A family member of Raphael Lemkin, a Jewish lawyer who escaped Europe during World War II and coined the term "genocide," is in a fight to have his name removed from a Pennsylvania nonprofit organization that accuses Israel of the exact term he came up with. The Lemkin Institute for Genocide Prevention and Human Security has "warned of genocide in Gaza since Oct. 13, 2023," less than a week after Hamas terror attacks killed about 1,200 and resulted in the capture of 251 hostages in 2023. On Oct. 28, 2023, the institute issued a "statement of mourning for the Gazans and the world," saying that "these two major military powers [the U.S. and Israel] are committing genocide in Gaza only weeks after actively enabling genocide against another besieged people: the Armenians of Artsakh." It also warned that "if the world allows these two powers to continue to act with this level of impunity, genocide will become the normative policy of both dictatorships and the world’s so-called democracies alike." PROMINENT HOLOCAUST MUSEUM CHALLENGES MAMDANI WITH OFFER IN RESPONSE TO CLAIMS ABOUT 'GENOCIDE' IN GAZA The man calling for the change is Joseph Lemkin — whose father was Raphael’s cousin — and the sole survivor after his family of six was killed during the Holocaust.
Joseph told Fox News Digital that growing up the son of a Holocaust survivor meant being followed by "a black cloud" that colored his entire life. In one example, he explained that when the families at his Jewish day school placed ads during an annual banquet to celebrate their successes, his father wrote a yearly commemoration of the memories of his more than 40 family members who died during the Holocaust, including his parents and brother killed at Auschwitz and two brothers who died after joining underground resistance groups. He said his father raised funds for the impoverished Raphael’s funeral when he died in 1959, and worked until weeks before his death to fundraise for the betterment of his fellow Jewish Americans.
Joseph’s experience as the child of a Holocaust survivor came to mind again when his teenage son showed him a social media post from the Lemkin Institute using the family name to accuse Israel of genocide. "Seeing the impact and how my son came across it made me really more concerned about it," Lemkin said. ANTI-ISRAEL NONPROFIT UNDER FEDERAL INVESTIGATION OVER FINANCIAL DEALINGS: REPORT 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 Democrat 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 that he believes that an investigation has been opened into the complaint. Pennsylvania's Department of State spokesman, Geoff Morrow, told Fox News Digital "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 Fox News Digital.
ISRAEL TURNS TABLES ON UN OFFICIAL CLAIMING 'GENOCIDE' IN GAZA WITH BASIC QUESTIONS In an Oct. 13, 2025 press release responding to an op-ed, The Lemkin Institute for Genocide Prevention stated that "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." The same press release also noted that "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.
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