article_snippet.sent: Genocide was not even a word at the time, much less a legally defined crime.
article_snippet.sent: The word "genocide" was invented in 1944 by a Polish lawyer named Raphael Lemkin to describe the Nazis' systematic attempt to eradicate Jews from Europe.
article_snippet.sent: a Polish lawyer named Raphael Lemkin formed the word by combining the Greek word for race with the Latin word for killing.
article_snippet.sent: Genocide became a crime in 1948, when the United Nations approved the Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide.
article_snippet.sent: The definition included acts meant "to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group.
article_snippet.sent: A the United Nations subcommittee called the killings genocide in 1985, but current U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon declines to use the word.