Human Rights Day

10 December 2025 | Author/Destination: | Category: General, Paris / Île-de-France Reading Time:  3 minutes

© Predrag Stakić

© Predrag Stakić

Human Rights Day (HRD) is celebrated annually around the world on 10 December every year. The date was chosen to honor the United Nations General Assembly‘s adoption and proclamation, on 10 December 1948, of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR), the first global enunciation of human rights and one of the first major achievements of the new United Nations. The formal establishment of Human Rights Day occurred at the 317th Plenary Meeting of the General Assembly on 4 December 1950, when the General Assembly declared resolution 423(V), inviting all member states and any other interested organizations to celebrate the day as they saw fit.   read more…

Palais de Chaillot in Paris

1 December 2025 | Author/Destination: | Category: General, House of the Month, Paris / Île-de-France Reading Time:  6 minutes

© flickr.com - James Petts/cc-by-sa-2.0

© flickr.com – James Petts/cc-by-sa-2.0

The Palais de Chaillot is a building atop the Chaillot Hill in the Trocadéro area, in the 16th arrondissement of Paris, France. The building was designed in classicising “moderne” style by architects Louis-Hippolyte Boileau, Jacques Carlu and Léon Azéma. The Palais consists of two separate wings shaped to form a wide arc, which are those of the former Palais du Trocadéro with new taller portions built in front. The pair of larger central pavilions are also those of the former Palais du Trocadéro, encapsulated in new construction. The large central hall and towers of the old palais were demolished, leaving only the basement, with a wide esplanade created on top, establishing an open view from the Place du Trocadéro to the Eiffel Tower and beyond.   read more…

United Nations Detention Unit, maybe Vladimir Putin’s new address in beautiful Scheveningen

18 August 2025 | Author/Destination: | Category: General Reading Time:  6 minutes

© Michiel1972/cc-by-sa-3.0

© Michiel1972/cc-by-sa-3.0

The United Nations Detention Unit (UNDU) is a United Nations–administered jail. It is part of the Hague Penitentiary Institution‘s Scheveningen location, more popularly known as Scheveningen Prison, in The Hague, Netherlands. The UNDU was established in 1993 as part of the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY) and currently houses detainees whose cases have been taken over by the International Residual Mechanism for Criminal Tribunals (IRMCT).   read more…

Vienna International Centre

17 April 2025 | Author/Destination: | Category: General Reading Time:  5 minutes

© Brücke-Osteuropa

© Brücke-Osteuropa

The Vienna International Centre (VIC) is the campus and building complex hosting the United Nations Office at Vienna (UNOV; in Austrian German: Büro der Vereinten Nationen in Wien). It is colloquially also known as UNO City.   read more…

Anne Frank Educational Centre in Frankfurt

27 January 2022 | Author/Destination: | Category: General, Museums, Exhibitions Reading Time:  8 minutes

Diary of Anne Frank © Diego Delso/cc-by-sa-4.0

Diary of Anne Frank © Diego Delso/cc-by-sa-4.0

The Anne Frank Educational Centre (German: Bildungsstätte Anne Frank) was founded in 1997 and is located in the neighbourhood of Dornbusch, Frankfurt am Main in Germany where Anne Frank was born. The Centre is supported by the Anne-Frank-Fonds in Basel. In their work, the Centre uses the biography and the diary of Anne Frank as a unique tool to promote tolerance and educate people about the consequences of Nazism, discrimination and racism.   read more…

Synagogue of Halle (Saale)

27 January 2021 | Author/Destination: | Category: General Reading Time:  5 minutes

Halle Synagogue © Allexkoch/cc-by-sa-4.0

Halle Synagogue © Allexkoch/cc-by-sa-4.0

The synagogue of Halle (Saale) is the house of worship of the Jewish community in Halle (Saale), which had 555 members in 2018. The building was originally built in 1894 as the Tahara House of the Jewish cemetery, laid out in 1864 northeast of downtown Halle, from white and yellow bricks according to plans by the architects Gustav Wolff and Theodor Lehmann. The conversion to a synagogue took place from 1948 after some renovations (consecrated in 1953) as a replacement for the old synagogue in the city center, which was destroyed during the November pogroms in 1938.   read more…

Topography of Terror in Berlin

27 January 2020 | Author/Destination: | Category: General, Berlin Reading Time:  12 minutes

© Manfred Brückels/cc-by-sa-3.0

© Manfred Brückels/cc-by-sa-3.0

The Topography of Terror (German: Topographie des Terrors) is an outdoor and indoor history museum in Berlin, Germany. It is located on Niederkirchnerstrasse, formerly Prinz-Albrecht-Strasse, on the site of buildings which during the Nazi regime from 1933 to 1945 was the SS Reich Main Security Office, the headquarters of the Sicherheitspolizei, SD, Einsatzgruppen and Gestapo.   read more…

Memorial to the Murdered Jews of Europe in Berlin

27 January 2019 | Author/Destination: | Category: General, Berlin, Museums, Exhibitions Reading Time:  15 minutes

© Orator/cc-by-sa-4.0

© Orator/cc-by-sa-4.0

The Memorial to the Murdered Jews of Europe (German: Denkmal für die ermordeten Juden Europas), also known as the Holocaust Memorial (German: Holocaust-Mahnmal), is a memorial in Berlin to the Jewish victims of the Holocaust, designed by architect Peter Eisenman and engineer Buro Happold. It consists of a 19,000-square-metre (200,000 sq ft) site covered with 2,711 concrete slabs or “stelae“, arranged in a grid pattern on a sloping field. The stelae are 2.38 metres (7 ft 10 in) long, 0.95 metres (3 ft 1 in) wide and vary in height from 0.2 to 4.7 metres (7.9 in to 15 ft 5.0 in). They are organized in rows, 54 of them going north–south, and 87 heading east–west at right angles but set slightly askew. An attached underground “Place of Information” (German: Ort der Information) holds the names of approximately 3 million Jewish Holocaust victims, obtained from the Israeli museum Yad Vashem. Building began on April 1, 2003, and was finished on December 15, 2004. It was inaugurated on May 10, 2005, sixty years after the end of World War II, and opened to the public two days later. It is located one block south of the Brandenburg Gate, in the Mitte neighborhood. The cost of construction was approximately 25 million.   read more…

70th Anniversary of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights

10 December 2018 | Author/Destination: | Category: General Reading Time:  14 minutes

The Universal Declaration of Human Rights, 10 December 1948

The Universal Declaration of Human Rights, 10 December 1948

The Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR) is a historic document that was adopted by the United Nations General Assembly at its third session on 10 December 1948 as Resolution 217 at the Palais de Chaillot in Paris, France. Of the then 58 members of the United Nations, 48 voted in favor, none against, eight abstained, and two did not vote.   read more…

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