GENOCIDE. — The term is etymologically a neologism, derived from two Latin words (gens and caedes) and means the slaughter of a people, of an ethnic group.
Genocide as a specific crime first appeared in the judicial arena at the Nuremberg Trials (14 Nov. 1945 – 30 Sept. and 1 Oct. 1946). The indictment then addressed three categories of crimes: crimes against peace, against war, and against humanity. In a nearly contemporary document, the Statute of the International Military Tribunal, conventionally established on 8 Aug. 1945 in London by France, England, Russia, and the United States, and specifically in Article 6(a), a series of crimes termed “against humanity” were listed: murder, extermination, enslavement, deportation, inhuman acts against the civilian population, racial, political, and religious persecutions; and in Article 6(b), a series of crimes termed “of war” were listed: violations of the laws and customs of war, murder, maltreatment, deportation (forced labor), killing or maltreatment of prisoners, execution of hostages, pillaging of private and public property, destruction of towns and villages without military necessity.
Something similar had occurred after the war of 1914–18, when British and American statesmen had imposed at the Versailles Peace Conference (Section VII, Article 227) the adoption of individual penal sanctions against the Kaiser and the principal German leaders. However, those sanctions were never practically enforced. As Lener observes (*Crimini di guerra e delitti contro l'umanità*, 3rd ed., Rome 1948, p. 131), war crimes are a subspecies of crimes against humanity; both are included in the crime of genocide, which is thus defined by H. Donnedieu de Vabres (*Le procès de Nuremberg devant les principes modernes du droit pénal international*, in *Recueil des cours*, 70 [1947, I], pp. 523 ff.) as the series of crimes committed during war and even outside it against individuals or human groups because of their race, nationality, religion, or opinions. Paoli explains that there is a natural equivalence between war crimes and crimes against humanity; the difference lies only in the time when they are committed (*Contributo à l'étude des crimes de guerre et des crimes contre l'humanité en droit pénal international*, in *Revue générale de droit international public*, 16 [1941–45, II], pp. 131 ff.).
The legal definition of genocide is found in Article 2 of the Convention on Genocide, approved on 9 Dec. 1948 by the United Nations General Assembly: “In the present Convention, genocide means any of the following acts committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group, as such: (a) Killing members of the group; (b) Causing serious bodily or mental harm to members of the group; (c) Deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part; (d) Imposing measures intended to prevent births within the group; (e) Forcibly transferring children of the group to another group.”
This type of crime, now condemned even in international law, is unfortunately not new in the history of humanity; what is new, if anything, is the attempt at coercive enforcement.
The slaughter and destruction of an entire lineage correspond in many cases in the Holy Scriptures of the Old Testament, which the hagiographers record under the term “herem” (q.v.). These refer mostly to the destruction of peoples hostile to the Hebrews, especially during the occupation of the Promised Land.
Alongside the massacre of entire lineages, the Bible also records similar events for individual cities, sometimes for entire armies (Deut. 20:10; 13:12–17).
Yet here we do not have the crime of genocide, except in a purely material sense, because God Himself not infrequently commands such exterminating war for the benefit of His people. Nevertheless, such must have been the law of war among other Semitic peoples as well, apart from any divine intervention, as is evident from some passages in the Bible itself (2 Kings 19:11; Isa. 37:11) and from other profane sources and inscriptions. In such cases, we are confronted with the configuration of genuine crimes of genocide.
To cite a few examples: in Egypt, under the Theban Eighteenth Dynasty, specifically under Thutmose III, the deportations of entire rebellious populations are notorious, including the tribes of the Jacobites, Josephites, and Jehudites.
In the Assyrian Empire under Tiglath-Pileser III (745–727 BC), the systematic transfer of subject populations from one region to another was adopted. Traces of this are found even in the Bible, such as the deportation of the Hebrews to Babylon during the Second Babylonian Empire (first deportation in 606, last in 586 BC).
Later, in the Hellenistic age, Philip of Macedon (349 BC), in his struggle against Athens and Olynthus, destroyed 32 cities and dispersed their inhabitants, transporting them to Macedonia. In the destruction of Thebes by Alexander, it is said that 30,000 inhabitants were sold into slavery.
In Roman times, without resorting to legend, it suffices to recall the destruction of Jerusalem under Titus, with the dispersion of the Jews, and the series of persecutions against Christians.
Of the Germans, Tacitus wrote: “The war was prosperous for the Hermunduri, ruinous for the Chatti, because the victors consecrated to Mars and Mercury whatever they captured in battle, and by that vow men, horses, and all spoils were given over to slaughter” (*Germania*, XIII, 57).
To partially explain, if not excuse, these events in antiquity, one may point to the non-existence of international law. Indeed, it seems that victory itself conferred the right to seize the lands of others and to enslave their inhabitants. Other causes may also be invoked, such as famine, brought about by the irrationality of agriculture; overpopulation, which forced tribes, driven from one region, to conquer another with weapons.
Yet one cannot subscribe to those who claim that the recurrence of these events and of exterminatory wars is a law of humanity, that history is compelled to unfold each of its pages without being able to explain them in individual cases.
With the advance of Christian civilization, there came in this sphere too a refinement of customs. Even when fears, in a sense justified, seemed to legitimize certain cruel interventions, as in the case of the Saxons—remnants of a people resisting any contribution of civilization—there was no lack of voices from the pontiffs of Rome (Pope Adrian and the monk Alcuin) in defense of the victims, even if they were infidels.
But apart from these protests, which emanated from the highest spiritual authority, in the field of international law one must wait until much more recent times to see coordinated interventions on behalf of oppressed peoples.
As a forerunner of what would later become the intervention of the United Nations in the field of international law, one may recall the humanitarian interventions by which European nations coordinated their efforts for the suppression of the slave trade from the Congress of Vienna (1815) onward, and moved to defend the oppressed populations of the Ottoman Empire in Greece (1827), in Syria and Lebanon (1860). With the Treaty of Berlin (1878), there came into being a veritable protective code for minorities, ensuring the enjoyment of civil and political rights and freedom of worship. A further development in this field occurred with the contractual agreements stipulated by the League of Nations with Poland and other States that had extended their frontiers to include, within their territory, large minorities of different nationality and faith after the war of 1914–18. Yet other crimes remained unchallenged, such as the massacres of Armenians perpetrated by the Turks (1915–18), not to mention the entire series of persecutions of Catholics from the earliest centuries of the Church to the present day. Nevertheless, the world was shaken by other events that occurred during the same wartime period of 1914–18, such as the deportation of entire Belgian populations to concentration camps, and later the slaughter of prisoners, particularly Armenians, carried out by the Russians (1927), and it would be even more shaken by the crimes perpetrated in the war of 1939–45, of which Poland itself was to become a victim—Poland, to which, after its rebirth under the Treaty of Versailles, guarantees for foreign minorities had been demanded. Also shocking were the racial struggle unleashed against the Jews by National Socialism, culminating in mass exterminations during the last war; and the entire system cruelly fashioned on the basis of abductions of men and women, inadmissible reprisals, brutal maltreatment, horrific concentration camps, torture chambers, and gas chambers.
Hence the concrete formulation of the problem in the international sphere, culminating in the Charter of the United Nations, which, even before sanctioning the recognition of human rights in the international arena (10 Dec. 1948), formally condemned on 9 Dec. 1948—already execrated by the conscience of the civilized world—the crime of genocide, declared it a crime under international law, and decided that persons accused of it shall be tried by a competent tribunal. Thus certain objections, both legal and factual, raised against the Nuremberg trials are dispelled. The safeguarding of fundamental humanitarian exigencies, which had previously