A Problem From Hell: America and the Age of Genocide by Samantha Power

developing countries and urged them to introduce a resolution on genocide. His logic-"large countries can defend themselves by arms; small countries need the protection of the law"proved persuasive. After convincing the Panamanian, Cuban, and Indian representatives to sign a draft resolution, he rushed "like an intoxicated man" to the office of the secretary-general, where he deposited the proposed text.'' Lemkin also got essential support from Adlai Stevenson, the U.S. representative on the UN Steering Committee. Hoping to neutralize anticipated Soviet opposition, he called upon Jan Masaryk of Czechoslovakia. Ahead of the meeting, Lemkin had hurriedly reviewed the works of Masaryk's father, Thomas Gatfigue Masaryk, who had written extensively on the cultural personality of nations. Lemkin told Masaryk that if his father were alive, he would be lobbying for the passage of the genocide convention. Lemkin urged him to win over the Russian foreign minister, Andrei Vishinsky, saying that the Soviet Union had nothing to fear from the law, as "penicillin is not an intrigue against the Soviet Union." Masaryk pulled out his appointment calendar for the next day and jotted: "Vishinsky. Genocide. Penicillin." He called Lemkin within twenty-four hours to inform him that he had persuaded Vishinsky to support the measure."
    As the language for the genocide resolution was batted around the special committee, some proposed using the word "extermination" instead of "genocide" But Judge Abdul Monim Bey Riad of Saudi Arabia, whom Lemkin considered the most sophisticated of all representatives, pleaded that "extermination" was a term that could also apply to insects and animals. He also warned that the word would limit the prohibited crime to circumstances where every member of the group was killed. Lemkin's broader concept, "genocide," was important because it signaled destruction apart from physical destruction and because it would require states to respond before all the damage had been done. The more expansive term "genocide" was preserved.
    On December 11, 1946, one year after the final armistice, the General Assembly unanimously passed a resolution that condemned genocide as "the denial of the right of existence of entire human groups," which "shocks the conscience of mankind" and is "contrary to moral law and to the spirit and aims of the United Nations." More gratifying to Lemkin, who was no fan of declarations, the resolution tasked a UN committee with drafting a full-fledged UN treaty banning the crime. If that measure passed the General Assembly and was ratified by two-thirds of the UN member states, it would become international law.
    A Neu, York Times editorial proclaimed that the resolution and the ensuing law would mark a "revolutionary development" in international law. The editors wrote, "The right to exterminate entire groups which prevailed before the resolution was adopted is gone. From now on no government may kill off a large block of its own subjects or citizens of any country with impunity."'' Lemkin returned to his run-down one-room apartment in Manhattan, pulled down the shades, and slept for two days."
    Closing the Loophole:
    Moving from Resolution to Law
    At the behest of UN Secretary-General Trygve Lie, Lemkin helped prepare the first draft of the UN genocide convention.'' When the official UN process kicked in, however, the Polish lawyer bowed out, knowing he could be more valuable on the outside. In 1947 Lemkin began work on a history of genocide and carried a thick file folder bulging with gruesome details on various cases. He took his cause and himself exceptionally seriously. Later, with full sincerity, he wrote that "of particular interest" to UN delegates were his "files on the destruction of the Maronites, the Herreros in Africa, the Huguenots in France, the Protestants in Bohemia after the Battle of White Mountain, the Hottentots, the Armenians in 1915 and the Jews, gypsies and Slavs by the Nazis. "h Many