From Simple English Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Exile
means being sent away from the
country
or area where you live. People are usually exiled for
political
reasons or sometimes because they have committed a
crime
. They may have said bad things about the rulers in that country or tried to get into power themselves. People are not exiled in
democratic
countries, but many famous people in
history
have been sent into exile.
Exile may mean that someone is sent out of the country, but sometimes they are sent to another part of the country (this is called "internal exile"). Sometimes people have made their own decision to leave their country as a
protest
against the way it was being ruled. This is called "self-imposed exile".
In the
Old Testament
the
Jews
were exiled to
Babylon
. In
Ancient Greece
and Ancient
Rome
people were often sent into exile. For several centuries
Russia
(in the
20th century
the
Soviet Union
) sent many people into exile, often to labour camps in
Siberia
. Thousands of people from
Europe
including many famous people went to the
United States
when the
Nazis
came to power in
Germany
in the
1930s
.
One famous person who was sent into exile was
Napoleon Bonaparte
who was exiled from
France
, first to
Elba
and then to
Saint Helena
after his defeat against the allied forces.
The
cellist
Pablo Casals
went into self-imposed exile as a protest against the government of
Francisco Franco
. He said he would not come back until
Spain
was a democracy. But he never could, because he died two years before Franco.