Stéphane Hessel Dies Age 95
Stéphane Hessel, the man behind the Occupy movement, diplomat, resistance fighter, writer of Time for Outrage! and co-author of Universal Declaration of Human Rights sadly passed away sometime between Tuesday and Wednesday.
After news of his death broke out, many magazines and French politicians expressed their respect and grief.
One French magazine remarked: "Stéphane Hessel, dead? It's hard to believe. He seemed to have become eternal, the grand and handsome old man.'
The French president, François Hollande, said Hessel was an "a huge figure whose exceptional life was devoted to the defence of human dignity".
The following quotes where taken from The Occupy Wall Street Facebook page
"It was in pursuit of his values that he engaged in the resistance," he added, concluding: "He leaves us a lesson, which is to never accept any injustice."
The French prime minister, Jean-Marc Ayrault, also paid tribute to Hessel, whom he described as "a man who was engaged" and who was the incarnation of the "resistance spirit".
"For all generations he was a source of inspiration, but also a reference. At 95 years, he epitomised the faith in the future of a new century," Ayrault said."
The story of Hessel's life is remarkable, extraordinary and more importantly, one that should be remembered and honored.
Hessel was born into a Jewish family in Berlin in 1917 and was raised in an unusual ménage à trois between his writer/translator father, journalist mother and her lover.
His life had seen the horrors of having to escape from two concentration camps where he tutored and going to be sentenced to death after refusing to follow Marshal Philippe Pétain's collaborationist Vichy government and fled to London and joined General Charles de Gaulle's resistance fighters.
Because he was such prominent figure in the resistance, he was arrested by the Gestapo in 1944 and deported to Buchenwald and Dora concentration camps, where he endured waterboarding torture.
He managed to escape execution at Buchenwald by exchanging identities with a prisoner who had died of Typhus, and then escaped from Dora during a transfer to the Bergen-Belsen death camp.
After fleeing from his Nazi guard escorts, he met advancing American troops.
When the war had finished, Hessel worked with the US' first lady; Eleanor Roosevelt by co-writing and editing the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.
Also, according the the Occupy Wall Street Facebook page, "During the Eurozone crisis, one of the names given to the protests against austerity programmes and corruption in Spain was Los Indignados, taken from the title of Hessel's work. These protests, along with the Arab spring uprisings, inspired protests in other countries and the Occupy Wall Street movement in the United States."
"This is not an ideological revolution. It is driven by an authentic desire to get what you need. From this point of view, the present generation is not asking governments to disappear but to change the way they deal with people's needs." - Stéphane Hessel
Remember him, as he rests in peace.
Related Article: Occupy Cardiff
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1 Comment – Postiwch sylw
jelly baby999
Rhoddwyd sylw 38 mis yn ôl - 4th March 2013 - 15:19pm
Not even the greatest men live forever. RIP, to this fantastic man.