EDITOR OF LEMKIN AUTOBIOGRAPHY TO SPEAK AT NAASR
By Contributor // September 6, 2013
BELMONT, Mass.-On Thurs., Sept. 19, Dr. Donna-Lee Frieze, a 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'” at the
National Association for Armenian Studies and Research (NAASR)
in Belmont. The lecture will be co-sponsored by Facing History and
Ourselves of Brookline, and NAASR.
Cover of ‘Totally Unofficial’
When Lemkin collapsed at a bus stop on 42nd Street in New York City on
Aug. 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 23 years after his death, in August 1982, by Alexander Gabriel
from the Transradio News Agency, UN Bureau.
In June 2013, Yale University Press published Totally Unofficial,
in which Lemkin highlights the Armenian Genocide 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, Australia. She taught a graduate
unit, “Genocide,” for more than 10 years at Deakin University,
Melbourne, and has published widely on the Armenian Genocide,
the Holocaust, and the Bosnian Genocide in relation to testimony,
film, and philosophy. She was the editor and transcriber of Lemkin’s
autobiographyTotally Unofficial and the first vice-president of the
International Association of Genocide Scholars.
The lecture begins at 7:30 p.m. at NAASR, 395 Concord Ave., Belmont.
The NAASR Bookstore will open at 7 p.m. the night of the lecture.
Totally Unofficial: The Autobiography of Raphael Lemkinwill be
available for purchase the night of the lecture. For more information,
call (617) 489-1610 or e-mail [email protected].
From: Emil Lazarian | Ararat NewsPress
