Madeleine K. Albright, a child of Czech refugees, who fled from Nazi invaders and Communist oppressors, and then flourished as a diplomat in the United States, died March 23 in Washington, CD. She was 84.

Enveloped by a veil of family secrets hidden from her for most of her life, Ms. Albright rose to power and fame as a brilliant analyst of world affairs and a White House counselor on national security. Under President Bill Clinton, she became the country’s representative to the United Nations (1993-97) and Secretary of State (1997-2001), making her the highest-ranking woman in the history of American government at the time.

It was not until she became Secretary of State that she accepted proof that, as she had long suspected, her ethnic/religious background was not what she had thought. She learned that her family was Jewish and that her parents had protectively converted to Roman Catholicism curing WWII, raising their children as Catholics without telling them of their Jewish heritage. She also discovered that 26 family members, including three grandparents, had been murdered in the Holocaust.