Rights Honoree Calls for Hussein Protest : Recognition: Chapman College’s Albert Schweitzer Award recipient, a former Nazi prisoner, asks the world to denounce the Iraqi president’s human-rights abuses.

Ginetta Sagan, a former Nazi prisoner who on Thursday received Chapman College’s Albert Schweitzer Award for her international human rights work, said in an interview that people throughout the world should protest the human rights violations of Iraqi President Saddam Hussein.

“Saddam Hussein has not only killed and tortured political opponents who he knows are political opponents, but he has gone even further, and anyone who is even remotely suspected of being an opponent faces destruction,” she said. “He is a brutal human being; he is a tyrant.”

Sagan said people should write or telegram the United Nations Commission on Human Rights to protest Hussein’s actions. She said that basic human rights, not world politics, are the issue. Sagan also denounced Hussein’s holding of civilian hostages in the current Mideast crisis.

“What he is doing violates international law,” she said. “People should speak up about these violations of human rights. They should stand up and be counted.”

Sagan, 65, who lives in Atherton, Calif., helped launch the human rights organization Amnesty International on the West Coast. She also started her own human rights group, based in Atherton, called the Aurora Foundation.

Sagan’s feelings for political prisoners comes from firsthand experience. During World War II, she was captured by the Nazis and tortured for being an Italian Resistance fighter. She was to be executed but was rescued in 1945.

Since regaining her freedom 45 years ago, Sagan has devoted her life to freeing people around the world who have been jailed and tortured for their beliefs. Chapman College on Thursday honored her work by presenting her with its annual Schweitzer award. Schweitzer, who died in 1965, was a philosopher, physician and missionary who won the 1952 Nobel Peace Prize for his international humanitarian work.

Kurt Bergel, director of the college’s Albert Schweitzer Institute, told the student-faculty audience that Sagan was “a woman who for a lifetime has stood in the forefront of the fight for human rights.”

Upon receiving the award, Sagan said, “I accept this award, not only for myself, but on behalf of my co-workers in Amnesty International worldwide, who are working relentlessly in behalf of prisoners of conscience. Thank you.”

Later, Sagan stressed that her comments about Hussein and the Mideast crisis were her personal views.

“I am not speaking for Amnesty International, and I must make that clear,” she said. But she added that as an individual human rights worker, she is appalled at the “nightmare” conditions in Iraq under Hussein’s rule.

Sagan added, “Iraq for years, as far as violating human rights, has been a nightmare.”

Sagan will be the initial speaker at 1 p.m. today as Chapman College launches its two-day convocation on “The Relevance of Albert Schweitzer’s Life and Thought Today.” Sagan, whose topic will be “My Struggle for Human Rights,” will speak in the Waltmar Theatre on the Chapman College campus, 333 N. Glassell St.

At 7:30 tonight in the college’s Memorial Hall Auditorium, there will be a concert, followed immediately by a talk by British author James Brabazon on “Reverence for Life and the Power of the Individual: Albert Schweitzer as a Guide for Today and Tomorrow.” Brabazon, of London, is the author of a Schweitzer biography.

On Saturday at 9 a.m. in Waltmar Theatre, Robert Livingstone, of International Physicians for the Prevention of Nuclear War, will speak on “Approaches to World Peace.”

All sessions today and Saturday are free and open to the public.