A relative of Raphael Lemkin, the Jewish lawyer who fled wartime Europe and coined the word “genocide,” is seeking to remove the Lemkin name from a Pennsylvania nonprofit that has accused Israel of committing the crime he defined.
The Lemkin Institute for Genocide Prevention and Human Security says it has been warning of a potential genocide in Gaza since Oct. 13, 2023 — less than a week after Hamas’ attacks in Israel killed roughly 1,200 people and led to the capture of 251 hostages.
In an Oct. 28, 2023, statement titled “Statement of Mourning for the Gazans and the World,” the institute said the United States and Israel were committing genocide in Gaza “only weeks after actively enabling genocide against another besieged people: the Armenians of Artsakh.” The group further cautioned that allowing the two countries to act with impunity could make genocide a standard policy among “both dictatorships and the world’s so-called democracies alike.”
International lawyer Raphael Lemkin helped draft the Genocide Convention, which establishes measures for preventing and punishing genocide. (Getty Images)
The campaign to change the organization’s name is being led by Joseph Lemkin, whose father was Raphael Lemkin’s cousin. Joseph’s father was the only survivor of a family of six during the Holocaust. Speaking to News Media, Joseph Lemkin said growing up with a Holocaust survivor as a father meant living beneath a “black cloud” that shaped every part of his life.
He recalled an annual banquet at his Jewish day school, where families purchased advertisements celebrating personal milestones. Each year, his father instead used the space to memorialize more than 40 relatives lost in the Holocaust. That included his parents and a brother murdered at Auschwitz, as well as two brothers who died after joining underground resistance movements.
Joseph said his father also helped raise money for Raphael Lemkin’s funeral after the lawyer died in 1959. Until just weeks before his own death, Joseph said, his father continued fundraising to improve the lives of fellow Jewish Americans.
Those experiences resurfaced for Joseph Lemkin when his teenage son showed him a social media post from the Lemkin Institute that used the family name while accusing Israel of genocide.
“Seeing the impact and how my son came across it made me really more concerned about it,” Lemkin said.
Pennsylvania Gov. Josh Shapiro speaks at a re-election campaign kickoff event in Philadelphia on Jan. 8, 2026. (Rachel Wisniewski/Bloomberg via Getty Images)
In an effort to keep the family name from being “turned on its head,” he said he has worked with the European Jewish Association (EJA) to submit a letter of complaint to the office of Democratic Pennsylvania Gov. Josh Shapiro and to Pennsylvania’s Department of State’s Bureau of Corporations and Charitable Organizations. In June, Lemkin and his team also sent out letters referencing their concerns to other leaders in Pennsylvania.
In response to a request from Shapiro’s office for additional information, Lemkin and the EJA submitted a 32-page comprehensive legal submission and statement of facts and a 58-page evidentiary appendix in April 2025. He said he believes that an investigation has been opened into the complaint.
Pennsylvania’s Department of State spokesman, Geoff Morrow, told News Media “the Department [of State] cannot confirm or deny whether any organization has had a complaint filed against it or is under investigation.”
Gov. Shapiro’s office did not respond to requests for comment from News Media.
People walk through Times Square as they participate in a pro-Palestinian rally on Oct. 4, 2025, in New York City. (Stephanie Keith/Getty Images)
In an Oct. 13, 2025, press release responding to an op-ed, the Lemkin Institute stated, “It is very hard to imagine that Raphael Lemkin would not have seen the genocidal dynamics of the present conflict early on, given his definition of the term and his historical studies. We share Raphael Lemkin’s belief in the need for a Jewish national home, but that has not meant that we are unable to see the genocide before our eyes.”
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The same press release also noted, “Joseph Lemkin does not speak for the entire Lemkin family, nor does he officially represent a Lemkin estate. We have Lemkin family members on our side who reached out to us after October 7, 2023. Peter Lemkin, in whose childhood home Raphael Lemkin was a frequent visitor, has been particularly supportive, offering encouragement, sharing insights into Lemkin’s work, and informing us of his family’s close collaboration in the effort to get the Genocide Convention ratified by states.”
In a statement to News Media, the institute again questioned Joseph’s representation of Raphael, stating in part, “Over the years, members of the Lemkin family have reached out to express their support for our work. Joseph Lemkin has expressed his disagreement with our work. There is no legal battle between the Lemkin Institute and the Lemkin family.”
Peter Lemkin did not respond to News Media’s requests for comment. Nor did another family member identified to News Media by the institute as being supportive of its work.
The statement to News Media continued, “The Institute was founded in 2016/2017. In 2021, it was renamed to honor the life and work of Raphael Lemkin, whose research and moral commitments, reflected not only in the 1948 Genocide Convention but also in the many case studies he completed before his untimely death at age 59, have deeply influenced the work of the Institute’s founders. Since Raphael Lemkin died without heirs or an estate, there was no official representative for the Lemkin family to contact for permission,” it stated.
Anti-Israel activists protest outside the United Nations headquarters in New York, on April 7, 2025. (Selcuk Acar/Anadolu via Getty Images)
The statement also noted, “The Lemkin Institute for Genocide Prevention is an all-volunteer organization founded to fill the gaps in genocide prevention that co-founders Dr. Elisa von Joeden-Forgey and Dr. Irene Massimino observed during several visits to Northern Iraq in 2016 and 2017, when they met with religious leaders, government officials, and survivors of ISIS genocide, including Yezidi, Christians, Shabak-Shia, Kakay and other religious, national, and ethnic minorities.”
It continued, “This includes, of course, security for the Jewish people, who continue to be the targets of one of the oldest and most lethal global genocidal ideologies — antisemitism. This also includes Palestinians, Darfuris, Armenians, Artsakhsis, Rohingya, Ukrainians, Uighurs, Amhara, trans people, Yezidis, many Christian populations, many Muslim populations, Somalilanders, Kurds, the Karakalpak, many Black and Native communities in the Western Hemisphere, and far too many other groups to mention here. Our world is unfortunately awash in genocide and it benefits all humanity for all of us to be involved in preventing the crime.”
A participant wrapped in a flag of Israel stands at the main gate with the lettering “Arbeit macht frei” (Work sets you free) at the start of the annual March of The Living to commemorate the victims of the Holocaust during World War II, at the memorial site of the former Auschwitz-Birkenau Nazi death camp in Oswiecim, Poland, on April 14, 2026. (Wojtek Radwanski/AFP via Getty Images)
The institute utilized the October 2025 press release to start a fundraising campaign “to cover urgent legal fees, hire a full-time administrator, and ensure the survival of the Lemkin Institute.” They stated that “the attempt to discredit us or to shut down our work is part of a wider effort to silence opposition to Israel’s genocide in the USA. But we will not allow our work to be smeared, or our voices to be silenced.”
Israeli civil rights attorney and president of the Shurat HaDin Law Center, Nitsana Darshan-Leitner, who is not party to the dispute, told News Media, “The real question is not simply ‘standing,’ but whether the Institute has a lawful right to use Raphael Lemkin’s name in a manner that implies his endorsement, his family’s authorization, or fidelity to his beliefs. The Institute apparently never received permission from Lemkin, his estate, or an authorized representative when it appropriated the name. While using a deceased scholar’s name is not automatically unlawful, it becomes legally actionable when it misleads donors and the public, creates a false impression of endorsement, constitutes deceptive charitable solicitation, or appropriates the reputation and goodwill attached to that individual’s identity.”
The main entrance at the former Nazi death camp of Auschwitz, and, right, Raphael Lemkin, who helped draft the convention that maps out prevention and punishment for the crime of genocide. (AP Photo/Markus Schreiber/Getty Images)
Commenting recently on the growing threat of antisemitism worldwide after the Hamas attacks of Oct. 7, 2023, renowned historian Sir Simon Schama called accusations that Israel has committed genocide in Gaza a “blood libel” in his keynote address at the Holocaust Educational Trust on Sept. 7. Schama stated, “We, the victims of the greatest genocide the world has ever seen, are being called perpetrators of genocide.”
The Lemkin Institute has published multiple reports on the Israel-Gaza war that allege genocide by Israel. On May 28, 2024, they wrote, “Even if there were legitimate doubts about Israel’s genocide, there is no doubt that Israel is committing atrocity crimes of the most barbaric kind. Israel must be stopped.”
The institute also said it is “disgusted by Western leaders, especially in the USA, Germany, and the U.K. They have demonstrated not only that they don’t care one bit about genocide prevention and human rights, but also that they are willing to allow an ally to commit atrocity crimes while they offer material and diplomatic support.” The Lemkin Institute suggested that “they should also be put on trial.”