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thought in the Second Polish Republic. At the University, he focused on the criminal law of totalitarian states - the Soviet Union and fascist Italy, and mass crimes agaisnt national and religious communities.
He later continued his work in Warsaw, where he lived, and ran a law firm until the outbreak of World War II, which was also a personal tragedy for Lemkin. As a result of the Holocaust, he lost almost his entire family. He managed to flee the country to the United States, where he coined the word 'genocide'.
As an emigrant in the US, he began an active campaign for the adoption, by the United Nations, of the Convention on Genocide, which he believed should be a legal barrier against the crime of genocide in the future.
He spent the rest of his life in poverty and solitude convincing the world about his concept. He worked on his autobiography until his last days, dying of a heart attack on 28 August 1959.