In August 1941, British Prime Minister Winston Churchill informed rapt radio listeners that Europe was “in the presence of a crime without a name.” Churchill spoke of the Nazis’ systematic annihilation of the Jewish people — the true extent of which would not be known for four more years.

That same year, a refugee named Raphael Lemkin arrived in the United States. Lemkin was granted entry to the country in part because of his impressive credentials. Lemkin was an accomplished Polish attorney: he had lectured internationally and helped to codify the first penal code in post-World War I Poland. As early as 1933, Lemkin had approached the League of Nations with a proposal to outlaw “acts of barbarism” as a crime under international law.

Lemkin had been inspired by his research on the massacres of Ottoman Armenians from 1915 -1923 — research that he approached from a legal perspective as well as a historical one. When Lemkin made his proposal to the League of Nations, the atrocities against the Armenians were still relatively fresh in international memory. The August 1933 Simele massacre of Assyrians in northern Iraq cemented Lemkin’s beliefs. He argued instances of targeted barbarity must be recognized as criminal acts, and subject to punishment within an international justice system.

Lemkin was also a Jew. He had seen his career as a public prosecutor cut short by anti-Semitism. He had fought with the Resistance movement, but ultimately fled Poland for Sweden when his home country fell under the grip of Nazism. Within a few short years, Lemkin would lose 49 family members to the “crime without a name.”

Raphael Lemkin gave this crime a name. He called it “genocide.”