Biography

Clare Hollingworth was born on October 10, 1911 in Knighton, Leicester, Leicestershire, England, UK. She was married to Geoffrey Hoare and Vandeleur Robinson. She died on January 10, 2017 in Hong Kong, China.

She is a former British journalist who in 1939 broke the news that Germany was planning to invade Poland. She traveled extensively, reporting on the Vietnam war and Algeria. She interviewed the shah of Iran, and reported from Beijing during the demise of Chairman Mao Zedong.

As a a glamorous 27-year-old political activist, she booked a Christmas trip to the luxury ski resort of Kitzbühel, Austria in December 1938 to do reconnaissance work. She returned to the UK with a Nazi-approved visa in her passport, which enabled her to volunteer for a dangerous humanitarian mission. The British Committee for Refugees from Czechoslovakia (BCRC) sent her to Katowice, Poland. She was put in charge of helping hundreds, and eventually thousands, of Jews, trade unionists, communists and other persecuted minorities. She led a one-woman operation to find them British visas, as well as food and housing. It is estimated that between March and July 1939, she helped to process visas for between 2,000 and 3,000 refugees to come to the UK.

She was found unresponsive in her flat in Central Hong Kong on 10 January 2017 and was confirmed dead shortly after at Ruttonjee Hospital. She was 105.