Stefanie Zweig (F / Germany, 1932-2014), Holocaust survivor
Stefanie Zweig (F / Germany, 1932-2014), Holocaust survivor
- <Refugees> <Kenya>
- <Memoirs> "Nirgendwo in Afrika" (Nowhere in Africa) (1995), adapted into an Oscar-winning film in 2001.
Biography
Zweig was born in Leobschütz, Germany (now Głubczyce, Poland) on Sept 19, 1932. Her parents and she, being Jewish, fled to Africa in 1938 to escape persecution in Nazi Germany. Zweig attended an English boarding school while in Kenya, which was a British colony at the time. In 1947 they moved back to Germany.
Memoirs
Nowhere in Africa is the extraordinary tale of a Jewish family who flees the Nazi regime in 1938 for a remote farm in Kenya. Abandoning their once-comfortable existence in Germany, Walter Redlich, his wife Jettel, and their five-year-old daughter, Regina, each deal with the harsh realities of their new life in different ways. Attorney Walter is resigned to working the farm as a caretaker; pampered Jettel resists adjustment at every turn; while the shy yet curious Regina immediately embraces the country—learning the local language and customs, and finding a friend in Owuor, the farm's cook. As the war rages on the other side of the world, the family’s relationships with their strange environment become increasingly complicated as Jettel grows more self-assured and Walter more haunted by the life they left behind. In 1946, with the war over, Regina's fondest dream comes true when her brother Max is born. Walter's decision, however, to return to his homeland to help rebuild a new Germany puts his family into turmoil again.