The Raphael Lemkin Seminar for Genocide Prevention is the Auschwitz Institute’s core program. Established in partnership with the Auschwitz-Birkenau State Museum, the Lemkin Seminar series brings rising leaders in government, military, and academia to the Holocaust site of Auschwitz in Poland for education by top scholars and practitioners in the most effective approaches for preventing genocide. The first Lemkin Seminar was held in 2008.
The program takes its name from Raphael Lemkin (1900–1959), the Jewish lawyer from Poland who coined the term “genocide” — from the Greek genos (“family,” “tribe,” “race”) and the Latin cide (“killing”). He first used the word in print in his groundbreaking 1944 work Axis Rule in Occupied Europe: Laws of Occupation; Analysis of Government; Proposals for Redress.
Currently AIPR operates two editions of the Lemkin Seminar — Global Government and U.S. Military — with plans to introduce regional editions for Latin America in 2012 and the African Union in 2013.
• the Global Government edition of the Lemkin Seminar, organized in partnership with the Auschwitz-Birkenau State Museum and the United Nations Joint Office on the Prevention of Genocide and Responsibility to Protect, brings mid-level government officials from countries around the world to the Holocaust site of Auschwitz in Poland for one week of education in preventing genocide.
• the U.S. Military edition of the Lemkin Seminar, organized in partnership with the Auschwitz-Birkenau State Museum and the United States Department of Defense, brings mid-ranking officers from the U.S. Army Command and General Staff College at Fort Leavenworth, Kansas, to the Holocaust site of Auschwitz in Poland for one week of education in preventing mass atrocities and protecting civilians during military operations.
Participants emerge from our Lemkin Seminars with a heightened commitment to preventing genocide and increased knowledge of the policy tools available, both domestically and internationally. Even more important for the long term, they become members of 2PREVENT, the Auschwitz Institute’s network for Lemkin alumni, designed to help decision makers learn from and support each other in their daily work on the front lines of prevention. This sort of community has never existed before at the level of those who make and shape policy.
A total of 33 UN member states have taken part in our Lemkin Seminars so far: Angola, Argentina, Armenia, Austria, Bosnia, Brazil, Burundi, Cambodia, Cape Verde, Chile, China, Congo DRC, Finland, Georgia, Germany, Hungary, Kenya, Latvia, Montenegro, Niger, Nigeria, Panama, Paraguay, Poland, Sierra Leone, South Africa, South Sudan, Sri Lanka, Tajikistan, Tanzania, Timor-Leste, Ukraine, and the United States.