His efforts paid few dividends, Power said, and his family was decimated in the Holocaust.
"Forty-nine members of [Lemkin's] family were exterminated in the Holocaust," she said. Lemkin eventually migrated to the U.S., where, according to Power, he worked tirelessly to convince the U.N. to ratify the Genocide Convention.
Even when the U.N. approved the convention in 1948 it was a bittersweet victory for Lemkin, according to Power. The U.S. Senate refused to ratify the convention, and Lemkin died a year later.
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The cause passed to William Proxmire, a Democratic senator from Wisconsin, Power said. Proxmire made a speech every day for 19 years in the Senate until the convention was finally ratified in 1988.