All she wrote: our obituaries editor reflects on 2021

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Hello and welcome to the Intelligence from the Economist. I'm your host Jason Palmer. Most weekdays we provide a fresh perspective on the events shaping your world. Today though, we'll be looking back at some notable lives, the inspired and inspiring figures who died this year.

It's very difficult to characterize the year over last year.

Ann Roe is the Economist's obituaries editor.

This year hasn't really had any pattern or theme to it. Every so often, as usually happens, a great figure dies and then much of the time you find you're looking round for people who are not as well known. Perhaps the most significant figure to die this year, at least from a British perspective, was Prince Philip, Duke of Edinburgh, the husband of of the Queen, the man she called her strength and stay. He was a man of few words and even fewer interviews, but his influence was widely felt, not least on his own family.

My father, I suppose the last 70 years has given the most remarkable devoted service to the Queen, to my family and to the country of, but also to the whole of the Commonwealth.

One particularly interesting pairing of the year. Among the great leaders who disappeared was Kenneth Kaunda and FW De Klerk. Kenneth Kaunda was the founding president of Zambia, who built up his country from a rather struggling and discontented colonial power to pretty successful and fairly united state and who became the father of Africa. In some ways he became a great force for peace on the continent. On the other side, if you like, at least for most of his life, was FW De Klerk, who was the leader of South Africa and was the last apartheid president of that country. He had been brought up as a strict Afrikaner and he had to see apartheid gradually disintegrate under its own wickedness. And interestingly, after his death, he released a video statement in which for the first time he acknowledged that apartheid was wrong. He had never quite brought himself to do that before. I, without qualification, apologize for the pain and the hurt and the indignity and the damage that apartheid has done to black, brown and Indians. By a great irony, 2021 also saw the death of one of the great pillars of the anti apartheid movement, Desmond Tutu, the archbishop of Cape Town and the chairman of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission, which did so much to improve relations between the races in South Africa. He said that when he heard of people being oppressed, God's word burned in his breast and he had to speak out, whether against the makers of apartheid or against his own black government, the anc, when they were dithering over whether to grant a visa to the Dalai Lama. I am warning you like I warned the nationalists. I am warning you one day we will start praying for the defeat of the ANC government. Two of the titans who passed away, if you like, were Colin Powell and Donald Rumsfeld.

As we know there are known knowns, there are things we know we know. We also know there are known unknowns. That is to say, we know there are some things we do not know. But there are also unknown unknowns. The ones we don't know, we don't know.

Rumsfeld was Secretary of Defense both in the Soviet era and later on in the era of 9 11. Colin Powell was always an army person first. He became National Security Advisor and and was a counselor to presidents, both Republican and Democratic. He ran for president, too, but never quite made it and will be forever remembered, certainly in the rest of the world, for persuading the United nations to allow the invasion of Iraq.

Indeed, the facts and Iraq's behavior show that Saddam Hussein and his regime are concealing their efforts to produce more weapons of mass destruction.

Not all figures, however, are titans because they're muscular secretaries of defense or whatever it may be. We also lost, right at the end of the year, Stephen Sondheim, a tremendous figure who revolutionized American musical theater. Perhaps his best known expression of this, and certainly his only big hit, was Sending the Clowns from A Little Night Music. Isn't it rich?

Are we a pair?

Me, here at last on the ground, I often find it the little lives, if you like, the ones we think of as little lives that are most interesting any part of the world that is not relentlessly the west and is not relentlessly white and male. I tend to try to go over it and hope that I can keep these lovely subjects going from week to week because they're bound to get shoved aside by people who are thought of as more important. But to me, there's no life that's more important than another, in fact, and no life that's more, more interesting than another. And when I find people like this, it's as if a bell goes off in my head. And I think that is a really good story.

One of those less well known lives that Ann wrote about this year was that of a war surgeon. He didn't operate on soldiers. Rather the victims of wars. From Rwanda to Yemen to Afghanistan, he spent his life in operating theaters in desperate places.

People often wondered why Gino Strada had chosen such a strange and dangerous life. He was a heart and lung surgeon, and he could have had a very wealthy leisurely life in Italy if he had wanted one. But instead, he spent his medical career out in some of the most desperate parts of the world, doing operations in makeshift tents and broken down places. And you might often see him between patients dashing outside to have a cigarette. He looked as if he had to keep chain smoking just to keep going in these awful conditions, because the wounds he was dealing with were those caused by bomb blasts and landmines which had torn bodies apart from. The worst thing, as far as he was concerned, was that the people he was operating on were not combatants. They were not soldiers. Instead, they were women who'd been going to get water or farmers who'd been crossing their fields. They were almost all of them, 90%, he reckoned, civilians. About half of those were children. He decided he would form his own charity. He'd been working for the Red Cross, but the Red Cross was gradually withdrawing from the most difficult places. So in 1994, around his kitchen table in Milan, he and his wife, Teresa sati, and about 20 friends set up a charity called Emergency. And they decided that they would set up a network of the most marvelous hospitals that they could afford to build. He set up a pediatric center in the Central African Republic. He set up another one in Uganda, and then he built a cardiac hospital in Sudan. He made particularly sure that it would be a splendid building, and he was intent that it should be not only the highest tech and staffed with the best possible doctors and nurses, but also that it should be, in his words, scandalously beautiful. So he was continuing this theme of offering the poor facilities just as good as those enjoyed by the rich. The heart of his work, however, lay in Afghanistan. And he had to negotiate with a Tajik commander in the Panshir Valley in order to get a site to build his hospital. And it became the very best maternity facility in the whole of Afghanistan. He realized then that the real problem, the fundamental problem that he couldn't solve was war itself. And he became convinced that war had to be abolished somehow. Of course, this was thought a crazy idea, but by all the people who otherwise supported him. But he absolutely insisted that it ought to be possible to abolish war, that people should be able to talk to each other. And he could foresee a time when making war would be as unthinkable as slavery. His charity Emergency campaigned very hard in Italy and was eventually successful in stopping the production of anti personnel landmines in the country. Italy was at one stage the third largest producer of such devices. And meanwhile he carried on working. He worked all hours in operating theaters in war zones, wearing himself out. He felt very strongly that he was only a drop in the ocean, that he was only able to do a small, infinitesimal amount of what needed to be done for the poor in these awful places. But all the same, he insisted on continuing doing everything he could to establish the best sort of care for the poor and to end war.

By 2020, 120,000 boys and girls had passed through the Asra Hawariat School in Addis Ababa. It had been founded 60 years earlier by a man whose origins were as humble as the children it was set up to help.

The best and most famous school for the poor in Ethiopia was not founded by a rich. It was founded by Aspor Yemiru, who decided at the age of nine that he didn't want a life herding goats, but he would much rather go to Addis Ababa and see what opportunities the world offered there. So, barefoot and with only 50 cents in his pocket, he set off from his village in Bugla, in a very poor part of Ethiopia, to walk to Addis Ababa 75 miles. When he got there, he found it was not quite the place he had hoped. Instead of getting a job at once, he joined a whole swarm of children who were living and begging in the churchyard of St. George's Cathedral. @ the same time, he found a job as a bearer and a laborer. And one day he had an extremely lucky break, because as he was laboring away, a rich Turkish woman came past with a basket full of cheeses, and some of them fell out and he raced to pick them up. And she was looking for a helper in the house and was so impressed with him that she took him on. And in between all the chores she gave him, he found he had enough time to go to primary school. And he did so well there that he won a free scholarship to one of the best schools in the city, the General Wingate School. He started Classes set up a little open air class in a churchyard. And there the children would crowd around him. He had a board on which he chalked up the letters. And as a couple of years or so passed, he found he had nearly 300 children coming to his classes. The church began to complain, and it was clear he'd got to find a proper site and build the school. One day, the Emperor of Ethiopia, Haile Selassie, paid a visit to Wingate School. And there was a time honored tradition in Ethiopia that if you wanted something from the Emperor, you threw yourself in front of his carriage or in front of his car and asked for it sitting. So this is what, as for Yemiru, did. He dashed out in front of the limousine shouting, we want land. The Emperor questioned him and then agreed to give him some land. So eventually he got 300 acres right by the Wingate School and started to build. And gradually over the years, the school, which he called the Azra Harariat School, which means Footsteps of the Apostles, grew and grew. He managed to keep the school going, and it got tremendously good results. So he had much to be grateful for and he was very proud of his school. But there was also always one worry he had, which was that if the children did well and got office jobs, they would begin to forget where they'd come from. He didn't want to turn out students who were socially useless, as he put it. He wanted them to be sure to give something back. And in fact, the students in his school, when they reached the later years, were encouraged to go out and teach adult literacy classes or simply to teach their parents at home. There was one particular occasion when the rich and the poor came together quite notably and showed what an extraordinary school this was. And that was when the Emperor Haile Selassie came to the school to visit it. He always took quite an interest in it. And on these occasions, as for Yemiru would appear barefoot because he wanted never to forget where he'd come from. He wanted always to remember how he'd first started on that long barefoot walk from his village to Addis.

Ababa. As trains arrived full of human cargo bound for the Auschwitz concentration camp, an orchestra played on the.

Platform. It seems extraordinary that there should have been an orchestra at Auschwitz, but there were several. And Esteve Gerano was one of the players in the girls orchestra and one of the last survivors. She heard about the orchestra fairly soon after she was taken to Auschwitz. She was engaged then in hauling rocks and doing extremely heavy work. She was only 18 and she realized that this labor would soon kill her. And she had to find a different sort of post in the camp. When she heard about the orchestra, she immediately went to audition. And was told that she should play a song called Bel Ami on the accordion. She knew Bel Ami very well. It was a song from the 1930s. Had been made into a film. Everyone knew it. A very jaunty tune. What luck you have with the women. Bel Ami was about a dandy. So she was pleased that it was something she knew. But not so pleased that she had to play it on the accordion. Because she had never played one before. In the end, however, she just chanced on chord of C major. And managed to play well enough. That she got through the audition. And she was in the orchestra. They had to play as the prisoners went off to work in the morning. German marching songs. In the evenings. She was called on to do concerts with. For the staff and for the troops. And the most painful part of it was when they had to go down to the railway station. Where the cattle cars came in. Carrying Jews from all over Europe. And as these poor people staggered off the car. They would play to them. As if to reassure them. That they were coming to a place of comfort and culture. When, of course, they were coming to nothing of the sort. And half of them would be going immediately to the gas chamber. And she said that sometimes the people coming out of the cars. Would smile and wave. And even applaud the orchestra. And then she would cry as she played. She and six other girls managed to escape. And eventually they encountered some Americans and were rescued. She remembered vividly that night, her first night of real freedom. Was when they made a great bonfire. And put on the bonfire a portrait of Hitler. And then they all danced around it while she played the accordion. She went down through France rather slowly. And eventually got on a boat for Palestine, as it then was. And decided that she would become one of the builders of the new state of Israel. And she was excited about going there. And things were going fairly well. But she was always worried by the treatment of the Arabs. And the people who had been displaced. She became more and more angry about this. And remained so all her life. And found out in the end that Israel really wasn't a comfortable place for her to stay. So she had to leave. She decided to go back to Germany. Although it held the most terrible memories. Of the deportations and murders of her family. The way she'd been kicked out of school. The way her sister had been beaten up on Kristallnacht in 1930. 8 All those memories apart, she thought she would try and make a life there again, because surely Nazism was dead. But she found after living there only a short time, that it wasn't dead at all. That it was underground perhaps, but like bad seeds, it was still there. And she decided at the same time that she would find fight racism and antisemitism with music. She was determined to go on and on singing, not letting anyone forget what had happened to her and what had happened to her people. She didn't, however, play the accordion anymore. She decided that that was not her instrument. She'd played it at Auschwitz and that was enough. Every so often when she sang Bellamy, which she still continued to sing, somebody would come and play the accordion for her. She seemed to find the song rather more difficult to sing, as if it just brought back too many memories of those terrible.

Years. Anne also reflected on the life of a woman who revolutionized a particular aspect of New York's food.

Scene. Among the many things that have long mystified Europeans about America, perhaps the biggest is the notable absence of decent cheese. Despite the vastness and variety of this land, it seemed that you could only get around 6 from coast to coast. Blue cheese, which came in a plastic bottle. Monterey Jack, which was a sort of pale imitation of cheddar, and then kind of presiding over all of them. Dayglo orange processed cheese food which was melted over burgers and.

Nachos. Kraft American singles. These pasteurized processed cheese food slices can make your basic tuna salad sandwich pretty.

Special. And that was a pretty poor showing for such a huge land. Anne Saxelby was perfectly used to that. She liked cheese. She didn't know anything about it, but she certainly had an epiphany when, as a very young woman, she went to Florence. And then she discovered when she was wandering through markets, nibbling on pecorino and dining blissfully on pasta and gorgonzola, that really there was another way of doing cheese. She wondered why on earth she couldn't get these things at her local grocery store. In 2006, she opened her little stall and it really was little. It was about the size of a shoebox with just a walk in fridge and a counter. And she opened the gate that first morning and thought, is anyone going to come? Does anyone know anything about cheese? She realized she had a very uphill job of educating to.

Do. You're listening to Cutting the Curd, hosted by Anne.

Saxelby. Eventually, she became so celebrated in Manhattan that she had her own radio show on Heritage Radio called Cutting the.

Curd. Hello and welcome to another episode of Cutting the Curd on the Heritage Radio Network. I'm your host, Anne Saxelby, and today my guest is Patrick Martins, founder of the Heritage Radio Network and also my husband. Thank you for being on the.

Show. So we're about in 2017, when Essex Market on the Lower east side seemed to be under threat and her little stall was really no longer big enough, she moved to a new one in Chelsea Market, where she could supply the growing number of people who wanted to taste her.

Wares. This is probably my favorite Bloomy that we have. It reminds me of like a French Brie, where it has that mushroomy quality to.

It. By 2020, there were hundreds of restaurants taking deliveries from her, and There were about 50 farms, all in the Northeast, mostly in Vermont, who were supplying her. So she had really revolutionized the cheese scene in New York, and she was beginning to change it in the country as a whole. She was keen on going into the future and aging and becoming more complex, rather as a cheese would do. But she had always had an underlying heart condition, an enlarged heart, which meant that she died extremely young, when her revolution was really only just beginning. And certainly could have spread a lot further. In the United States, it's produced.

On a lone farm in Zasavica, a nature reserve west of Belgrade. And they're apparently making and marketing this cheese for €1,000 per kilo, which would work out to about $600 per pound. And according to this article, Ann.

Rowe on Anne Saxelby, who died this year aged 40. We also heard about the lives of Geno Strada, Asva Yamiru and Esther Beggarano. That's all for this episode of the Intelligence. The show's editors this week are Ken Gitelson and Chris Impey, and our sound engineer is Will Rowe. With help this week from Soul Rivers. Our senior producers are Sam Colbert and Jack Gill. Our producers are William Warren, Rory Galloway and Alize Jean Baptiste. And assistant producer Abisoye Ocean Dairo, with extra production help this week from Emily Elias and John Jo Devlin. We'll all see you back here in the new.