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disease.
Under the terms of the secret Soviet-German deal known as the Molotov-Ribbentrop pact, the Soviets invaded Poland just after the Germans, and the country was divided into a Soviet and a German zone. Lemkin kept on the move until November 1939, when he wound up in a small town in Poland's Soviet-occupied half and persuaded a devout Jewish family to shelter him for a few days. There, despite the warmth and generosity of his hosts, Lemkin was frustrated by their passivity and wishful thinking in the face of Hitler's brutality.
"There is nothing new in the suffering of Jews, especially in time of war," the man of the house, a baker, insisted. "The main thing for a Jew is not to get excited and to outlast the enemies. A Jew must wait and pray. The Almighty will help. He always helps."
Lemkin asked the man if he had heard of Mein Kampf. The man said he had heard of it but that he did not believe Hitler would follow through on his threats.
"How can Hitler destroy the Jews, if he must trade with them?" the baker asked Lemkin. "I grant you some Jews will suffer under Hitler, but this is the lot of the Jews, to suffer and to wait"
Lemkin argued that this was not like other wars.The Germans were not interested only in grabbing territory. Hitler wanted to destroy the Jews completely.
"In the last war, 1915-1918, we lived three years under the Germans," the baker said. "It was never good, but somehow we survived. I sold bread to the Germans; we baked for them their flour. We Jews are an eternal people, we cannot be destroyed. We can only suffer.""
This disbelief, this faith in reason, in human contact, in commerce, convinced millions to remain in place and risk their fates. Only a small number ofJews had Lemkin's foresight.The vast majority expected persecution and maybe even the occasional pogrom, but not extermination.
Lemkin studied the man carefully and reflected:
Many generations spoke through this man. He could not believe the reality of [Hitler's intent], because it was so much against nature, against logic, against life itself, and against the warm smell of bread in his house, against his poor but comfortable bed.... There was not much sense in disturbing or confusing him with facts. He had already made up his mind."
Lemkin took a train to eastern Poland, where his brother and parents lived. He begged them to join him in flight. "I have been living in retirement for more than ten years because of my sickness," his father said. "I am not a capitalist. The Russians will not bother me" His brother chimed in,"I gave up my store and registered as an employee before it was taken over by the new government. They will not touch me either." Lemkin later remembered: "I read in the eyes of all of them one plea: do not talk of our leaving this warm home, our beds, our stores of food, the security of our customs.... We will have to suffer, but we will survive somehow." He spent the next day feeling as if he was living their funerals while they were still alive. "The best of me was dying with the full cruelty of consciousness," he noted."'
Before Lemkin left Wolkowysk, his mother lectured him on the importance of rounding out his life. She reminded him that his goal of writing a book a year was not as important as developing "the life of the heart." Lemkin, who had never dated, joked that maybe he would have more luck in his new capacity as a nomad than he had had "as a member of a sedentary society." He told his parents that he planned to travel first to Sweden and then, he hoped, to the United States, because that was where decisions were made.
After waving good-bye to his parents with a determined casualness, Lemkin headed toward Vilnius, Lithuania, a town bustling with refugees. He spent what was left of his money on two telegrams.The first the fastidious scholar sent to Paris to inquire whether his publisher had received a manuscript that he had mailed a week before the war's outbreak. The second, a plea for refuge, he
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