ABSTRACT
The end of the Great War did not bring peace to Lemkin’s homeland, and, seeing as the Polish-Soviet war broke out in February 1919, the situation could even be said to have deteriorated. The federalist concept of Piłsudski is of the greatest significance, seeing as it was the most consistent with Lemkin’s views and was likely the reason behind his pro-Piłsudski sympathies, over which he would question himself in the fall of 1939. Lemkin was shaped by the experience of the ethnic-religious-linguistic mosaic that surrounded him when he was around 18. The area in question was a stage of rivalry between the Belarusian, Lithuanian, Polish, Russian, and Jewish/Zionist national movements. Equally complicated was the ethnic composition of the Volkovysk area, and Lemkin sympathized with the Zionist movement. Lemkin’s experiences of that time are crucial not so much to the discussion on genocide itself, but to his way of thinking of a nation and – more broadly – of the criteria of membership in particular social groups. The events of World War I and the years which immediately followed created a fascinating opportunity for Lemkin, who could observe the dynamic, heterogeneous, and volatile nature of national and ethnic groups and of the sense of belonging to them, which characterized this variegated area with no clear boundaries.
