Public Figures & Cultural Luminaries

Resistance & Human Rights

14

🕯️ 920

Marie-Claude Vaillant-Couturier

Marie-Claude Vogel

France

3 November 1912 – 11 December 1996 (84 years old)

French photojournalist and communist resistance member who survived deportation to Auschwitz and Ravensbrück, becoming the premier eyewitness to detail the mechanics of the Nazi death factories at the Nuremberg Trials.

Villejuif, Val-de-Marne, France

14 Full Record →

Resistance & Human Rights

13

🕯️ 940

Ken Saro-Wiwa

Kenule Beeson Saro-Wiwa

Nigeria

10 October 1941 – 10 November 1995 (54 years old)

Nigerian writer, television producer, and president of the Movement for the Survival of the Ogoni People (MOSOP) who led nonviolent campaigns against catastrophic Shell oil pollution in the Niger Delta, executed by General Abacha's military junta.

Port Harcourt Prison, Rivers State, Nigeria

13 Full Record →

Resistance & Human Rights

14

🕯️ 910

Joe Slovo

Yossel Mashel Slovo

Lithuania

23 May 1926 – 6 January 1995 (68 years old)

Lithuanian-born South African politician and anti-apartheid leader who was chief of staff of the ANC's armed wing Umkhonto we Sizwe and formulated the crucial 'sunset clauses' enabling the peaceful transition to multiracial democracy.

Johannesburg, South Africa

14 Full Record →

Resistance & Human Rights

12

🕯️ 960

César Chávez

César Estrada Chávez

United States

31 March 1927 – 23 April 1993 (66 years old)

Mexican-American labor leader and civil rights activist who co-founded the National Farm Workers Association (later UFW) with Dolores Huerta, using nonviolent strikes, consumer boycotts, and hunger fasts to win union rights for farmworkers.

San Luis, Arizona, United States

12 Full Record →

Resistance & Human Rights

1

🕯️ 0

Rani Gaidinliu

Gaidinliu Pamei

India

1915 – 1993 (78 years old)

Naga spiritual and political leader who launched an armed revolt against British colonial rule in Manipur at age 16, hailed by Nehru as 'Rani' of the hills.

Kohima, India

1 Full Record →

Resistance & Human Rights

9

🕯️ 960

Thurgood Marshall

Thoroughgood Marshall

United States

2 July 1908 – 24 January 1993 (84 years old)

Legendary civil rights lawyer and jurist who argued and won Brown v. Board of Education (1954) dismantling legal racial segregation, and became the first African American appointed to the United States Supreme Court.

Bethesda, Maryland, United States

9 Full Record →

Resistance & Human Rights

12

🕯️ 1,420

Andrei Sakharov

Андрей Дмитриевич Сахаров

Russia

21 May 1921 – 14 December 1989 (68 years old)

Andrei Sakharov was a brilliant Soviet theoretical nuclear physicist and key developer of the Soviet thermonuclear weapon (RDS-37), who underwent a profound ethical transformation to become the USSR's most prominent civil rights dissident. Awarded the 1975 Nobel Peace Prize for his relentless defense of political prisoners, intellectual freedom, and nuclear disarmament, he was exiled to Gorky for speaking out against the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan before being rehabilitated under Perestroika.

Moscow, Russia

12 Full Record →

Resistance & Human Rights

13

🕯️ 1,040

Ignacio Ellacuría

Ignacio Ellacuría Beascoechea

Spain

9 November 1930 – 16 November 1989 (59 years old)

Ignacio Ellacuría was a brilliant Spanish-Salvadoran Jesuit philosopher, theologian, and Rector of the Central American University (UCA) who developed the 'philosophy of liberation' and relentlessly championed a negotiated peace to end the Salvadoran Civil War. Targeted for his defense of the poor and condemnation of military atrocities, he was massacred alongside five fellow Jesuits, their housekeeper, and her daughter by the US-trained Atlacatl Battalion in November 1989.

San Salvador, El Salvador

13 Full Record →

Resistance & Human Rights

11

🕯️ 930

Chico Mendes

Francisco Alves Mendes Filho

Brazil

15 December 1944 – 22 December 1988 (44 years old)

Brazilian rubber tapper, trade union leader, and environmentalist who pioneered nonviolent human blockades (empates) to stop the destruction of the Amazon rainforest, assassinated by ranchers in 1988.

Xapuri, Acre, Brazil

11 Full Record →

Resistance & Human Rights

10

🕯️ 920

Bayard Rustin

Bayard Rustin

United States

17 March 1912 – 24 August 1987 (75 years old)

Brilliant American civil rights strategist and pacifist who introduced Gandhian nonviolent resistance techniques to Martin Luther King Jr. and served as the chief logistics architect of the 1963 March on Washington.

Manhattan, New York City, United States

10 Full Record →

Resistance & Human Rights

9

🕯️ 950

Primo Levi

Primo Michele Levi

Italy

31 July 1919 – 11 April 1987 (67 years old)

Italian chemist, anti-fascist partisan, and Auschwitz survivor whose lucidity in If This Is a Man and The Drowned and the Saved provided humanity's supreme philosophical and moral analysis of the concentration camp universe.

Turin, Italy

9 Full Record →

Resistance & Human Rights

8

🕯️ 910

Ella Baker

Ella Josephine Baker

United States

13 December 1903 – 13 December 1986 (83 years old)

Visionary African American civil rights and human rights activist who served as a primary strategist of the modern movement, mentoring young organizers and nurturing the founding of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC).

New York City, New York, United States

8 Full Record →

Resistance & Human Rights

7

🕯️ 960

Chiune Sugihara

杉原 千畝

Japan

1 January 1900 – 31 July 1986 (86 years old)

Japanese vice-consul in Lithuania who defied direct orders from Tokyo to handwrite thousands of transit visas, saving more than 6,000 Polish and Lithuanian Jews from Nazi extermination.

Kamakura, Kanagawa, Japan

7 Full Record →

Resistance & Human Rights

11

🕯️ 1,580

Jerzy Popiełuszko

Jerzy Popiełuszko

Poland

14 September 1947 – 19 October 1984 (37 years old)

Blessed Jerzy Popiełuszko was an inspiring Polish Roman Catholic priest and chaplain to the banned trade union Solidarity whose monthly 'Masses for the Homeland' galvanized millions against communist martial law. Preaching radical non-violence and civic truth, he was abducted, brutally tortured, and murdered by officers of the communist secret police (Służba Bezpieczeństwa) in October 1984, cementing his legacy as a martyr for freedom.

near Włocławek, Poland

11 Full Record →

Resistance & Human Rights

11

🕯️ 930

Martin Niemöller

Emil Gustav Friedrich Martin Niemöller

Germany

14 January 1892 – 6 March 1984 (92 years old)

German theologian and Lutheran pastor who founded the anti-Nazi Confessing Church, was held as Hitler's 'personal prisoner' in Sachsenhausen and Dachau concentration camps for eight years, and authored the immortal poem 'First they came...'.

Wiesbaden, Hesse, Germany

11 Full Record →

Resistance & Human Rights

7

🕯️ 920

Corrie ten Boom

Cornelia Arnolda Johanna ten Boom

Netherlands

15 April 1892 – 15 April 1983 (91 years old)

Dutch watchmaker who, along with her family, harbored hundreds of Jews and resistance fighters in a secret room inside their Haarlem house during the Nazi occupation, surviving Ravensbrück concentration camp.

Placentia, California, United States

7 Full Record →

Resistance & Human Rights

7

🕯️ 880

Ruth First

Heloise Ruth First

South Africa

4 May 1925 – 17 August 1982 (57 years old)

South African investigative journalist, scholar, and anti-apartheid leader who exposed slave-like labor on potato farms and was murdered in Mozambique exile by an apartheid police parcel bomb.

Maputo, Mozambique

7 Full Record →

Resistance & Human Rights

7

🕯️ 890

Ferruccio Parri

Ferruccio Parri

Italy

19 January 1890 – 8 December 1981 (91 years old)

Heroic Italian anti-fascist partisan military commander (nom de guerre 'Maurizio') who led the National Liberation Committee for Northern Italy (CLNAI) and served as the first Prime Minister of unified Italy following liberation in 1945.

Rome, Italy

7 Full Record →