June 20 marked the 65th World Refugee Day, described by the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees as “a special day when the world takes time to recognize the resilience of forcibly displaced people throughout the world.”

The official definition of the term “refugee,” quoted from the 1951 Refugee Convention, states:

“A refugee is someone who owing to a well-founded fear of being persecuted for reasons of race, religion, nationality, membership of a particular social group or political opinion, is outside the country of his nationality and is unable to, or owing to such fear, is unwilling to avail himself of the protection of that country.”

While many associate this definition to the countless faces pictured in the midst of crisis, like the current situation in Syria, the term refugee can be applied to prominent figures that have made a significant change in our international history. Below are just five examples of famous refugees that have made a difference.

1. Albert Einstein
Profession: Scientist
Country of Origin: Germany
Country of Asylum: United States of America
Backstory: As a German Jew, Einstein was accused of treason and his books were thrown into Hitler’s bonfires. Finding it increasingly difficult to work in Nazi Germany, Einstein took a job at Princeton University in 1932 and gained United States citizenship. Despite having left Germany, Einstein and his wife continued to support the German Jews from abroad, making visa applications for refugees and later selling his 1905 research paper on special relativity, earning $6 million towards the war effort.
Quote: “I am privileged by fate to live here in Princeton,” Einstein wrote in a letter to the Belgian Queen. “In this small university town the chaotic voices of human strife barely penetrate. I am almost ashamed to be living in such peace while all the rest struggle and suffer.”

2. Frédéric Chopin
Profession: Composer
Country of Origin: Poland
Country of Asylum: France
Backstory: Chopin left his home country to advertise Poland’s fight, against the Russians, through music abroad. After leaving Warsaw for Vienna, the fighting broke out and Chopin was notified that he was longer welcome back in Poland.
Quote: “Oh, how hard it must be to die anywhere but in one’s birthplace.”

3. Madeline Albright
Profession: First Female U.S. Secretary of State
Country of Origin: Czech Republic
Country of Asylum: United States of America
Backstory: Albright is unique in the fact that her family was forced to leave her home country on two separate occasions. The family fled to England when Nazis invaded Czechoslovakia during World War II and later fled Prague during the Communist takeover of 1948.
Quote: “My father had been in the Czechoslovakian Diplomatic Service. I was a refugee during World War II in England as a little girl and lived through the Blitz. I then went back and had a fairly glorious life as a daughter of an ambassador. And then all of a sudden we were again refugees and came to the (U.S.) with nothing.”

4. Sigmund Freud
Profession: Neurologist
Country of Origin: Austria
Country of Asylum: England
Backstory: Upon the Nazi army’s attack on Austria, Freud fled to London and became a refugee at age 84, after living in Austria for 79 years.
Quote: “Civilized society is perpetually menaced with disintegration through this primary hostility of men towards one another.”

5. Henry Kissinger
Profession: 56th U.S. Secretary of State
Country of Origin: Germany
Country of Asylum: U.S.
Backstory: Kissinger did not publicly share much information about his experience as a refugee. However, it is known that Kissinger fled with this family to the U.S., escaping the Nazi regime in his homeland of Germany. Dr. Kissinger became a U.S. citizen in 1938 at age 15.
Quote: “When you see the mass exodus of people in war situations, or in genocidal situations, that magnifies my personal experience. But I think my personal experience creates an understanding and, I like to think, a sense of obligation to being sympathetic and supportive. So for all of these reasons I think helping refugees is something this country must do.”

– Blythe Riggan

Sources: United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees, History, Huffington Post, BrainyQuote, United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees, United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees, Nobel Prize, International Rescue Committee
Photo: Colombo Telegraph