Our neighborhood includes a big building known all over the world, whose employees travel far and wide trying to do good. It's the UN, and if you live on the North side of Waterside you can see it out your window. A lot of people who live at Waterside are in fact UN employees, so it's part of the family.
And on August 19, 2003, we lost some members of our family in the terrorist attack on the Canal Hotel in Baghdad, which was housing the UN compound at the time.
At least 23 people were killed in the attack, perpetrated by terrorists who used an old Soviet bomb. Among them were 14 UN staff members and the UN's top envoy to Iraq, Sergio
Vieira de Mello, who also served as the UN high commissioner for human
rights. I wrote about his life at the time in an article, "A Humanitarian in Harm's Way." The bombers were "enemies of the civilized world," U.S.
President George W. Bush said at the time; regrettably, the terrorists associated the neutral UN with the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq.
On that fateful day a long-time colleague, lawyer and refugees specialist Arthur Helton just happened to be waiting for an appointment to begin with de Mello in Baghdad, and was killed in the blast. Right before his trip, Arthur wrote an article with about the crisis of Iraqi displaced persons and refugees; Loescher survived the blast but lost his legs. Arthur's office was next to mine when we both worked at the Bar Building on W. 44th St in the 1980s; later I found his numerous valuable landmark briefs on refugee laws and cases in the archives of the Ford Foundation.
August 19 is now marked as World Humanitarian Day by the UN, which commemorates those who have given their lives in the service of humanitarian ideals and draws attention to the sacrifices many unknown people make in working at the often-maligned and misunderstood UN. Outside the UN for some years there was stood a monument to the famous Swedish diplomat Raoul Wallenberg, who saved Jews from Hungary during the Holocaust. The modernistic monument shows five pillars reaching toward the sky, yet has one realistic detail: a small bronzed briefcase at the foot, symbolizing the peaceful work of diplomats during war.
The work was designed by Swedish sculptor Gustav Graitz, and commissioned by the Swedish consulate. Entitled “Hope,” the sculpture consists of a replica of a briefcase belonging to Wallenberg, a sphere, five pillars of hewn black granite, and stones that formerly paved the streets of a Jewish ghetto in Budapest (these were a gift from the city).
Comments