Read the information below and discuss with your classmates how modern history may have been altered if some of these people had not been able to share their gifts with the world.

Exile often represents some of the most dramatic and traumatic experiences in the lives of these people. Such experiences colour the lives of these people, and sometimes, when given refuge and assistance, these people can add colour to the shape of history.

Refugees are people like us who find themselves in extraordinary situations, and from these situations often emerge extraordinary people. People like Victor Hugo, Bertolt Brecht, Fryderyk Chopin, Peter Carl Fabergé, Marc Chagall, Vladimir Nabokov, Thomas Mann, Joseph Conrad, Marlene Dietrich and Bob Marley were all refugees.

Albert Einstein
The author of the theory of general relativity, Einstein contributed more than any other scientist to the 20th-century vision of physical reality, changing fundamental ideas about space, time and gravitation. In 1933, Einstein, while an established German scientist, he was accused of treason by the Third Reich and his books were burned. He fled to the United States where he used his influence and financial resources to obtain visas for other refugees. In 1999 Albert Einstein was named "Person of the Century" by ‘Time’ magazine.

Sigmund Freud
Freud is best known for his theories of the unconscious mind through ‘free association’ and his pioneering work in the field of psychoanalysis. His reinterpretation of the nature of the human psyche revolutionized psychiatry and psychology. With Hitler’s invasion of Austria in 1938, Freud had to flee Vienna with his family. He protested such a move to his friends, saying, “It would be like deserting, like a soldier quitting his post”. Ultimately the invasion forced his hand, and he left his home of 79 years for London. He died later that same year, an 84 year old man.

Karl Marx
“The philosophers have only interpreted the world, in various ways; the point, however, is to change it”
Revolutionist, Communist, sociologist, journalist, political thinker, philosopher. No one term properly encapsulates the life and life’s work of Karl Marx. His works and political theories have planted the seed of revolutionary thought in many minds, with his ideas still laying the foundation for countless volumes of modern philosophical thought. Born in Germany in 1818, Marx spent most of his life in political exile. At first, banished from Paris in 1845 (deemed a dangerous revolutionary), then Brussels, Paris again, and finally settling in London, where he would later die.

Anne Frank
Now a symbol of child suffering during the Holocaust, Anne Frank’s story is a reminder of the true cost of war and how it affects civilians’ lives. Fleeing Germany in 1934, Anne Frank found refuge in the Netherlands until 1942, after which she went into hiding with eight other people in an attic in Amsterdam . Anne immortalised her experiences of the two years spent there in her famous diary, recording the day-to-day hardships and her coming to terms with the reality of the situation. She and her family were discovered in 1944 and she died of typhus in Auschwitz the following year.