The ‘Beautiful Crime’: Raphael Lemkin, the Shvarzbard Trial, and the Double Life of Genocide
Virtually unknown today to scholars of international law, the Sholem Shvartsbard trial served as the crucial first stage in the development of Raphael Lemkin’s legal concept of genocide. In a short commentary, “The Verdict of the ‘Beautiful Crime,” Lemkin provides a legal analysis of the trial that doubles as a larger reflection on legal change and global justice in the post-World War I world of nation-states and diasporic minorities.