Over one million Armenians died in the Armenian Genocide , which took place between the years of 1915 and 1917 . Lemkin 's interest in prosecuting the perpetrators was sparked when he first learned about the genocide during his studies at University of Lwów ( from which he graduated in 1926 ) . In his autobiography , Lemkin wrote that he had been influenced by the March 15 , 1921 assassination of Talaat Pasha : Then one day I read in the newspapers that all Turkish war criminals were to be released ... The Turkish criminals released from Malta dispersed all over the world . The most frightful among them was Talaat Pasha , the minister of the interior of Turkey , who was identified with the destruction of the Armenian people ... One day he was stopped in the street by a young Armenian with the name Tehlirian . After identifying Talaat Pasha , Tehlirian shot him saying , ' This is for my mother . ' This event became a topic of discussion for Lemkin during his studies on the topic of sovereignty at Lwów : " Sovereignty … ' can not be conceived as the right to kill millions of people . " The murder of Talaat Pasha and trial of Tehlirian prompted Lemkin 's future path . Lemkin wrote : " At that moment , my worries about the murder of the innocent became more meaningful to me . I did n't know all the answers but I felt that a law against this type of racial or religious murder must be adopted by the world . " In 1953 , in a speech given in New York City , Lemkin described the Holodomor as one part of " perhaps the classic example of Soviet genocide , its longest and broadest experiment in Russification — the destruction of the Ukrainian nation " , going on to point out that " the Ukrainian is not and never has been a Russian . His culture , his temperament , his language , his religion , are all different ... to eliminate ( Ukrainian ) nationalism ... the Ukrainian peasantry was sacrificed ... a famine was necessary for the Soviet and so they got one to order ... if the Soviet program succeeds completely , if the intelligentsia , the priest , and the peasant can be eliminated then Ukraine will be as dead as if every Ukrainian were killed , for it will have lost that part of it which has kept and developed its culture , its beliefs , its common ideas , which have guided it and given it a soul , which , in short , made it a nation ... This is not simply a case of mass murder . It is a case of genocide , of the destruction , not of individuals only , but of a culture and a nation . " On Sunday , 20 September 1953 , as part of a protest in New York , '' The Ukrainian Weekly '' reported a speech by Lemkin : For his work on international law and the prevention of war crimes , Lemkin received a number of awards , including the Cuban Grand Cross of the Order of Carlos Manuel de Cespedes in 1950 , the Stephen Wise Award of the American Jewish Congress in 1951 , and the Cross of Merit of the Federal Republic of Germany in 1955 . On the 50th anniversary of the Convention entering into force , Dr. Lemkin was also honored by the UN Secretary-General as " an inspiring example of moral engagement . " He was nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize ten times
Armenian Genocide
Armenian Genocide
Raphael Lemkin