Famous Refugees

Famous Refugees
Famous Refugees. In honor of World Refugee Day, we take a look at some of the world's biggest names and find out caused them to flee their homes.



Alek Wek
Home country: Sudan


Career: Fashion model
These days, Alek Wek, 34, is one of the most sought models for runways and photo spreads in the fashion world. But when she was 14, Wek’s family fled southern Sudan for the U.K. to escape a brutal civil war. Six years later, she became the first African model to grace the cover of this magazine. She makes a line of designer handbags called "Wek 1933."
Wyclef Jean
Home country: Haiti

Career: Musician
Wyclef Jean’s refugee story inspired his music from the very beginning. He may have left when he was 9 years old, but his native Haiti is never far from his mind. The 41-year-old entertainer’s urgent tweets appealing for aid helped raise millions after 2010’s devastating earthquake. Watch him discuss fundraising efforts through his YĆ©le foundation. Wyclef even flirted with a Haitian presidential bid.

Albert Einstein
Home country: Germany

Career: Physicist
His name has practically become synonymous with “genius,” and almost anyone on the street can name Einstein’s most famous discovery, even if they can’t explain what it is. Hitler’s rise to power forced the professor to flee his native Germany in 1933 and accept a teaching post at a well-known university until his death in 1955.
Henry Kissinger
Home country: Germany

Career: Former US secretary of state

He’s best known for serving as America’s top diplomat, but the man who negotiated the end to the Vietnam War and helped send this president to China was actually born overseas. A teenage Heinz Alfred Kissinger, who is now 88, and his family fled Nazi persecution in 1938.
Marlene Dietrich
Home country: Germany

Career: Actress/Singer
One of the original superstars of the silver screen, the gender-bending Dietrich shot to worldwide fame as the cabaret singer in a 1930 film. She fled Nazi Germany and went on to earn this recognition.
M.I.A.
Home country: Sri Lanka

Career: Singer
Born in London to Tamil parents, M.I.A.’s family returned to their native Sri Lanka when she was an infant. Her father’s political activism in favor of a Tamil homeland forced the family into hiding, and her early years were marked by the violence of the Sri Lankan civil war. The escalation of the conflict forced her mother to bring the family back to London when she was 11.

Sigmund Freud
Home country: Austria

Career: Neurologist

The father of psychoanalysis, Freud is probably best known for his work on the unconscious and a short-lived belief in the healing powers of cocaine. He spent most of his life in Vienna, as part of the city’s rich pre-Nazi Jewish intellectual community, but was forced to flee in 1938.

Madeleine Albright
Home country: Czechoslovakia

Career: Former secretary of state

The first woman to head the State Department was born in Prague. Albright’s parents converted from Judaism to this religion before they fled to London ahead of World War II. Albright, 74, starred as a child refugee in a wartime film aimed at promoting sympathy for all war refugees in London.

Nadia Comaneci
Home country: Romania

Career: Olympic gymnast

As a member of the Romanian Olympic Team in 1976, Comaneci won worldwide acclaim when she became the first gymnast to score a perfect 10. She went on to win several medals over the course of her Olympic career, but later defected to the West in the waning days of the Communist regime. Post-retirement, Comaneci became active with the association for this disease and the Special Olympics.

The Dalai Lama
Home country: Tibet

Career: Religious leader

The political and spiritual leader of Tibet has been living outside his homeland since the Chinese army brutally put down a nationalist uprising in 1959. The Dalai Lama turned the northern Indian city of Dharamsala into his home base for his travels around the world preaching compassion, forgiveness and tolerance.

Andy Garcia
Home country: Cuba

Career: Actor

He earned an Academy Award nomination for playing an Italian mobster in this film, Andy Garcia, 55, born in Havana. After the disastrous Bay of Pigs invasion, a 5-year-old Garcia left Cuba for Miami, where the family set up a successful perfume business. Garcia speaks out regularly on behalf of Cuban political prisoners and in favor of democratic change on the island.

Elie Wiesel
Home country: Romania

Career: Author

Born to a Romanian Jewish family, Wiesel survived the horrors of Auschwitz in World War II and eventually settled in the U.S. His memoir, “Night,” about his time in the camp, has been translated into more than 30 languages, and his work as an activist for peace and forgiveness earned him this acclaimed award.

Luol Deng
Home country: Sudan

Career: NBA player

The 6-foot-9 Chicago Bulls forward looks right at home on a basketball court in the Windy City, but his original home is half a world away, in Sudan. A member of the Dinka ethnic group, Deng’s family fled the violence of the Sudanese Civil War and eventually settled in Britain.

Source: msn
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