(International Herald Tribune) Shashi Tharoor - A retired Australian UN official called Tom Luke was born Tomas Lowenbach in 1926 into a Jewish family in Czechoslovakia. In 1942, he was sent with his family to the concentration camp of Theresienstadt. Birkenau followed; then Auschwitz, where his mother and sister were murdered. He survived, and migrated to Australia in 1949. When I first met Tom, he was more than halfway through a 28-year career with the UN working for developing countries and then for refugees. For him, the work he was doing for the UN was to ensure that what happened to millions like him could not happen again. When Vaclav Havel began his velvet revolution in Prague, Tom, at great personal and professional risk, smuggled printing and publishing equipment into Czechoslovakia to aid the underground press there. He saw no contradiction with his role as a UN official. The ideals he was defending were those of the UN Charter, drawn up by men and women for whom ''never again'' was more than a slogan. Luke currently lives in Geneva with his wife. The writer is the UN undersecretary general for communications and public information.
2005-03-04 00:00:00Full ArticleBACK Visit the Daily Alert Archive