“A Crime without a Name”: Some Observations on the Prototype of the Term “Genocide”

Abstract

The article analyzes the historical background of the development of the term genocide by Raphael Lemkin. He tried to justify the need for the creation of the term by the fact that before he defined the crime of genocide, it did not even have a formal name, while Churchill called it “a crime without a name”. However, this research demonstrates that before Churchill declared it “a crime without a name”, there were some definitions of genocide during the Second World War and even before that. It is particularly noteworthy that the actions carried out by the Ottoman Empire against the Armenians were already characterized in different languages by expressions meaning the murder of the race or the people. In other words, although the crime was not anonymous, it had no legal definition. Raphael Lemkin gave his own wording of the crime along with presenting it.