Rabbi Eugene J. Lipman and I had adjoining offices at the Union for American Hebrew Congregations (now the Union for Reform Judaism). One day a man walks into our office. Strangers were always walking into our office because of Gene Lipman. If they were survivors of the Holocaust and they had any problem, that was all Gene had to know, his door was open (because he had worked for HIAS after the war in Europe).

One day the person who walked through the door was Raphaël Lemkin, the inventor of the genocide convention itself. This was the man who coined the word “genocide,” invented the convention, wrote the convention. He himself was a survivor of the Holocaust, and his entire family – nearly 100 members – had been wiped out in Poland. He had been a lawyer in Warsaw. After he survived, the purpose of his life became the prevention of genocide. Not only did he write the genocide convention, he lobbied for it with every country in the world at the United Nations. He lobbied for it in the Congress of the United States. He was not only a single-issue force, he was virtually the only person there. Even for the United States – we who prided ourselves on our great moral virtue and moral involvement – the genocide convention was just another issue at the back of our agenda.

So Raphael Lemkin walked in and said, “What are you working on here?”

We told him we were working on immigration reform, setting up coalitions, civil rights, McCarthyism.

He said, “Are you people crazy? Did you ever hear of the holocaust?”

I don’t even know if we called it “Holocaust” then – I don’t think we did – but that is what he was talking about.

“Less than one generation ago they slaughtered six million of our people and you are dealing with all these other issues? That is all you have to do? You have an absolute responsibility to help me. I can’t be abandoned.” He had been abandoned by most of the Jewish community; they thought he was crazy.

We said, “What do you want us to do?”

He said, “What do I want you to do? I want you to give me an office. I want you to give me a secretary. I want you to help me out. I have no place to function. I have no secretary to help me. I have nothing. Then I want you to lobby. I want you to make this one of your issues.”

We said, “We are not sure that we can do the last thing, but we will give you a place, and we will give you a secretary who will help you out.” And we did; he worked out of our offices.

Raphael Lemkin never thought we were doing enough – and he was probably right. But the Reform Movement supported his absolutely essential work. We did publish a report on genocide. It was a very good document, but he said we still weren’t doing enough.

He succeeded in making the Genocide Convention live. Signed by a hundred and twenty nations and internationally ratified, it didn’t do what he thought it would do – prevent other genocides – but now at least we have trials for war crimes. Genocide is an international crime. He made a tremendous contribution: just one person acting alone.