Holocaust Survivor Still Fights For Human Rights

[struggle4progress]

... Born in Berlin in 1917, Hessel moved to Paris with his parents when he was 16 years old. He initially studied philosophy with Jean-Paul Sartre, then international relations. In 1939, he was drafted into the French army. Two years later, he fled to England, but returned to Paris 10 months before the end of the war with an espionage mission.

The Gestapo arrested him there on July 10, 1944 and deported him to one of the largest German concentration camps, Buchenwald. Later, he was moved to the notorious off-premises camp Dora. Yet he was set free after he successfully managed to take on the identity of a deceased fellow prisoner ...

Back in Paris, Hessel was supposed to travel to Beijing as a diplomat. The route went via New York and things took a turn when he met Henri Laugier, the first assistant secretary-general for social affairs at the UN ...

He worked with Logier at the UN for five years. The most important thing they did in that time was to think about the Universal Declaration on Human Rights until it was finished in 1948, he said ...

http://www.dw-world.de/dw/article/0,,3861109,00.html