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How did Raphael Lemkin help make genocide a crime under international law?

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Samuel Bak: Smoke — Holocaust *Smoke*, oil on linen by Holocaust survivor Samuel Bak, 1997.

Raphael Lemkin, a Polish-born jurist and international lawyer, was instrumental in establishing genocide as a crime under international law by identifying the need to name and outlaw the systematic destruction of human groups.12

In his 1944 work, Axis Rule in Occupied Europe, Lemkin coined the term genocide—combining the Greek genos (race or tribe) and the Latin cide (killing)—to describe the criminal intent to destroy or cripple a national, ethnic, racial, or religious group. He argued that by formally naming and defining this act, the international community could better prevent and punish such atrocities.312

Following the revelations of Nazi atrocities during World War II, Lemkin campaigned to have his definition codified. His efforts contributed to the United Nations General Assembly passing Resolution 96-I in 1946, which recognized genocide as a punishable crime. This momentum led to the 1948 approval of the Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide, which officially established genocide as an international crime, whether committed in times of peace or war.324