for which he had collected a lot of material.

One category of his collected sources was specifically on the #ArmenianGenocide. (For some first details see Tanya Elder (2005) What you see before your eyes: documenting Raphael Lemkin's life by exploring his archival Papers,1900–1959, Journal of Genocide Research, 7:4, 469-499)

The list of documents that clearly show his awareness of the massacres and how they have influenced his thoughts about punishing the perpetrators predate 1944 and is long & well documented. 1944 is important for the fact that he put a “name” to these thoughts, i.e. genocide.

However, that is just the culmination of his work.

“I became interested in genocide because it happened […] to the Armenians, and after […], Hitler took action.”