This is a list of prominent people who
fled their native country, went into
exile and found refuge in another country. The list follows the current legal concept of
refugee only loosely. It also includes children of people who have fled. The people are ordered according to the field in which they made their names.
Eva Jiřičná – British artist and architect, designed the Faith Zone in the
Millennium Dome. Born in Czechoslovakia and took refuge in the UK after the
Prague Spring in 1968.[2]
Mona Hatoum – British-Palestinian sculptor, performance and installation artist; Palestinian refugee born in Lebanon,[10] forced into exile in London in 1975 when war broke out in
Lebanon.[10]
Marcel Janco – Romanian artist and architect, best known as the co-founder of Dadaism. Fled persecution in Romania for British (or Mandatory)
Palestine in 1941.[12]
Anish Kapoor - British-Indian sculptor. His mother's family was Iraqi-Jewish and took refuge in India in 1920 after the
Iraqi revolt.[13]
Camille Pissarro – Danish-French Impressionist and Neo-Impressionist painter, took refuge in London from France during the
Franco-Prussian war of 1870–1871[15]
Alfred Wolmark – British Post-Impressionist painter and decorative artist; Polish-Jewish refugee whose family came to the UK in 1883[16]
Michael Marks – British citizen, one of the founders of
Marks & Spencer. He was a Polish-Jewish refugee from Belarus (then part of the Russian Empire) who fled to the UK in 1882.[20]
Thomas Peterffy - Developed electronic trading of securities. Hungarian refugee who arrived in the U.S. in 1965.
de Portal – founder of British paper firm Portal, which for 270 years (until 1995) held the only license to print British money.
Huguenot refugee who arrived in the UK in 1685.[18]
George Weidenfeld – British citizen; publisher, philanthropist and newspaper columnist. Jewish-Austrian refugee, fled Nazi annexation of Austria (see Anschluss) in 1938 and found refuge in the UK.[23]
Fashion and design
Sir
Alec Issigonis – British car designer, best known for designing the
Mini. His family was evacuated from Smyrna following the end of the Greco-Turkish war.[24]
Tanya Sarne - British fashion designer and creator of the Ghost label. Her parents were refugees (her mother was Romanian, her father French-Jewish who met in London at the end of WWII.[citation needed]
Erich Wolfgang Korngold – Czech-born Jewish composer, working in U.S. when Nazis came to power in Austria and could not return
Fritzi Massary – US citizen. Austrian-Jewish operetta singer and actress. Despite her conversion to Protestantism in 1903, she was persecuted in Germany for her Jewish heritage, and fled the country in 1933, ultimately settling in the US.[33]
Freddie Mercury - British pop singer, songwriter and producer, best known as the lead singer/songwriter for the
rock band Queen. Born a British citizen in the British Protectorate of the
Sultanate of Zanzibar (now Tanzania), he and his family fled during the
1964 Zanzibar Revolution. He and his family resettled in the UK.[34]
Mika – Lebanese-born British singer-songwriter. Born in Beirut, Lebanon in 1983 to a Lebanese mother and American father; his family relocated to Paris in 1984 after attacks on the American Embassy during the
Lebanese civil war.[35]
M.I.A (Mathangi "Maya" Arulpragasam) – British-born Tamil rapper, singer. Six months after her birth, her family relocated from the UK to Sri Lanka at the beginning of the
Sri Lankan Civil War. As a result of her father's political activism, she and her family fled the war for London in 1987.[36]
Rita Ora – British singer and actress. She was born in
Pristina, Kosovo to Kosovar Albanian parents. Her family fled the
Kosovo war for the UK when she was 1.[37]
Laleh Pourkarim – Swedish-Iranian singer. Fled persecution in Iran in 1982 (her father was a prominent opponent of the regime after the
Iranian Revolution), eventually found refuge in Sweden.[38]
Arnold Schoenberg – US citizen, Jewish-Austrian composer and painter, associated with
Expressionism. Persecuted as a "
degenerate" artist, in 1933 he fled the Nazi occupation and resettled in the US.[40]
Chaim Witz (Gene Simmons) – Israeli-American rock bass guitarist, best known as co-lead singer of the rock band
Kiss. His mother was a Hungarian-Jewish
Holocaust survivor.[42]
Regina Spektor – American singer-songwriter and pianist. Came to the U.S. with her parents at the age of 9 from Soviet Russia.
György Stern (Sir
Georg Solti) – British citizen, Hungarian-Jewish conductor. Fled anti-semitic laws in Hungary to work in Germany, left Germany in 1938 after the Anschluss.[43]
Oscar Straus (composer) – Austrian-Jewish composer of operettas and film scores. He fled Austria in 1938 after the Anschluss, first for Paris, then Hollywood.[44]
Robert Stolz – Austrian composer/conductor. Prior to the Anschluss he aided the escape of Jewish and political refugees across the Austro-German border, before escaping to the US himself in 1940.[45]
Richard Tauber – Austrian-Jewish singer, composer. He began his career in Germany, but in 1933 he was assaulted by
NaziBrownshirts, and left Germany for Austria. Nazis revoked his passport and right of abode while he was on tour in London in 1938, forcing him to apply for British citizenship.[46]
Madeleine Albright – Former U.S. Secretary of State. She and her family fled Czechoslovakia in 1948 and came to the US as refugees.[50]
Hannah Arendt – Jewish-American author and political theorist. Born in Germany, in 1933 she fled persecution by the Nazis for Czechoslovakia and then Geneva, eventually becoming a naturalized citizen of the US in 1950.[51][52]
Adrienne Clarkson – Canadian journalist and 26th Governor General of Canada. Her parents fled Hong Kong with her in 1941 and found refuge in Canada.[53]
Alexander Gerschenkron – Russian-born American economist. Fled Russia during Russian civil war and settled in Austria, fleeing again to the United States after the rise of fascism. He is best known for his book of essay, Economic Backwardness in Historical Perspective, which became one of the foundational texts of development economics.
Albert O. Hirschman – German development economist and political economist. He was an active resistance fighter during the Second War World and Spanish Civil War, helping to rescue many of Europe's leading artists and intellectuals. He is best known for his work on unbalanced development and his book in political science:
Exit, Voice and Loyalty.
Michaëlle Jean – Canadian journalist and 27th Governor General of Canada. Her father fled Haiti's
Duvalier regime in 1967, she and the rest of their family arrived in Canada in 1968.[54]
Henry Kissinger – American diplomat and political scientist who fled Germany with his family in 1938.[55]
Karl Marx – German philosopher, writer and journalist best known for "inventing" the political concept of
Communism. He spent much of his adult life in exile as a result of his political views, but became truly stateless in 1848 when he gave up his Prussian citizenship, and was expelled from France. He remained stateless till the end of his life.[56]
Thandika Mkandawire – Malawian-Swedish economist, best known for his work on 'transformative social policy'. He was targeted by the regime of Dr. Hastings Kamuzu Banda and found asylum in Sweden.[57]
Maryam Monsef – Canadian politician. In 2015 she became Minister For Democratic Institutions. She and her family fled the
Afghan Civil War in 1996, resettling in Canada.[58]
Ilhan Omar – Somali-American politician. Born in Somalia, her family fled the civil war there, and spent four years in a refugee camp. They immigrated to the United States. She was elected to the U.S. House of Representative in 2018.
Karl Polanyi – Hungarian economic historian and political economist and a refugee from fascist persecution in the Vienna of 1934. He is known for his book The Great Transformation, which argued that the emergence of market-based societies in modern Europe was not inevitable but historically contingent.[59]
Edward Snowden – American computer security specialist, leaked information about U.S. National Security data collection, fled U.S. and received asylum in Russia.
Tȟatȟáŋka Íyotake (Sitting Bull) –
Hunkpapa Lakota holy man who led his people as a tribal chief during years of resistance to United States government policies. Took refuge with his followers in Canada in 1877 for four years, where they petitioned the Canadian government for land and food. The Canadian government refused their request, and ultimately Sitting Bull and his people were forced to return to the United States.[60]
Michael Balint – British citizen, Jewish-Hungarian psychoanalyst, best known as a proponent of
Object relations theory. Fled persecution by Nazis for the UK in 1939.[62]
Sigmund Freud – Jewish-Austrian neurologist, best known as the founder of
psychoanalysis. Fled persecution by the Nazis in Austria in June 1938, took refuge in the UK.[63]
Anna Freud – daughter of Sigmund, also a psychoanalyst. Fled persecution by the Nazis in Austria in June 1938, took refuge in the UK.[63]
Ernest Gellner – British citizen, Czech-Jewish philosopher and social anthropologist. Came to England in 1939 after the German occupation of Prague.[64]
Stephan Korner – British citizen, Czech-Jewish philosopher. Came to England in 1939 after German occupation of Czechoslovakia.[65]
Claude Lévi-Strauss – French-Jewish anthropologist and ethnologist. Stripped of his citizenship in 1940 under the
Vichy anti-semitic laws for his Jewish ancestry, Levi-Strauss took refuge in the United States until 1948, when he returned to France.[66]
Karl Popper – Austrian-Jewish philosopher; fled from rise of Nazism in Austria to New Zealand in 1937.[67]
Dr. Ruth Westheimer (Dr. Ruth) – Jewish German-American sex therapist, talk show host, author, professor, and former
Haganah sniper who fled Nazi Germany for Switzerland as a 10-year-old in January 1939, as part of the
Kindertransport. Both her parents were killed at
Auschwitz.[68][69]
Religion
Jesus and the Holy Family, according to Matthew's gospel account of their flight to Egypt due to Herod's threat
Pope Gregory the Great was driven from Rome in 550 as a child with his family, along with most of the remaining population of the city by King Totila, during the
Gothic war[70]
Theodore of Tarsus fled his home for Constantinople during either the Persian or Arab invasions of the Eastern Byzantine Empire in the 7th century[70]
Adrian of Canterbury fled from North Africa to Italy during the Muslim invasions of North Africa in the 640s[70]
Maximus the Confessor fled from the vicinity of Constantinople for Crete and later to Carthage around the time of the Persian siege of Constantinople during the
Persian-Byzantine war[70]
Isaac Abravanel – rabbi and politician – fled from Portugal to Spain
Constantin Carathéodory- Greek mathematician who spent most of his professional career in Germany. Taught in Turkey until the
1922 Great Fire of Smyrna, when he fled with books he had saved from the university's library to Athens.[75]
Albert Einstein – Nobel Prize-winning physicist (1921) for his
theory of relativity; German-Jewish refugee who escaped Nazi Germany by taking a post at Princeton in 1938.[76]
Enrico Fermi – Nobel Prize-winning physicist (1938) for his work on nuclear reactions; member of the
Manhattan Project; moved with his family to America in 1938 to escape Italy's anti-semitic laws.[77]
Bernard Katz – Nobel Prize-winning biophysicist – German-Jewish refugee
Walter Kohn – theoretical physicist who won the Nobel Prize (1998) in Chemistry for Density-Functional Theory; left Austria for England via
Kindertransport
Sir
Hans Krebs – Nobel Prize-winning scientist – German-Jewish refugee
Sir
John Krebs – zoologist – son of Sir Hans Krebs
Lord (Claus) Moser – British professor of statistics and head of the Government Statistical Service – Austrian-Jewish refugee
Charles Proteus Steinmetz – mathematics and electrical engineering – German-Polish refugee. he identified and explained, through a mathematical equation that later became known as the Law of Hysterisis, or Steinmetz's Law, phenomena governing power losses, leading to breakthroughs in both alternating- and direct-current electrical systems.[79]
Dame Stephanie Shirley – British information technology pioneer and philanthropist, best known for founding
Xansa. Arrived in the UK in 1938 as an unaccompanied child refugee from Germany as part of the
Kindertransport.[26]
Sport
Alexander Alekhine – chess world champion, who moved from communist Russia to France
Ossip Bernstein – chess grandmaster, who escape from Communistic Ukraine to France
Efim Bogoljubow – chess grandmaster, who moved from the Soviet Union to Germany
Fedor Bohatirchuk – chess grandmaster, who moved from Ukraine to Canada
Reinaldo Arenas – Cuban novelist. Became a refugee in the US after years of persecution for his sexuality and political ideas. His autobiography,
Before Night Falls, was on the New York Times list of the ten best books of the year 1993 and was made into a film in 2000
Bertolt Brecht – German playwright, refugee from the Nazis during World War II
Anne Frank – German-Jewish teen who fled with her family to the Netherlands during WWII. Her book The Diary of a Young Girl is one of the most widely known and poignant accounts of the refugee experience.[82][83]
Karen Gershon – as a child she fled from Nazi Germany to Great Britain
Felix Salten – author of Bambi – Hungarian-born Jewish refugee from Nazis
Joe Schlesinger – Austrian-born Canadian television journalist and author was a Jewish refugee. In 1938, he was sent to England from Czechoslovakia to escape the Nazis as part of the
Kindertransport that rescued 669 Jewish children. His parents, who couldn't escape with him, were later killed in the Holocaust.
Shyam Selvadurai – Canadian novelist, refugee from Sri Lanka as a teenager
Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn – Russian writer, winner of 1970 Nobel Prize in Literature. Deported from the USSR in 1974 as a result of his criticism of the Soviet system,[85] returned to Russia from the United States in 1994 after the dissolution of the Soviet System.[86]