It is a type of crime against humanity, where a group is exterminated because of its racial origin, its religion, its sex, . . . It can be extended to political, ideological, geographical differences; but in truth the practical limit for this concept should be outside an armed conflict, since a war is always between opposing sides for some reason, and in a genocide one kills only for a characteristic of the victims. It is a word first used as a title in a chapter on the Shoah of the work Axis rule in occupied Europe ("The axis domain in occupied Europe", Raphael Lemkin, 1944), combining the Latin voices gens, gentis ("nation, people, tribe, clan") the suffix -cidium ("who kills").
