Sonia Meyer

@soniameyer

About

I was not yet 2 years old, when my family fled the Nazis to live in the woods of Germany and Poland with partisans andGypsies. At age 6 my father taught her to throw hand grenades using a woodendarning egg. Most of the year was spent hiding in the woods, winters we survived in abandoned houses and barns,dodging the German and later Soviet armies who hunted us relentlessly.Shortly after the war we returned to Germany, where I connected with a band of Gypsies camped nearby, together we foraged for food and coal for heating.

After the war a wealthy part of my family pulled me out of Germany and I traveled both across Europe and the United States with them. I acquired fluent knowledge of 8 languages, which allowed me towork as a translator for embassies, large corporations and an Americanphilanthropic organization. There I discovered documents on the genocide ofJews, but was struck by the absence of similar documents on the genocide of the Gypsies.

I reconnected with Gypsy culture while traveling inFrance. A chance encounter with a Gypsy encampment, with horses grazing nearby,allowed me to break the ice by quietly whispering a few words in Romani to thehorses. They welcomed me as one of their own..

For the first 30 years of my life, I lived all over Europe,Israeland the United States.Living with Gypsies in Europe, meeting Bedouinsin the Negev desert, helping Jewish refugeesby day, mixing with the Jet Set in Switzerland by night, I livedthe traveler’s life, until I decided to settle down in the U.S. I now live in Florida and in Vermontwhere I research Gypsy culture and bred horses, until I devoted myself completely to writing novels..