The former French Resistance fighter Stéphane Hessel has died at the age of 95. Hessel joined the French Resistance during World War II, was caught by the Gestapo and sent to the Buchenwald concentration camp. He escaped during transfer to Bergen-Belsen and later helped draft the United Nations Universal Declaration of Human Rights. In 2010, he became an unlikely best-selling author when his pamphlet-length book, “Time for Outrage,” sold millions of copies around the world and helped inspire protests like Occupy Wall Street. As the movement spread in the fall of 2011, Hessel explained to Democracy Now! why he was encouraged by nonviolent resistance.

Stéphane Hessel: “It is proper for the young generation to listen to the very old ones who tell them, 'We have been resisters at a time where there was fascism or Stalinism. You must find the things that you will not accept, that will outrage you. And these things, you must be able to fight against nonviolently, peacefully, but determinedly.' That is why I am so happy about what happens these days in Wall Street, because they’re indeed very peaceful. They are not throwing any bombs or any stones, but they’re there determined to see that their values are to be respected.”