When France resolved, along with England, to lend assistance in the legitimate defense of Poland, the realization burst on us that a conflict of awesome proportions was inevitable.

The only compensation, gained through the influence of nongovernmental organizations, consisted in slightly broadening for private individuals the possibility of access and appeal to the agencies enforcing the Covenant concerned with civil and political rights.

The single outstanding exception was the broad yet precise mandate communicated by the General Assembly in 1946 to prepare as soon as possible the Charter of Human Rights which the San Francisco Conference had not had the time or the courage to draw up.

The other salient characteristic of the Declaration is its universality: it applies to all human beings without any discrimination whatever; it also applies to all territories, whatever their economic or political regime.

Every child growing up will look to their parents, my mother and my father. My grandmother lived with us. I picked up quite a bit of family lore and history from her, which was interesting.

The year my mom worked as a secretary at an apparel company in midtown, she would often come home in tears because she had mistakenly called her boss by another coworker's name. 'You know how it is,' my father said, 'they all look the same. It's not your mom's fault. There's just no telling them apart. Same high nose and deep-set eyes.'

I must have been six or seven years old at the time. My family lived on the bottom floor of a two-story house on Cruger Avenue in the Bronx, and every night at 9:30, I sat by my little radio in our kitchen and listened to a half hour of Bing's records regularly spilling out over WNEW.

Coming from a family who put a lot of emphasis on academics, I always thought I was going to be a lawyer.