HESSEL Stéphane

Biography:

Stéphane Hessel's parents moved from Germany to Paris in 1925 when he was 8. Shortly after graduating from the Ecole Normale Supérieure, World War II broke out. He was imprisoned, escaped, became a member of the Resistance and joined De Gaulle in 1941. During his first clandestine mission in France in 1944, he was arrested and tortured, deported to Buchenwald, then managed to change his identity, get transferred and narrowly avoid being hanged. Caught again, he avoided hanging for a 2nd time, then escaped from the train taking him to the Bergen-Belsen camp and reached Paris with his wife on May 8, 1945. Immediately after the war, he was appointed Ambassador to China, then diplomat to the United Nations, and in 1946 a member of the Commission on Human Rights charged with drafting the future Universal Declaration of Human Rights, along with Eleanor Roosevelt, René Cassin, Charles Habib Malik and 8 other drafters. The Declaration was adopted by the United Nations in December 1948 by 48 of the 58 member countries. He went on to represent France as a diplomat specializing in multilateral cooperation with international bodies based in New York, then in 1977 with the United Nations in Geneva. All his life, he mobilized for causes that seemed right to him, from Algerian independence to the peaceful resolution of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. In his latest book, Indignez-vous! written at the age of 93, he advocates non-violence as an effective solution to violence, more effective than violence in return. He has received numerous awards, including: - UNESCO/Bilbao Prize for the Promotion of a Culture of Human Rights, 2008 - Council of Europe North-South Prize, 2004 - Grand Cross of the National Order of Merit, 1999