Lemkin family fights to stop Pa. charity from using name in anti-genocide campaign
Raphael Lemkin, a long-dead Polish Jew who never set foot in Armenia, is nonetheless regarded there as a champion of justice who exposed the Ottoman-era genocide of an estimated 1.5 million Armenians during World War I.
In fact, it was Lemkin—a Holocaust survivor who lost 49 members of his family to the Nazis—who in 1944 coined the word “genocide” to describe what had happened to the Armenians, as well as to the Jews during World War II. Four years later, he succeeded in getting the United Nations to adopt the Convention for the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide.
Lemkin died penniless in 1959, and while there are no known monuments to Lemkin anywhere in Israel, Armenia has no shortage of them. There’s a bust of Lemkin at Yerevan State University’s “Alley of Gratitude, as well as a street in downtown Yerevan named in his honor.
And last year, on the 125th anniversary of his birth, soil from his grave in Queens, New York, was placed in a wall of remembrance at Yerevan’s Armenian Genocide Memorial Complex.
“Today, we not only honor the legal legacy of Raphael Lemkin, but also his moral conviction,” former museum director Edita Gzoyan said during the June 2025 ceremony at which a commemorative plaque was also unveiled.
“He believed that memory without accountability is empty, and that justice begins by naming the truth,” Gzoyan said. “Lemkin was not Armenian and never visited Armenia. Yet the Armenian genocide left a deep imprint on his soul and became the foundation of his legal thought. He was the one who defined this horrific crime and dedicated his life to ensuring that it would never again go unpunished.”
But in an ironic twist, earlier this summer—just as Israel’s Knesset was debating whether to finally recognize that genocide—Lemkin’s U.S. descendants announced they would take legal action against a Pennsylvania nonprofit that’s been using the family name without authorization.
The Philadelphia-based Lemkin Institute for Genocide Prevention and Human Security, founded in 2021 as a Section 501(c)3 charity, is known for its support of Armenian causes. Among other things, it has condemned Azerbaijan’s 2023 invasion of the ethnic Armenian enclave of Artsakh and criticized President Trump’s 2025 peace accord between Armenia and Azerbaijan.
It has also advocated for ethnic Rohingyas in Bangladesh, persecuted Yazidis in Iraq, Ukrainian victims of Russian aggression, Muslim Uyghurs in China, and transgender people worldwide.
Now, since Oct. 7, 2023, the Lemkin Institute has become an especially fierce critic of Israel.
Among other things, it has accused the Jewish state of “committing genocide across Palestine” and of “intentionally targeting children in Gaza as part of an overwhelming push on the part of Israeli authorities to oust Palestinians from their remaining ancestral lands.”
In a June 4 statement, for instance, the Lemkin Institute said it was “horrified by Israel’s unrelenting and systematic attacks against healthcare workers in Lebanon, which are occurring against the backdrop of Israel’s continued genocide in Gaza. We believe Israel is conducting a genocidal policy of absolute destruction in Lebanon, targeting the essential foundations of life of Lebanon’s Shia communities.”
This infuriates Joseph Lemkin, a lifelong Zionist and supporter of Israel whose father was Raphael Lemkin’s first cousin.
“They distort his legacy and appropriate his name to advance a definition of genocide which is inconsistent with what we believe was his life’s work,” said Lemkin, 57. “To me, it tarnishes his memory by attaching to his name allegations that trivialize the whole concept of genocide.”
Lemkin, a bankruptcy lawyer in Princeton, N.J., said he first heard about the institute’s anti-Israel campaign when his college-age son saw a post on Instagram and brought it to his attention.
“What these people are doing on social media is causing antisemitism to rise throughout the world,” said Lemkin, who along with his wife Susan founded the Jewish Bar Association of New Jersey after Oct. 7. “They’re bastardizing our name to attack Israel—and it directly contradicts everything he believed in.”
The Brussels-based European Jewish Association agrees—and has come to the family’s defense.
“As an institution, they can publish whatever they want. But they cannot pretend to carry Raphael Lemkin’s name and at the same time misrepresent his heritage, which was completely against these beliefs,” said Rabbi Menachem Margolin, the EJA’s chairman and founder. “What they did is completely illegal and so we started a campaign with the authorities in Pennsylvania to shut them down or at least change their name.”
As such, Margolin’s hired attorneys have sent letters to various state officials asking them to investigate the Lemkin Institute’s tax-exempt status as a Section 501(c)3 charity. His group has also enlisted the help of Amichai Chikli, Israel’s hardline minister of diaspora affairs and combating antisemitism, who wrote to Pennsylvania Gov. Josh Shapiro urging him to make this investigation a priority.
Asked why the EJA—which deals mainly with antisemitism in Europe—would get involved in a legal dispute with a nonprofit based in Philadelphia, Margolin suggested its location is irrelevant.
“We live in a world where accusations spread easily through social media,” the rabbi replied. “It’s not really important for us where they’re registered—whether in Pennsylvania or in Zambia. Their impact is all around the globe.”
The Lemkin Institute itself is a small outfit, operating from a row house in South Philadelphia, a block from the city’s famous 9th Street Italian market. Posters seen through the window allude to Armenia’s long-running hostilities with Azerbaijan over the disputed Nagorno-Karabakh region.
Nobody answered the doorbell when a reporter recently visited, but Elisa von Joeden-Forgey, the Lemkin Institute’s director, did respond via email about an Oct. 29, 2025, letter from local attorneys hired by EJA asking the institute to cease using Raphael Lemkin’s name and likeness.
“We have received no communication from the state of Pennsylvania and have only heard about Joseph Lemkin’s complaint to the governor through the press,” she said. “We will wait for communications from the state of Pennsylvania before taking any steps.”
And while not addressing the issue of Israel specifically, Joeden-Forgey stood by the institute’s general approach to defining genocide. Without identifying anyone in particular, she said “there are several members of the Lemkin family who support our work and who understand how we use Raphael Lemkin’s studies and analyses in our own prevention mechanisms.”
According to a draft submitted by Margolin to Pennsylvania officials, “after the Lemkin family filed its formal complaint and public pressure mounted, the Lemkin Institute — which had operated for four years without any connection to the Lemkin family — suddenly announced that a person named Peter Raphael Lemkin had joined its board. This individual had no prior visible involvement with the organization.”
It continued: “This maneuver, executed after legal action was publicly announced, is evidence of consciousness of guilt, manufactured retroactive legitimacy and bad faith. It is not a defense. It is an admission.”
Efforts to reach Peter Raphael Lemkin, who lives in the Czech Republic, were unsuccessful, and neither Joseph Lemkin or his brother, Binyamin Lemkin, are in contact with him.
“Offended would be an understatement for how we feel about what this institute is doing with our family name,” said Binyamin Lemkin, an attorney living in Ramat Bet Shemesh. “Raphael Lemkin was a Zionist and a proud Jew. If anything, he saw Palestinian nationalism itself as a form of genocide against the Jewish people.”
Alexander Lapshin, a Russian-Israeli blogger who spent four years in Armenia and writes often about the Caucasus, says the Lemkin Institute is a strong advocate for exposing the crimes of Ottoman Turks in the early 20th century—but lacks credibility when it comes to the Middle East.
“My sense is that it’s a fairly anti-Israel organization, giving voice to figures like Francesca Albanese, who criticize Israel for the genocide in Gaza while ignoring the crimes of Hamas,” he said. “I suspect it’s not without funding from the Turks and Qataris.
But in a November 2024 letter to supporters, Jordan-Forgey categorically denied that her charity receives money from any government.
“We rely on the generosity of ordinary people around the world, and our most common contribution is a one-time donation of $10,” she stated. “Implications or reports that we receive secret or grant funding are false. We intentionally do not seek funding from states, governments, political parties, large foundations and large NGOs because we value our independence and believe that independence is necessary to ensure we have a clear and honest voice.”
Lapshin, interviewed in Tel Aviv, said that civil-society organizations and public figures—both in the U.S. and Europe—that openly support Armenia tend to take active and sometimes aggressive positions against Israel.
“The Lemkin Institute’s policies and its legal disputes with the family could potentially have a negative impact on the institute’s support for recognizing the genocide and the crimes committed by Azerbaijan,” he said. “On the other hand, Armenia’s prime minister, Nikol Pashinyan, is increasingly pushing the issue of genocide recognition into the background. In practice, this approach risks contributing to the gradual fading of the memory of the Armenian genocide.”
