Human rights activists

Simon Wiesenthal, (born Dec. 31, 1908, Buczacz, Galicia, Austria-Hungary [now Buchach, Ukr.]—died Sept. 20, 2005, Vienna, Austria), founder (1961) and head (until 2003) of the Jewish Documentation Centre in Vienna. During World War II Wiesenthal was a prisoner in five Nazi concentration camps, and after the war he dedicated his life to the search for and the legal prosecution of Nazi criminals and to the promotion of Holocaust memory and education.

Claude Bourdet, French human rights activist and journalist who led the French Resistance during World War II and was a prominent figure in the Parisian leftist intelligentsia as cofounder and editor of the political weekly France-Observateur (b. Oct. 28, 1909–d. March 20, 1996).

Kronid Arkadyevich Lyubarsky, Russian human rights activist whose work led to his arrest and emigration in the 1970s; following the 1991 breakup of the U.S.S.R., he returned to Russia, where he served as chairman of the human rights monitoring group Moscow Helsinki Watch and as editor of Novoye Vremya, a pro-democracy magazine (b. April 1935–d. May 23, 1996).

René de Epelbaum, Argentine human rights activist who helped found the Mothers of the Plaza de Mayo to protest the disappearance of their children during the dictatorship of the military regime and to campaign for information about their missing relatives (b. 1920, Entre Rios province, Arg.–d. Feb. 7, 1998, Buenos Aires, Arg.).

Sola Sierra, Chilean human rights activist who led a campaign to uncover the truth about the disappearance of hundreds of political dissidents in Chile during the 1974–1990 dictatorship of Gen. Augusto Pinochet Ugarte. After her husband was detained by police in 1976 and subsequently vanished, she became president of an organization called the Relatives of the Detained-Disappeared…

Natalya Khusainova Estemirova, (born Feb. 28, 1959, Saratov, Russia, U.S.S.R.—died July 15, 2009, near Nazaran, Ingushetiya, Russia), Russian human rights activist who documented illegal torture, kidnappings, and murders to give a voice and publicity to victims of political violence in the Russian republic of Chechnya…

María Julia Hernández, (born Jan. 30, 1939 , Honduras—died March 30, 2007 , San Salvador, El Salvador), El Salvadoran human rights activist who devoted her life to chronicling and investigating the abuses and massacres committed by right-wing paramilitary death squads…

Alison Des Forges (Alison B. Liebhafsky), (born Aug. 20, 1942, Schenectady, N.Y.—died Feb. 12, 2009, near Buffalo, N.Y.), American human rights activist and historian who detailed the horrific genocide (1994) in Rwanda, in which more than 500,000 people were slaughtered by the Hutu militia, in her book Leave None to Tell the Story: Genocide in Rwanda (1999); she also sharply criticized the failure of leading countries to intervene in the tragedy…

Gerhart Moritz Riegner, (born Sept. 12, 1911, Berlin, Ger.—died Dec. 3, 2001, Geneva, Switz.), German-born lawyer and human rights activist who , was the first to warn government officials in London and Washington, D.C. (in August 1942, in what came to be known as the “Riegner telegram”), that the Nazis had made the decision to exterminate the Jews in Europe and had begun putting their plans in motion…

Baba Amte (Murlidhar Devidas Amte), (born Dec. 26, 1914, Maharashtra district, British India—died Feb. 9, 2008, Anandvan, Maharashtra, India), Indian lawyer and social activist who devoted his life to India’s lower-caste Dalits (officially called Scheduled Castes; formerly called “untouchables”) and especially to the care of those individuals who suffered from leprosy (Hansen’s disease)…

Saʿd al-Dīn Ibrāhīm, also spelled Saad Eddin Ibrahim (born Dec. 3, 1938, Al-Manṣūrah, Egypt), Egyptian American professor and civil rights activist known for his vocal criticism of Egyptian president Hosnī Mubārak.

Bulgarian Women Medical Doctors in the Social Modernization of the Bulgarian Nation State (1878-1944) (Historical Social Research by Georgeta Nazarska).

*Source: Encyclopædia Britannica, Inc.