Stephane Hessel, The Man Behind Outrage,
Protest And Resistance, Will Inspire Forever
By Countercurrents.org
28 February 2013
Countercurrents.org
French resistance hero, holocaust survivor and co-author of Universal Declaration of Human Rights Stephane Hessel, whose 2010 manifesto "Time for Outrage" sold millions of copies and inspired protest movements worldwide, has died at the age of 95, his wife said on February 27, 2013. Hessel wrote: To create is to resist, to resist is to create”.
"He died overnight," said his wife Christiane Hessel-Chabry.
An AFP report by Myriam Chaplain-Riou said:
Hessel joined Charles de Gaulle in exile during World War II, was waterboarded by the Nazis, escaped hanging in concentration camps and took part in drafting the Universal Declaration of Human Rights in 1948.
The career diplomat was already celebrated as one the last living heroes of the 20th century when, as a nonagenarian, he became the unlikely godfather of youth protest movements such as "Occupy Wall Street" or Spain's "Indignados".
Tributes poured in for Hessel, with French President Francois Hollande praising "the exceptional life" of a man he said was a symbol of human dignity and the United Nations celebrating a "monument" in the history of human rights.
Born to a Jewish family which joined the Lutheran Church, Hessel's parents moved to France in 1924.
They served as the inspiration for the characters of Jules and Kathe in Henri-Pierre Roche's novel "Jules et Jim," which later was made into an iconic film by French director Francois Truffaut.
Hessel became French in 1937 and after watching the Nazis invade France without firing a shot, in anger, he heeded De Gaulle's appeal and went to London and then became a leading resistance figure.
He was captured by the Gestapo, tortured and deported to the Buchenwald and Dora concentration camps, where he escaped hanging by switching identities with a prisoner who had died of typhus.
After the war, Hessel was involved in editing the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and became an indefatigable champion of social justice, human rights and the protection of the environment.
"Time for Outrage," his 32-page essay that sold more than 4.5 million copies in 35 countries, provoked the "Occupy Wall Street" movement which began in New York's financial district and spread to other countries.
It coincided with the Arab Spring revolutions which felled many long-serving dictators. Protests in Spain against corruption and bipartisan politics drew their name, the Indignants, from the Spanish title of Hessel's essay.
In the work, he said: "The reasons for outrage today may be less clear than during Nazi times. But look around and you will find them."
His reasons for personal outrage included the growing chasm between the haves and have-nots, France's treatment of its illegal immigrants and the abuse of the environment.
Hessel followed up his best-seller with another book "Get Involved" which focuses on saving the environment.
Speaking to AFP in March last year, Hessel said he was "astonished" by the success of "Time for Outrage," adding that it was probably due to the fact that it came at a "historic moment" when "societies were lost and were seeking ways on how to come out and looking for a sense of human adventure."
His seminal pamphlet was criticized by Jewish groups as anti-semitic but a flood of tributes poured in on February 27, 2013.
Hollande said Hessel's "exceptional life was devoted to defending human dignity," adding: "He left us with an important lesson -- that of not resigning oneself to any injustice."
"Mr. Hessel was a monumental figure of human rights," said Poland's ambassador Remigiusz Henczel, chairman of the UN Human Rights Council. "His life will continue to inspire our work."
European Parliament president Martin Schulz said on Twitter: "Stephane Hessel, a great European, always involved, never satisfied, spurred by a spirit of combat and liberty. We will miss him."
Paris mayor Bertrand Delanoe hailed him as a "world citizen".
Hessel served as a diplomat in Vietnam and Algeria and had been made ambassador for life.
His last published work came out in 2012. Called “Declare Peace! For a Progress of the Spirit," it comprises interviews with the Tibetan spiritual leader, the Dalai Lama.
Kim Willsher wrote from Paris (The Guardian, Feb 27, 2013, “Stéphane Hessel, writer and inspiration behind Occupy movement, dies at 95”):
The story of the French author Stéphane Hessel's long and extraordinary life reads like a Boy's Own adventure.
From his childhood in Berlin and then Paris, where he was brought up by his writer and translator father, journalist mother and her lover in an unusual ménage à trois, to his worldwide celebrity at the age of 93, when a political pamphlet he wrote became a bestselling publishing sensation and inspired global protest and the Occupy Wall Street movement.
And then there was everything in between: his escape from two Nazi concentration camps where he had been tortured and sentenced to death, his escapades with the French resistance and his hand in drawing up the Universal Declaration of Human Rights in 1948.
Sometime between Tuesday and Wednesday, just a week after his last big interview was published, Hessel's long and extraordinary life came to an end. One French magazine remarked: "Stéphane Hessel, dead? It's hard to believe. He seemed to have become eternal, the grand and handsome old man."
Le Point magazine added that the man with an "old-fashioned politeness and elegance from another age" had "danced" with the best part of a century.
"When one is received by the world in television studios, when one writes bestsellers, when one has baptised an international mobilisation movement, does one still die?" the magazine asked.
In 2010, when most people are winding down and after a long career as a diplomat, Hessel's life took yet another dramatic turn when his 48-page pamphlet Indignez-Vous!, sold 4.5m copies in 35 countries. It was translated into English as Time for Outrage.
The work was originally written as a speech to commemorate the resistance to Hitler's occupation of France during the Second World War. It served as a rallying cry for those appalled by the gap between the world's rich and poor.
Hessel said afterwards he aimed to imbue French youth with the same passion and fervor as had existed in the resistance. He compared the 21st-century struggle against what he described as the "international dictatorship of the financial markets" to his generation's struggle against oppression as a young man during the war.
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 epitomized the faith in the future of a new century," Ayrault said.
As a committed European and supporter of the left, he was behind the Socialist François Hollande's successful presidential election bid last year. On Wednesday after news of his death broke, French politicians lined up to express their admiration, respect and sadness.
Son of a journalist and a writer Hessel was born in Berlin. The family moved to France when Hessel was eight and he took French nationality in the late 1930s, having passed his baccalauréat at the young age of 15.
The young Hessel refused to follow Marshal Philippe Pétain's collaborationist Vichy government and fled to London, where he joined General Charles de Gaulle's resistance fighters.
After the war, he worked with the US first lady, Eleanor Roosevelt, in editing the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.
Time for Outrage! argued that the French needed to become as outraged now as his fellow fighters had been during the war. He was highly critical of France's treatment of illegal immigrants, and Israel's treatment of Palestinians, and passionate about the environment, a free press and France's welfare system. His call was for peaceful, non-violent insurrection.
During the eurozone crisis, one of the names given to the protests against austerity programs 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.
"The global protest movement does not resemble the Communist movement, which declared that the world had to be overturned according to its viewpoint," Hessel said in an interview a year ago.
"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."
A BBC report (Feb 27, 2013, “ Inspirational French writer Stephane Hessel dies at 95”)
said:
In Time for Outrage, he called for a new form of "resistance" to the injustices of the modern world.
The 95-year-old's name was the top trending term on Twitter in Spain and France on Wednesday morning, as admirers paid tribute with quotes such as: "To create is to resist, to resist is to create."
French President Francois Hollande said in a statement: Hessel's "capacity for indignation knew no bounds other than those of his own life." "As that comes to an end, he leaves us a lesson: to refuse to accept any injustice."
Born on October 20, 1917, a naturalized French citizen from 1939, Hessel became a prominent Resistance figure.
Some, like the French Jewish activist Gilles-William Goldnadel, have accused him of exaggerating his role in the work.
According to Goldnadel, France's leftist press idealized the former Resistance fighter, a strong critic of Israeli policy, as a "secular saint".
Hugh Schofield, BBC News, Paris wrote:
I first met Stephane Hessel in the early 1990s. He used to come round for interviews at the old BBC office on the Rue du Faubourg Saint-Honore.
He was a great favorite, because he was unfailingly courteous. Diplomacy was his natural calling. He would wear a dark suit and some kind of old-fashioned hat - possibly a homburg - then, put before the microphone, argue gently but irresistibly on the subject at hand.
Over the years we would bump into each other. He lived around the corner from me in the 14th Arrondissement. He had first come to the neighborhood in 1927!
He was already pretty old when I first met him, so he did not seem to get any older: a bald, grinning sparrow with impeccable manners. The last occasion was about a year ago, when he spoke of his wartime experiences.
I would say that in his bearing he was the least French of Frenchmen, and of course that reflects his origins. But in his ideas, his passion for justice, his belief in the ideal: that is France all over.
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