Sonja Krenzisky

Biography

Sonja Krenzisky, also known as Sonja Sonnenfeld, was a Swedish performer who appeared in several German films before she became more well known later as a human rights advocate. She was born September 22nd, 1912 in Malmo, at the age of two she moved to Berlin with her father, an architect of Russian Jewish ancestry looking for work, and her mother, of Brazilian ethnicity.In the 1920s young Sonja became friendly with visiting musical artist Josephine Baker and later did some of her own cabaret performances.In the few films she was in, she could be cast in a mulatto role because of her dark skin color. Sonja returned to Sweden in 1938, after she was denied more film parts because of her father's Jewishness, When she married the Protestant Wolfgang Sonnenfeld there in 1940, much of her family boycotted the wedding. In 1962 she started a Sunday salon in Stockholm where celebrities gathered and in 1979 she became secretary of the Swedish Raoul Wallenberg Committee, to demand the truth from the USSR about the disappearance of the famous Swedish diplomat in Hungary who was whisked away when the Russians occupied that country at the close of the Second World War. She wrote two books, published in 2001 and 2005, and died on July 22nd ,2010 .