Gerald Nagler, a leading human rights activist since the Cold War, has died at the age of 92
Nagler’s influence on international human rights efforts and priorities spanned more than four decades, from documenting the struggles of opposition groups in the Iron Curtain era to combat. antisemitism amid the rise of nativist and far-right political forces in recent years.
During the Balkan wars of the 1990s, after the breakup of Yugoslavia, Nagler worked to help civil society groups and independent media across ethnic and religious divides, including in Belgrade B92 radio that challenged the propaganda of Yugoslav leader Slobodan Milosevic and his Serbian allies targeting Bosnian Muslims and others.
Nagler said he was “very optimistic” even as political opposition and free speech were under serious threat in places like Vladimir Putin’s Russia and Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s Turkey. Which encouraged He said he was an international sensation: “Human rights are on everyone’s agenda these days.”
Mr. Nagler began human rights activism out of an unexpected request in 1977. Morton Narrowean American-born rabbi and leader of Stockholm’s Jewish community, suggested that his friend apply for a visa to visit Soviet Jews who want to enter the West, known as replicants.
Mr. Nagler, Mr. Narrowe thought, was a perfect fit for the fact-finding trip and opening channels with Moscow’s Jewish community. He had no experience in international politics or human rights campaigns and worked in his family’s optical equipment company. The rabbi figured that Mr. Nagler would not attract much attention from the KGB and other Soviet men.
“I didn’t think it was a good idea because I don’t speak Russian, I don’t speak Hebrew, I barely understand Yiddish. So I said, ‘This is none of my business,'” Nagler recalled inside something 2002 interview. “But [Narrowe] said, “I think you should go take a look.” “
During the trip, Mr. Nagler was able to avoid major run-ins with the authorities while meeting with activists, including Sakharovthe 1975 Nobel Peace Prize winner and his wife, Jelena Bonner. Nagler would remain among Sakharov’s closest contacts in the West.
“You learn so much about courage, ethics and morality,” he later said.
In 1982, Nagler left the business world and founded the Swedish Helsinki Committee. It originated as an idea at the kitchen table with his wife, Monica Nagler Wittgenstein, a Swedish journalist and authority on German literature. The name of the group refers Helsinki Final Document, a 1975 agreement signed by 35 nations, including the United States and the Soviet Union, that established broad principles on issues such as freedom of the press, scientific cooperation, and human rights.
“We had no budget, we had no staff, we had no office,” said Nagler a 2020 video Produced by Civil Rights Defenders. “But we had a job to do.”
Hans Gerald Nagler was born on December 10, 1929 in Vienna, the son of a Jewish merchant, who moved the family to Stockholm in 1931 amid growing anti-Semitism in the interwar period.
Mr. Nagler often recalled that his family offered help to people fleeing Nazi Germany and Nazi-occupied territories during the war, and later offered asylum to concentration camp survivors who arrived in Sweden after 1945.
“Of course it plays a role that I’m Jewish,” he said in 2002 of his position among human rights activists, “because if something goes wrong anywhere, the Jews are likely to be the first. [in] queuing pays the price.”
In the 1980s, Nagler entered into relationships Lech Walesa Solidarity movement in Poland and with Havel Charter 77 human rights movement that was then Czechoslovakia. While visiting with Havel at his summer house outside Prague, Mr. Nagler assumed that secret police had broken into the rooms and suggested they walk for privacy.
Havel said it doesn’t matter. He pointed to a small cabin nearby, Mr. Nagler recalled. It was a “listening station” that constantly monitored your every move playwright, who became the last president of Czechoslovakia in 1989 when anti-communist groups took power. Havel resigned in 1992 just before the country split; then he returned as president of the new Czech Republic from 1993 to 2003.
On another trip to Prague in the early 1980s, Nagler planned to attend a meeting of writers, academics, and others considered enemies by the government. The night before the meeting, Mr. Nagler received word that the host hotel “suddenly had to fix all its windows or something,” said his longtime colleague Benedicte Berner, the former president of Civil Rights Defenders and a longtime colleague of Mr. Nagler’s. , in a telephone interview.
The group ended up squeezing into a small apartment.
“There were probably 30 or 40 people in the little place,” Berner said. “This says a lot [Mr. Nagler]. He faced many obstacles but somehow always found his way.
Until 1992, Nagler also led the organization International Helsinki Human Rights Association, an umbrella organization of over 40 legal groups around the world. In 2009, the Swedish Helsinki Committee changed its name to Civil Rights Defenders.
Among his survivors is his wife of 65 years, who is the philosopher’s niece Ludwig Wittgenstein; and three children, Pamela and Camilla, both of Stockholm, and Nicholas of New York.
Mr. Nagler wanted to quote an Israeli writer Amos Oz and his “tl attitude”.
“We all have a teaspoon,” Mr. Nagler explained. “We should take water and put it on fire. It seems [like] it doesn’t have an effect, but if there are many teaspoons it can have an effect.”