Peter Benenson^{[needs IPA]} (31 July 1921 – 25 February 2005) was a British Jewish lawyer and the founder of human rights group Amnesty International (AI). In 2001, Benenson received the Pride of Britain Award for Lifetime Achievement.

Born in London as Peter James Henry Solomon to a Jewish family, the only son of Harold Solomon and Flora Benenson, Peter Benenson adopted his mother's maiden name later in life. His army officer father died when Benenson was aged nine from a long-term injury, and he was tutored privately by W. H. Auden before going to Eton. At the age of sixteen he helped to establish a relief fund with other schoolboys for children orphaned by the Spanish Civil War. He took his mother's maiden name of Benenson as a tribute to his grandfather, the Russian gold tycoon Grigori Benenson, following his grandfather's death.

He enrolled for study at Balliol College, Oxford but World War II interrupted his education. From 1941 to 1945, Benenson worked at Bletchley Park, the British codebreaking centre, in the "Testery", a section tasked with breaking German teleprinter ciphers. It was at this time when he met his first wife, Margaret Anderson. After demobilisation in 1946, Benenson began practising as a barrister before joining the Labour Party and standing unsuccessfully for election. He was one of a group of British lawyers who founded JUSTICE in 1957, the UK-based human rights and law reform organisation. In 1958 he fell ill and moved to Italy in order to convalesce. In the same year he converted to the Roman Catholic Church.

Bernd Dost (b. May 16, 1939 in Dortmund) is a German journalist, filmmaker, writer and publisher. He produces documentaries for ARD, Germany’s leading Public TV Station, and wrote articles for Stern magazine and the Münchner Merkur and Münchner Abendzeitung, two daily newspapers. His documentary works are socio-critical and deal with major topics such as environmental protection, human rights and psychology. As a documentary film maker, Bernd Dost has worked with various people like Jane Goodall, the Anti-psychiatry pioneer Ronald David Laing or the writer Carl Amery. His novels include elements of surrealism, transgressional fiction and postmodernism and deal with mass media, religion and psychology. He is the brother of theater and film actress Roswitha Dost.

His father, Josef Dost, was a foreman, and his mother, Elisabeth "Elli" Dost, a writer. During the Second World War Bernd Dost experienced the bombing of Dortmund, was subsequently evacuated and grew up in Hemer in the Sauerland. From a very early age he was interested in a career as a writer and journalist.