The term was created by the Polish lawyer Raphael Lemkin during World War II. Lemkin, who was Jewish, escaped Poland after the Nazis invaded, and his parents were murdered in the Holocaust. At the time, international laws sought to protect civilians from attacks by militaries in times of war, but no laws existed to protect against a government attempting to annihilate an entire group, such as the nine million Jews who lived in Europe before World War II (six million of whom were murdered by the Nazis). After the war, the UN enacted a law to define genocide and make it an international crime, largely due to Lemkin’s efforts.