Totally Unofficial
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The Autobiography of Raphael Lemkin
Edited by Donna-Lee Frieze
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Format: ClothPrice: $66.00
Among the greatest intellectual heroes of modern times, Raphael Lemkin lived an extraordinary life of struggle and hardship, yet altered international law and redefined the world’s understanding of group rights. He invented the concept and word “genocide” and propelled the idea into international legal status. An uncommonly creative pioneer in ethical thought, he twice was nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize.
"We have studied much about the mentality of those who perpetrate genocide but know little about that of the man who named the crime and did most to combat it. Raphael Lemkin was one of the great intellectual heroes of the 20th century. In this stirring memoir Lemkin tells us how he combined his experiences as a Polish-Jewish survivor of the Nazis, a legal scholar, and a passionate defender of human rights to articulate a concept that has been all too crucial in our time. Doing that required him to undergo a profound extension of his personal identity that could enable him to apply his ethical imagination to the entire human species. Donna-Lee Frieze has performed a remarkable scholarly task in rescuing a manuscript that might otherwise have been lost, and in meticulously preparing it for a wide reading audience. We encounter a man who, whatever his vulnerabilities and defeats, persists doggedly, courageously, and at considerable personal cost, in a lifelong mission to give international legal status to resisting the most extreme expression of human evil. The entire story is strangely hopeful."—Robert Jay Lifton, author of The Nazi Doctors and (with Eric Markusen) The Genocidal Mentality
"Raphael Lemkin fought a battle—one that cost him his health, if not his life—to educate the world about genocide and create mechanisms to punish the perpetrators. All who are dismayed that, in the years since the Holocaust, “Never Again” is, in fact, “Again and Again” would do well to read this important book."—Deborah E. Lipstadt, Emory University
"Totally Unofficial is a unique and compelling memoir of the twentieth century. Lemkin’s blend of narrative strategies gives voice, shape, and scope to his remarkable life and large achievement—an achievement that has come to define something essential about our age and the urgency of human rights. In writing about his tireless lifelong efforts to make genocide a crime in international law, Lemkin shows us a rich and textured world, from his flight from Nazi occupied Poland, through northern Europe, the Soviet Union and Japan to the United States, and then to corridors of international political process in Paris, Geneva, and at the U.N. This is essential reading. Donna Frieze has done a remarkable job unearthing it from the archives and bringing it to the world.”—Peter Balakian, author of The Black Dog of Fate and The Burning Tigris: The Armenian Genocide and America’s Response.
“Unfinished at his death, Lemkin’s autobiography gives a detailed account of his tireless advocacy. It will prove useful to generations of historians.”—Yascha Mounk, Wall Street Journal, 25th July 2013
'The publication of Lemkin’s autobiography…is…a welcome event.'—Lawrence R. Douglas, TLS
Publication Date: June 24, 2013
