ABSTRACT
In response to the Russian invasion of Ukraine, by the end of February 2022 the Pilecki Institute had established the Raphael Lemkin Center for Documenting Russian Crimes in Ukraine (the Lemkin Center). The task of the unit is to collect individual, civilian witness accounts in the form of interviews and questionnaires to build an archive preserving evidence of crimes committed by Russian troops on Ukrainian territory. The center is developing a collection of testimonies (questionnaires, photographs, and videos), which after anonymization will be made available to researchers, journalists, and all those interested in the subject. The Lemkin Center’s efforts however, are not aimed at collecting evidence for legal proceedings, its goal is to memorialize the tragedy of victims, and to building a historical record of the conflict available to a broader public. This chapter presents the activities and goals of the Lemkin Center, discusses adopted methodology of war crimes documentation, summarizes the center’s achievements and attempts to identify the fields for improvement.
