In If the Whole Body Dies: Raphael Lemkin and the Treaty Against Genocide, a one-act play published by Parallel Press, Robert Skloot brings to life Raphael Lemkin’s lifelong fight against genocide.

If the Whole Body Dies traces Lemkin’s obsession with preventing genocide – a term he first coined. Lemkin's struggle ultimately resulted in the creation of the United Nations Convention for the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide. The text of the original U.N. treaty is included.  A reading of the play was the program of the Madison Jewish community’s annual Yom Hashoah observance held last April at Beth Israel Center.

Skloot has taught and directed plays at UW–Madison since 1968 and served as an associate vice chancellor from 1996 to 2002. He is the author of The Darkness We Carry: The Drama of the Holocaust and the editor of the two-volume anthology, The Theatre of the Holocaust. He served as a Fulbright Professor in Israel, Austria, Chile and the Netherlands, and he holds a joint appointment in the UW–Madison’s Mosse-Weinstein Center for Jewish Studies.

The publication of If the Whole Body Dies through Parallel Press was made possible through the support of the UW–Madison Graduate School, the Evjue Foundation and the Office of the Chancellor.

The Parallel Press is an imprint of the UW–Madison Libraries that publishes print and digital publications featuring new works of scholars, researchers and poets.