Open Letter to the Rabbinical Center of Europe

Dear Rabbinical Center of Europe:
 
As a non-profit organization dedicated to genocide and human rights studies since 1982, the International Institute for Genocide and Human Rights Studies (“IIGHRS,” A Division of the Zoryan Institute) is deeply concerned about and takes great issue with the open joint letter that was released by the RCE signed by 50 senior leading European Rabbis.
 
We recognize that we are currently living in a time where antisemitism is at historically high levels. We also condemn the recent trend in which Holocaust imagery and language have been misappropriated, especially regarding the COVID-19 pandemic. We would like to point out, however, that the word “genocide,” coined by Jewish scholar Raphael Lemkin in 1943/1944, was adopted into law in 1948, many years after the Armenian Genocide and as a result of the Shoah. Article II of the 1948 Genocide Convention states:
 
Genocide means any of the following acts committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial, or religious group, as such:

1. Killing members of the group;
2. Causing serious bodily or mental harm to members of the group;
3. Deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part;
4. Imposing measures intended to prevent births within the group;
5. Forcibly transferring children of the group to another group.