Formative Years in Poland

Abstract

Rafel Lemkin, a name later anglicized to Raphael Lemkin, was born on a farm called ‘Ozerisko’ near the village of Bezwodene in eastern Poland on 24 June 1900. At the time of Lemkin’s birth, the region into which he had been born was absorbed into Imperial Russia during the partitions of Poland but it is now part of Belarus. The whole area was a contested borderland which was to be controlled by successive states during Lemkin’s lifetime. From his earliest years his whole outlook on the preservation of nationalities and the means of preventing their destruction was influenced by what was happening around him. His parents’ farm was situated 14 miles from the city of Wolkowysk or some 50 miles from Bialystok. For reasons which are not altogether clear, certain sources appear to record Lemkin’s year of birth as 1901, but this appears to be an error, as the year given on his tombstone which contains an inscription from his brother is 1900 and data in his entry for Who Was Who in America and in a tax return support the supposition that this is correct. His father Joseph was a farmer, a somewhat unusual occupation for a Jew in Tsarist Russia, while his mother Bella neé Pomeranz was an intellectual, teacher and amateur artist. Raphael had two siblings, an elder brother called Elias and a younger brother called Samuel.¹