Bernard Deiderich

A lifetime achievement award was presented recently at a Wellington Press Club function organised by Peter Isaac at the Martinborough Hotel. The recipient was Bernard Diederich, a journalist and author well known and respected overseas but not so well known here in his homeland.  

With the encouragement of his Haitian family, Bernard eventually wrote ‘The Ghosts of Makara’ about his happy, carefree childhood in the wilds of Makara, amongst a large extended family. 

After leaving New Zealand in 1942 as a youngster in the merchant navy and travelling the world, he fell in love with Haiti and a Haitian and they married and had three children.

Because of his subsequent deep knowledge of Central America, he became a valuable correspondent for Time Magazine and is the author of at least four books regarding the politics of the region and leaders such as Papa Doc and Fidel Castro (a personal friend).

Author, Graham Greene, became a close friend and after he died, Bernard decided to write of their time together travelling along the Haitian border in his recently published book ‘Seeds of Fiction’.

 As a result of their trip, Greene wrote ‘The Comedians’ an expose of the atrocities of the Papa Doc regime, which was also made into a film. Apart from some affairs that became public, Grahame Greene was an intensely private man and Bernard was keen to dispel some of the myths surrounding one of the greatest writers of our time.
Bernard originally owned a newspaper in Haiti and served time in jail there for highlighting corruption, and the influence of the USA government. Later he and his family were forced to flee across the border to the Dominican Republic. He now lives a quiet retired life with his wife in Miami  ‘where the living is easier’.
Bernard has continued to make regular trips to New Zealand to visit his family, some of who settled in the Martinborough area after his parents moved there.