For four years, a Philadelphia nonprofit organization called the Lemkin Institute for Genocide Prevention operated with no connection whatsoever to the family of Raphael Lemkin, the Jewish lawyer whose name it took. Then the family filed a complaint with Pennsylvania authorities, the press picked it up, and the institute made an announcement. A man named Peter Raphael Lemkin had joined its board.

He lives in the Czech Republic. He had no prior visible involvement with the organization. Joseph Lemkin, whose father was Raphael Lemkin’s first cousin, has never been in contact with him. Neither has his brother Binyamin, an attorney in Israel. The submission filed with Pennsylvania officials by the European Jewish Association puts it plainly: This is not a defense, it is an admission. Consciousness of guilt, manufactured retroactive legitimacy, and bad faith.