Editor of Raphael Lemkin Autobiography to Speak at NAASR September 1

PRESS RELEASE
National Association for Armenian
Studies and Research (NAASR)
395 Concord Avenue
Belmont, MA 02478
E-mail: [email protected]
Tel.: 617-489-1610

DONNA-LEE FRIEZE, EDITOR OF LEMKIN
AUTOBIOGRAPHY, TO SPEAK AT NAASR

Dr. Donna-Lee Frieze, genocide scholar and editor of the newly
published autobiography of Raphael Lemkin, will give a lecture
entitled “Raphael Lemkin: The Armenian Genocide and the Autobiography
of the ‘Insistent Prophet,'” on Thursday, September 19, 2013, at 7:30
p.m. at the National Association for Armenian Studies and Research
(NAASR), 395 Concord Avenue, Belmont, MA.
The lecture will be co-sponsored by Facing History and Ourselves of
Brookline, MA, and NAASR.
When Raphael Lemkin collapsed at a bus stop on 42nd Street
in New York City on August 29, 1959, he had either just visited the
Curtis Brown Publishing Agency on Madison Avenue or was on his way
there to discuss his autobiography, Totally Unofficial. He left
behind a near complete autobiography, which was eventually donated to
the New York Public Library twenty-three years after Lemkin’s death,
in August 1982, by Alexander Gabriel from the Transradio News Agency,
U.N. Bureau.
In June 2013, Yale University Press published Totally
Unofficial, in which Lemkin highlights the Armenian genocide in order
to articulate his conceptual understanding of the meaning of genocide.
Lemkin’s autobiography clearly underscores the lawyer’s detailed
analysis of the crime. It is argued that the events of 1915 provided
the framework for Lemkin’s understanding of genocide as a crime of
intended group destruction, and not necessarily as mass killing. The
long-awaited publication of Lemkin’s autobiography is a watershed
event in the ongoing reassessment of his seminal work on genocide.
Donna-Lee Frieze is a Prins Senior Fellow at the Center for Jewish
History in New York City and a Visiting Fellow at the Alfred Deakin
Research Institute in Melbourne. She taught a graduate unit,
Genocide, for over 10 years at Deakin University, Melbourne, and has
published widely on the Armenian genocide, the Holocaust and the
Bosnian genocides in relation to testimony, film and philosophy. She
is the editor and transcriber of Raphael Lemkin’s autobiography
Totally Unofficial (Yale University Press) and the first
vice-president of the International Association of Genocide Scholars.
The NAASR Bookstore will open at 7:00 p.m. the night of the lecture.
Totally Unofficial: The Autobiography of Raphael Lemkin will be
available for purchase the night of the lecture.
More information about this program may be had by calling
617-489-1610, faxing 617-484-1759, e-mailing [email protected], or writing
to NAASR, 395 Concord Ave., Belmont, MA 02478.

Belmont, MA
September 2, 2013