“Good guys don’t always win, especially when they are divided and less determined than their adversaries. The desire for liberty may be ingrained in every human breast, but so is the potential for complacency, confusion and cowardice. And losing has a price.” ~ Madeleine Albright
Former Secretary of State Madeleine Albright died on Wednesday 23 March 2022, aged 84. Albright fled the Nazis in Czechoslovakia, and eventually became the first female Secretary of State in the US. Known for letting her broaches do the talking, Albright passed away after a fight against cancer.
Albright was US ambassador to the United Nations from 1993 to 1997 and US President Bill Clinton’s secretary of state from 1997 to 2001.
While at the United Nations, she pressed for a tougher line against the Serbs in Bosnia after Bosnian Serb military forces laid siege to the capital Sarajevo.
Born Marie Jana Korbelova in Prague on 15 May 1937, her family fled in 1939 to London when Germany occupied Czechoslovakia. She attended school in Switzerland at age 10 and adopted the name Madeleine.
She was raised a Roman Catholic but after she became secretary of state, the Washington Post dug up documentation showing that her family was Jewish and relatives, including three grandparents, died in the Holocaust. Her parents likely converted to Catholicism from Judaism to avoid persecution as Nazism gained strength in Europe, the paper reported.
After the war, the family left London and returned to Czechoslovakia, then in the throes of a communist takeover.
Her father, a diplomat and academic who opposed communism, moved the family to the US, where he taught international studies at the University of Denver. One of his favourite students was Condoleezza Rice, who would become the second female secretary of state in 2005 under Republican President George W Bush.
