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 autobiography Totally 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 Lemkin will be available for purchase the night of the lecture. For more information, call (617) 489-1610 or e-mail hq@naasr.org.