Index
Scholarships
The Raphael Lemkin Scholarship
The Raphael Lemkin Scholarship was established in 1988 by an anonymous donor in memory of Raphael Lemkin, a distinguished European academician, survivor of the Holocaust and inspirer of the United Nations Convention on Genocide.
Raphael Lemkin was born to a Jewish family near Bexwodene, Poland. His mother, an intellectual, helped him master over nine languages as a teenager. He soon left home to study in France, Italy, and Germany, and received his Ph.D. in philology from the University of Lwow, in Poland (now Lviv, Ukraine), in 1926. From 1929-35, Dr. Lemkin served as secretary of the Committee on Codification of the Laws of the Polish Republic, where he fought to protect minority groups from "acts of barbarism and vandalism." He joined guerilla forces in 1939 to defend Poland from the Nazi invasion and was shot in the hip during the Siege of Warsaw.
He and his brother Elias were the only members of his family to survive the invasion. Dr. Lemkin escaped to Sweden and then to the United States, teaching international law at several universities. In 1944, he published Axis Rule in Occupied Europe: Laws of Occupation, Analysis of Government, Proposals for Redress, where he coined the term "genocide." His book was referenced during the Nuremberg trials, during which Dr. Lemkin served as adviser to Justice Robert Jackson. In 1948, the U.N. General Assembly approved Dr. Lemkin's proposal for what would become the Genocide Convention. Among several of his awards and honors, Dr. Lemkin was nominated for a Nobel Peace Prize in 1950 and 1952. After a long career spent serving the interests of humanity, he died in 1959.
June 2014
Please note: The named scholarships profiled on these pages support the College’s generous need-based financial aid commitment. These donor-funded scholarships help ensure the Hamilton promise of keeping education affordable through meeting a student’s full demonstrated financial need.
