Title: What is Genocide? — United States Holocaust Memorial Museum
Headings: What is Genocide?
< Learn About Genocide and Mass Atrocities
What is Genocide?
Origin of the Term Genocide
Genocide as an International Crime

Content: What is Genocide? — United States Holocaust Memorial Museum
< Learn About Genocide and Mass Atrocities
What is Genocide? Genocide is an internationally recognized crime where acts are committed with the intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnic, racial, or religious group. These acts fall into five categories: Killing members of the group
Causing serious bodily or mental harm to members of the group
Deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part
Imposing measures intended to prevent births within the group
Forcibly transferring children of the group to another group
There are a number of other serious, violent crimes that do not fall under the specific definition of genocide. They include crimes against humanity, war crimes, ethnic cleansing, and mass killing. Learn More
Raphael Lemkin coined the term “genocide” in 1944. — US Holocaust Memorial Museum, gift of United Nations
Origin of the Term Genocide
The word “genocide” did not exist prior to 1944. It is a very specific term coined by a Polish-Jewish lawyer named Raphael Lemkin (1900–1959) who sought to describe Nazi policies of systematic murder during the Holocaust, including the destruction of European Jews. He formed the word genocide by combining geno-, from the Greek word for race or tribe, with -cide, from the Latin word for killing.