Universal+Declaration+of+Human+RIghts+Roberts+Page

Robert Hampson

Universal Declaration of Human Rights
 In 1945 allied troops went into Germany and saw the horror inside the death camps. Rene Levesque, a Canadian news reporter, who later became the premiere of Quebec, went into one of the camps as the Americans set the prisoners free. This is one of Levesque's quotes. "We were beginning to wish we hadn't seen anything ourselves." Rene Léesque, //Memoirs// (Montreal: Amerique, 1986) It was the holocaust that encouraged the United Nations to protect human rights. It created the United Nations Human Rights Division. In 1946, John Peters Humphrey, A Montreal lawyer became the director of this division. He is the person who actually wrote the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. The United Nations put forth the final copy of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights on December 10, 1948. Here is a audio clip media type="file" key="Eleanor Roosevelt addresses the United Nations on the ratification of the Universal Declaration of H.mp3"of Eleanor Roosevelt, the chairperson of the Commission on Human Rights. The thirty articles in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights have been used in creating the laws of many countries. The Canadian Bill of Rights and the Ontario Human's Rights Code use these. Here is basically what the first seven articles say.

article 1. All humans are born free and equal.

article 2. Do not discriminate. These rights are for everyone.

article 3. Everyone has the right to life, freedom and safety.

article 4. No one can be made a slave.

article 5. No one can be tortured.

article 6. You have the same rights no matter where you go.

article 7. The law is the same for everyone.

Questions:
1. Think about Rene Levesque's comments about the concentration camp:

a) Should people who knew about the death camps but didn't do anything about it share responsibility for the Holocaust? Rene Levesque seemed to be saying that people knew about what was happening, but everyone was pretending as if they didn't know. I think that people who knew about the death camps and didn't do anything about it should take some of the responsibility. They were just turning a blind eye to the whole situation. These people will live with that guilt for the rest of their lives. On the other hand, they knew as individuals that if they protested, they and their families's would end up in the camps too.

b) What do you think Lévesque meant by his last sentence: "We were beginning to wish we hadn't seen anything ourselves"? I think that he meant, everything was so terrible and horrific and some of the sights were things no human should ever see. I think he may have been wishing that he hadn't been a witness of what had happened in the camps.

<span style="font-family: 'Arial Black',Gadget,sans-serif; font-size: 150%;">2. Identify which articles of the Human Rights Declaration were clearly violated by the Nazis. All seven of the articles I talked about were violated by the Nazis. <span style="font-family: 'Arial Black',Gadget,sans-serif; font-size: 150%;">article 1. All humans are born free and equal. <span style="font-family: 'Arial Black',Gadget,sans-serif; font-size: 150%;">The Jews, Roma, people with disabilities and the communists were not considered equal in the eyes of the Nazis. Only people of pure Aryan blood were considered equal. As prisoners, they were definitely not free. <span style="font-family: 'Arial Black',Gadget,sans-serif; font-size: 150%;">article 2. Do not discriminate. These rights are for everyone. <span style="font-family: 'Arial Black',Gadget,sans-serif; font-size: 150%;">I think this is the article that was violated the most by the nazis. The Jews were discriminated against because of religion, the communists because of their political views, the Roma because of their birth and people with disabilities, because of their disabilities. <span style="font-family: 'Arial Black',Gadget,sans-serif; font-size: 150%;">article 3. Everyone has the right to life, freedom and safety. <span style="font-family: 'Arial Black',Gadget,sans-serif; font-size: 150%;">Jews had no right to life because they were murdered. They had no freedom because they were put into concentration camps and ghettos. They had no safety because they could be arrested at any time. <span style="font-family: 'Arial Black',Gadget,sans-serif; font-size: 150%;">article 4. No one can be made a slave. <span style="font-family: 'Arial Black',Gadget,sans-serif; font-size: 150%;">The prisoners were forced to work as slaves. Many of them died from working too hard. <span style="font-family: 'Arial Black',Gadget,sans-serif; font-size: 150%;">article 5. No one can be tortured. <span style="font-family: 'Arial Black',Gadget,sans-serif; font-size: 150%;">The prisoners were tortured. Many of them were tortured to death. <span style="font-family: 'Arial Black',Gadget,sans-serif; font-size: 150%;">article 6. You have the same rights no matter where you go. <span style="font-family: 'Arial Black',Gadget,sans-serif; font-size: 150%;">The Jews were herded into ghetto. In that area they had different rights from the rest of the population. <span style="font-family: 'Arial Black',Gadget,sans-serif; font-size: 150%;">article 7. The law is the same for everyone. <span style="font-family: 'Arial Black',Gadget,sans-serif; font-size: 150%;">The Jews had different laws. At first they had to wear the star of David, then they couldn't even own businesses.