The word genocide did not exist prior to 1944. The term was coined by Polish-Jewish lawyer Raphel Lemkin, who sought to describe Nazi policies of systematic mass murder during the Holocaust, including the destruction of European Jews.
![Jews work on the construction of a wall around the Warsaw ghetto area. [LCID: 80754]](https://encyclopedia.ushmm.org/images/large/f8ffe083-b1c3-432f-860e-c0c674945792.jpg "Jews work on the construction of a wall around the Warsaw ghetto area. [LCID: 80754]")
Forced laborers work on the construction of a wall around the Warsaw ghetto area. The Germans announced the construction of a ghetto in October 1940 and closed the ghetto off from the rest of Warsaw in mid-November 1940.
Item View![A Warsaw ghetto resident gives money to two children on a Warsaw ghetto street. [LCID: 89467]](https://encyclopedia.ushmm.org/images/large/c6466018-1bf6-4126-bf4e-5001fcfc28a6.jpg "A Warsaw ghetto resident gives money to two children on a Warsaw ghetto street. [LCID: 89467]")
A Warsaw ghetto resident gives money to two children on a Warsaw ghetto street. Warsaw, Poland, between October 1940 and April 1943.
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Ukrainian Jews who were forced to undress before they were massacred by Einsatzgruppe detachments. This photo, originally in color, was part of a series taken by a German military photographer. Copies from this collection were later used as evidence in war crimes trials. Lubny, Soviet Union, October 16, 1941.
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An assembly point (the Umschlagplatz) in the Warsaw ghetto for Jews rounded up for deportation. Warsaw, Poland, 1942–43.
Item View![Deportation of the Jews of Wuerzburg. Germany, 1942. [LCID: 46207]](https://encyclopedia.ushmm.org/images/large/ffef9ad9-dfc4-48bb-898c-c70df9701652.jpg "Deportation of the Jews of Wuerzburg. Germany, 1942. [LCID: 46207]")
Deportation of the Jews of Würzburg. Germany, 1942.
Item View![Romani (Gypsy) prisoners in Belzec labor camp. Poland, 1940. [LCID: 74705]](https://encyclopedia.ushmm.org/images/large/bc8389c2-055f-4c37-bd48-36681987a68d.jpg "Romani (Gypsy) prisoners in Belzec labor camp. Poland, 1940. [LCID: 74705]")
A group of Romani (Gypsy) prisoners in Belzec labor camp, 1940.
The Belzec labor camp and its subsidiaries were dismantled at the end of 1940.
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View of the camp for Roma (Gypsies) in Lodz. The original German caption for this photograph was: "Zigeunerlager" (Gypsy camp), #137. In the autumn of 1941, German police authorities deported some 5,000 Roma from Austria to the ghetto for Jews in Lodz, where they resided in a segregated section (part of which is shown in this photograph). Photograph taken between 1940 and 1944.
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A Romani (Gypsy) victim of Nazi medical experiments to make seawater safe to drink. Dachau concentration camp, Germany, 1944.
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Jews from Subcarpathian Rus get off the deportation train and assemble on the ramp at the Auschwitz-Birkenau killing center in occupied Poland. May 1944.
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Jewish women and children from Subcarpathian Rus who have been selected for death at Auschwitz-Birkenau, walk toward the gas chambers. May 1944.
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![Beginning of the burning of the village of Um Zeifa in Darfur after the Janjaweed looted and attacked. [LCID: steidle8]](https://encyclopedia.ushmm.org/images/thumb/e298e41c-9406-444d-a860-b43f1497199a.jpg)