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In 1940, when Elena was twenty, she and her family were declared civilian internees by the Italian Fascists. Banished from their home in Genoa, they left behind their work in helping Jews to escape Europe. This well-connected Dutch family of Jewish heritage, who counted Albert Einstein’s family amongst their intimates, lost their privileged existence: Elena’s reign as an equestrian champion was over and her father was stripped of his beloved shipping business. They found refuge in Florence. Always conscious of the gifts bestowed by Fate and the skills of a wily father, and despite their own hardships, they continued to reach out to hard-pressed civilians suffering under the lash of Fascism and Nazism. The hallmarks of this family were humour, tolerance and adaptability and when the Allied forces arrived in Florence the Van Praags found themselves catapulted into new associations and useful roles. This sociable family attracted men from the British, American and South African forces and thus Elena met and fell in love with her South African captain. Elena’s story gives an understanding of, and human face to, the Allied forces’ Italian Campaign from civilian and military perspectives. Her tender and enduring love affair with her husband led her to a new country after the war. They settled on the south coast of KwaZulu Natal and made an invaluable contribution to the development of their new community, as so many ex-servicemen, whose steel had been tempered in the fire of the Second World War, were given the opportunity to do. Her biography is a celebration of the triumph of the human spirit over the horrors of dictatorship and war. It is a reminder of the good of which man is capable, but also the evil he so often chooses instead.
