Varian Fry
Encyclopedia
Vichy France
Vichy France, Vichy Regime, or Vichy Government, are common terms used to describe the government of France that collaborated with the Axis powers from July 1940 to August 1944. This government succeeded the Third Republic and preceded the Provisional Government of the French Republic...
that helped approximately 2,000 to 4,000 anti-Nazi and Jewish refugees to escape Nazi Germany
Nazi Germany
Nazi Germany , also known as the Third Reich , but officially called German Reich from 1933 to 1943 and Greater German Reich from 26 June 1943 onward, is the name commonly used to refer to the state of Germany from 1933 to 1945, when it was a totalitarian dictatorship ruled by...
and the Holocaust.
Early life
Varian Fry was educated at Hotchkiss and Taft School and Harvard UniversityHarvard University
Harvard University is a private Ivy League university located in Cambridge, Massachusetts, United States, established in 1636 by the Massachusetts legislature. Harvard is the oldest institution of higher learning in the United States and the first corporation chartered in the country...
. He founded Hound & Horn
Hound & Horn
Hound & Horn, originally subtitled "a Harvard Miscellany", was a literary quarterly founded by Harvard undergrads Lincoln Kirstein and Varian Fry in 1927...
, an influential literary quarterly, in 1927 with Lincoln Kirstein
Lincoln Kirstein
Lincoln Edward Kirstein was an American writer, impresario, art connoisseur, and cultural figure in New York City...
while a Harvard undergraduate. He married Kirstein's sister, Eileen.
While working as a foreign correspondent
Foreign correspondent
Foreign Correspondent may refer to:*Foreign correspondent *Foreign Correspondent , an Alfred Hitchcock film*Foreign Correspondent , an Australian current affairs programme...
for the American journal The Living Age, Fry visited Berlin
Berlin
Berlin is the capital city of Germany and is one of the 16 states of Germany. With a population of 3.45 million people, Berlin is Germany's largest city. It is the second most populous city proper and the seventh most populous urban area in the European Union...
in 1935 and personally witnessed Nazi
Nazi Germany
Nazi Germany , also known as the Third Reich , but officially called German Reich from 1933 to 1943 and Greater German Reich from 26 June 1943 onward, is the name commonly used to refer to the state of Germany from 1933 to 1945, when it was a totalitarian dictatorship ruled by...
abuse against Jews on more than one occasion and wanted to help.
Greatly disturbed by what he saw, he helped raise money to support Europe
Europe
Europe is, by convention, one of the world's seven continents. Comprising the westernmost peninsula of Eurasia, Europe is generally 'divided' from Asia to its east by the watershed divides of the Ural and Caucasus Mountains, the Ural River, the Caspian and Black Seas, and the waterways connecting...
an anti-Nazi movements. Following the occupation of France in August 1940, he went to Marseille
Marseille
Marseille , known in antiquity as Massalia , is the second largest city in France, after Paris, with a population of 852,395 within its administrative limits on a land area of . The urban area of Marseille extends beyond the city limits with a population of over 1,420,000 on an area of...
as an agent of the newly formed Emergency Rescue Committee in an effort to help persons wishing to flee the Nazis. Fry had $3,000 and a short list of refugees under imminent threat of arrest by agents of the Gestapo
Gestapo
The Gestapo was the official secret police of Nazi Germany. Beginning on 20 April 1934, it was under the administration of the SS leader Heinrich Himmler in his position as Chief of German Police...
. Clamoring at his door came anti-Nazi writers, avant-garde
Avant-garde
Avant-garde means "advance guard" or "vanguard". The adjective form is used in English to refer to people or works that are experimental or innovative, particularly with respect to art, culture, and politics....
artists, musicians and hundreds of others desperately seeking any chance to escape France.
Some later confessed they thought it a miracle that a White American Protestant would risk everything to help them.
Emergency Rescue Committee
Beginning in 1940, in Marseille, despite the watchful eye of the collaborationist Vichy regime, he and a small group of volunteers hid people at the Villa Air-Bel until they could be smuggled out. More than 2,200 people were taken across the border to Spain and then to the safety of neutral PortugalPortugal
Portugal , officially the Portuguese Republic is a country situated in southwestern Europe on the Iberian Peninsula. Portugal is the westernmost country of Europe, and is bordered by the Atlantic Ocean to the West and South and by Spain to the North and East. The Atlantic archipelagos of the...
from which they made their way to the United States
United States
The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...
.
Others he helped escape on ships leaving Marseille for the French colony of Martinique
Martinique
Martinique is an island in the eastern Caribbean Sea, with a land area of . Like Guadeloupe, it is an overseas region of France, consisting of a single overseas department. To the northwest lies Dominica, to the south St Lucia, and to the southeast Barbados...
, from which they too could go to the United States. Among Fry's closest associates were Americans Miriam Davenport
Miriam Davenport
Miriam Davenport was an American painter and sculptor who played an important role helping European Jews and intellectuals escape the Holocaust during World War II...
, a former art student at the Sorbonne
University of Paris
The University of Paris was a university located in Paris, France and one of the earliest to be established in Europe. It was founded in the mid 12th century, and officially recognized as a university probably between 1160 and 1250...
, and the heiress Mary Jayne Gold
Mary Jayne Gold
Mary Jayne Gold was an American heiress who played an important role helping European Jews and intellectuals escape Nazi Germany in 1940-1941, during World War II....
, a lover of the arts and the "good life" who had come to Paris
Paris
Paris is the capital and largest city in France, situated on the river Seine, in northern France, at the heart of the Île-de-France region...
in the early 1930s.
When the Nazis seized France in 1940, Gold went to Marseille, where she worked with Fry and helped finance his operation. Also working with Fry was a young academic named Albert O. Hirschman
Albert O. Hirschman
Albert Otto Hirschman is an influential economist who has authored several books on political economy and political ideology. His first major contribution was in the area of development economics. Here he emphasized the need for unbalanced growth...
, who eventually went on to a distinguished career in America.
Especially instrumental in getting Fry the visa
Visa (document)
A visa is a document showing that a person is authorized to enter the territory for which it was issued, subject to permission of an immigration official at the time of actual entry. The authorization may be a document, but more commonly it is a stamp endorsed in the applicant's passport...
s he needed for the artists, intellectuals and political dissidents on his list was Hiram Bingham IV
Hiram Bingham IV
Hiram "Harry" Bingham IV was an American diplomat. He served as a Vice-Consul in Marseille, France, during World War II, and helped over 2,500 Jews to flee from France as Nazi forces advanced.-Early life:...
, an American Vice Consul
Vice Consul
A vice consul is a subordinate officer, authorized to exercise consular functions in some particular part of a district controlled by a consulate....
in Marseille who fought against State Department
United States Department of State
The United States Department of State , is the United States federal executive department responsible for international relations of the United States, equivalent to the foreign ministries of other countries...
anti-Semitism
Anti-Semitism
Antisemitism is suspicion of, hatred toward, or discrimination against Jews for reasons connected to their Jewish heritage. According to a 2005 U.S...
and was personally responsible for issuing thousands of visas, both legal and illegal.
From his isolated position in Marseille, Varian Fry relied on the Unitarian Service Committee in Lisbon to help the refugees he sent. This office, staffed by American Unitarians under the direction of Robert Dexter
Robert Dexter
Robert Dexter was the founder of the Unitarian Service Committee, which during World War II was the most significant program of any American church in the rescue and assistance of Jewish refugees and the victims of Nazism in Europe.-Early life:...
, helped refugees to wait in safety for visas and other necessary papers, and to gain ship passage from Lisbon.
Among those Fry aided were:
- Hannah ArendtHannah ArendtHannah Arendt was a German American political theorist. She has often been described as a philosopher, although she refused that label on the grounds that philosophy is concerned with "man in the singular." She described herself instead as a political theorist because her work centers on the fact...
- Jean ArpJean ArpJean Arp / Hans Arp was a German-French, or Alsatian, sculptor, painter, poet and abstract artist in other media such as torn and pasted paper....
- Hans Aufricht
- Hans BellmerHans BellmerHans Bellmer was a German artist, best known for the life-sized pubescent female dolls he produced in the mid-1930s. Historians of art and photography also consider him a Surrealist photographer.-Biography:...
- Georg Bernhard
- Victor BraunerVictor BraunerVictor Brauner was a Romanian Jewish painter of surrealistic images.-Early life:He was born in Piatra Neamţ, the son of a timber manufacturer who subsequently settled in Vienna with his family for a few years. It is there that young Victor attended elementary school...
- André BretonAndré BretonAndré Breton was a French writer and poet. He is known best as the founder of Surrealism. His writings include the first Surrealist Manifesto of 1924, in which he defined surrealism as "pure psychic automatism"....
- Camille Bryen
- De Castro
- Marc ChagallMarc ChagallMarc Chagall Art critic Robert Hughes referred to Chagall as "the quintessential Jewish artist of the twentieth century."According to art historian Michael J...
- Frédéric Delanglade
- Óscar DomínguezÓscar DomínguezOscar M. Domínguez was a Spanish surrealist painter.Born in San Cristóbal de La Laguna on the island of Tenerife, Domínguez spent his youth with his grandmother in Tacoronte and devoted himself to painting at a young age after suffering a serious illness which affected his growth and caused a...
- Marcel DuchampMarcel DuchampMarcel Duchamp was a French artist whose work is most often associated with the Dadaist and Surrealist movements. Considered by some to be one of the most important artists of the 20th century, Duchamp's output influenced the development of post-World War I Western art...
- Heinrich Ehrmann
- Max ErnstMax ErnstMax Ernst was a German painter, sculptor, graphic artist, and poet. A prolific artist, Ernst was one of the primary pioneers of the Dada movement and Surrealism.-Early life:...
- Edvard Fendler
- Lion FeuchtwangerLion FeuchtwangerLion Feuchtwanger was a German-Jewish novelist and playwright. A prominent figure in the literary world of Weimar Germany, he influenced contemporaries including playwright Bertolt Brecht....
- Leonard Frank
- Giuseppe Garetto
- Oscar Goldberg
- Emil S. Gumbel
- Hans HabeHans HabeJanos Békessy, better known under his pen name Hans Habe was an Austrian writer and newspaper publisher...
- Jacques-Salomon Hadamard
- Konrad HeidenKonrad HeidenKonrad Heiden was an influential journalist and historian of the Weimar Republic and Nazi eras, most noted for the first influential biographies of German dictator Adolf Hitler. Often, he wrote under the pseudonym "Klaus Bredow."Heiden was born in Munich, Germany, on 7 August 1901, and graduated...
- Jacques Hérold
- Wilhelm HerzogWilhelm HerzogWilhelm Herzog was a German historian of literature and culture, dramatist, encyclopedist, and pacifist.- Life :...
- Erich Itor-Kahn
- Berthold Jacob
- Heinz JollesHenry JollesHenry Jolles , born Heinz-Frederic Jolles, was a German pianist and composer. Uprooted from his native Germany by the rise of Nazism, he spent his last quarter-century in Brazil.-Life:...
- Siegfried KracauerSiegfried KracauerSiegfried Kracauer was a German-Jewish writer, journalist, sociologist, cultural critic, and film theorist...
- Wifredo LamWifredo LamWifredo Óscar de la Concepción Lam y Castilla , better known as Wifredo Lam, was a Cuban artist who sought to portray and revive the enduring Afro-Cuban spirit and culture...
- Jacqueline LambaJacqueline LambaJacqueline Lamba Breton was a French painter perhaps best known as the second wife of André Breton and "the subject of many of his poems". With Breton she had a daughter, Aube Elléouët Breton. She and Breton separated in 1943...
- Wanda LandowskaWanda LandowskaWanda Landowska was a Polish harpsichordist whose performances, teaching, recordings and writings played a large role in reviving the popularity of the harpsichord in the early 20th century...
- Lotte Leonard
- Jacques LipchitzJacques LipchitzJacques Lipchitz was a Cubist sculptor.Jacques Lipchitz was born Chaim Jacob Lipchitz, son of a building contractor in Druskininkai, Lithuania, then within the Russian Empire...
- Alberto MagnelliAlberto MagnelliAlberto Magnelli was an Italian modern painter who was a significant figure in the post war Concrete art movement.- Biography :...
- Alma Mahler Gropius WerfelAlma MahlerAlma Maria Mahler Gropius Werfel was a Viennese-born socialite well known in her youth for her beauty and vivacity. She became the wife, successively, of composer Gustav Mahler, architect Walter Gropius, and novelist Franz Werfel, as well as the consort of several other prominent men...
- Jean MalaquaisJean MalaquaisJean Malaquais was a French novelist.He was born as Wladimir Malacki in Warsaw in 1908 of a non-religious Polish family of Jewish descent...
- Golo MannGolo MannGolo Mann , born Angelus Gottfried Thomas Mann, was a popular German historian, essayist and writer. He was the third child of the novelist Thomas Mann and his wife Katia Mann.-Life:...
- Heinrich MannHeinrich MannLuiz Heinrich Mann was a German novelist who wrote works with strong social themes. His attacks on the authoritarian and increasingly militaristic nature of pre-World War II German society led to his exile in 1933.-Life and work:Born in Lübeck as the oldest child of Thomas Johann Heinrich Mann...
- Valeriu MarcuValeriu MarcuValeriu Marcu was a Romanian poet, writer and historian. He wrote the first biography of Lenin.Marcu, who was Jewish, migrated from Germany to Austria, and then to France, where he and his wife Eva settled in Nice in 1933. In 1940 Varian Fry helped the family get papers to leave France.-Works:*...
- André MassonAndré MassonAndré-Aimé-René Masson was a French artist.-Biography:Masson was born in Balagny-sur-Thérain, Oise, but was brought up in Belgium. He began his study of art at the age of eleven in Brussels, at the Académie Royale des Beaux-Arts under the guidance of Constant Montald, and later he studied in Paris...
- Roberto MattaRoberto MattaRoberto Sebastián Antonio Matta Echaurren , better known as Roberto Matta, was one of Chile's best-known painters and a seminal figure in 20th century abstract expressionist and surrealist art....
- Walter MehringWalter MehringWalter Mehring was a German author and one of the most prominent satirical authors in the Weimar Republic. He was banned during the Third Reich, and fled the country.-Biographical:...
- Alfredo Mendizabel
- Otto Meyerhof
- Boris Mirkine-Guetzevitch
- Hans NamuthHans NamuthHans Namuth was a German-born photographer. Namuth specialized in portraiture, photographing many artists, including abstract expressionist Jackson Pollock. His photos of Pollock at work in his studio increased Pollock's fame and recognition and led to a greater understanding of his work and...
- Hans Natonek
- Ernst-Erich Noth
- Max OphülsMax OphülsMaximillian Oppenheimer — known as Max Ophüls — was an influential German-born film director who worked in Germany , France , the United States , and France again...
- Hertha PauliHertha PauliHertha Pauli was an Austrian journalist, author and actress.- Biography :Hertha Ernestine Pauli was born in Vienna, the daughter of the feminist Bertha Schütz and the medical scientist Wolfgang Pauli...
- Benjamin PéretBenjamin PéretBenjamin Péret was a French poet, Parisian Dadaist and a founder and central member of the French Surrealist movement with his avid use of Surrealist automatism.-Biography:...
- Alfred PolgarAlfred PolgarAlfred Polgar was an Austrian-born journalist, one of the renowned wits of the Vienna coffeehouses. He left Austria in 1938, and later worked in Hollywood.He was known as a drama critic, in Berlin 1925 to 1933, and an essayist...
- Poliakoff-Litovzeff
- Peter Pringsheim
- Denise RestoutDenise RestoutDenise Restout - keyboard teacher; expert on German and French Baroque performance practice for the keyboard; and protégé, assistant, editor, biographer and domestic partner of noted harpsichordist Wanda Landowska....
- Hans SahlHans SahlHans Sahl was a poet, critic, and novelist who began during the Weimar Republic. He came from an affluent Jewish background, but like many such German Jews he fled Germany due to the Nazis. First to Czechoslovakia in 1933, then to Switzerland, and then France...
- Jacques Schiffrin
- Anna SeghersAnna SeghersAnna Seghers was a German writer famous for depicting the moral experience of the Second World War.- Life :...
- Victor SergeVictor SergeVictor Serge , born Victor Lvovich Kibalchich , was a Russian revolutionary and writer. Originally an anarchist, he joined the Bolsheviks five months after arriving in Petrograd in January 1919 and later worked for the Comintern as a journalist, editor and translator...
- Ferdinand Springer
- Bruno Strauss
- Sophie Taeuber
- Franz WerfelFranz WerfelFranz Werfel was an Austrian-Bohemian novelist, playwright, and poet.- Biography :Born in Prague , Werfel was the first of three children of a wealthy manufacturer of gloves and leather goods. His mother, Albine Kussi, was the daughter of a mill owner...
- Kurt WolffKurt WolffKurt Wolff was a German publisher, editor, writer and journalist.Wolff was born in Bonn, Rhenish Prussia. Together with Ernst Rowohlt he began to work in publishing in Leipzig in 1908. He was the first to promote and publish the authors Franz Kafka and Franz Werfel...
and Helen Wolff - WolsWolsWols was the pseudonym of Alfred Otto Wolfgang Schulze , a German painter and photographer predominantly active in France....
- YllaYllaYlla was the pseudonym of Camilla Koffler , a Hungarian photographer who specialized in animal photography. At the time of her death she "was generally considered the most proficient animal photographer in the world."...
In 1942, the Emergency Rescue Committee and the American branch of the European-based International Relief Association joined forces under the name the International Relief and Rescue Committee, which was later shortened to the International Rescue Committee
International Rescue Committee
The International Rescue Committee is a leading nonsectarian, nongovernmental international relief and development organization based in the United States, with operations in over 40 countries...
(IRC). The IRC is a leading nonsectarian, nongovernmental international relief and development organization that still operates today.
Back home in the United States, Fry published his book in 1945 about his time in France under the title Surrender on Demand. In 1968, the US publisher Scholastic
Scholastic Press
Scholastic is a global book publishing company known for publishing educational materials for schools, teachers, and parents, and selling and distributing them by mail order and via book clubs and book fairs. It also has the exclusive United States' publishing rights to the Harry Potter book...
(which markets mainly to children and adolescents) published a paperback edition under the title Assignment: Rescue, and subsequent reprints have appeared under both of the above titles.
He wrote and spoke critically against U.S. immigration policies particularly relating to the issue of the fate of Jews in Europe. In a December 1942 issue of The New Republic
The New Republic
The magazine has also published two articles concerning income inequality, largely criticizing conservative economists for their attempts to deny the existence or negative effect increasing income inequality is having on the United States...
, he wrote a scathing article titled: "The Massacre of Jews in Europe".
Although by 1942 Fry had been terminated from his position at the Emergency Rescue Committee, American private rescuers acknowledged that his program in France had been uniquely effective, and recruited Fry in 1944 to provide behind-the-scenes guidance to the Roosevelt administration's late-breaking rescue program, the War Refugee Board
War Refugee Board
The War Refugee Board, established by President Franklin D. Roosevelt in January 1944, was a U.S. executive agency created to aid civilian victims of the Nazi and Axis powers...
.
Legacy
In 1967, the government of France recognized his contribution to freedom with the Legion of HonorLégion d'honneur
The Legion of Honour, or in full the National Order of the Legion of Honour is a French order established by Napoleon Bonaparte, First Consul of the Consulat which succeeded to the First Republic, on 19 May 1802...
. Mary Jayne Gold's 1980 book titled Crossroads Marseilles 1940 sparked an interest in Fry and his heroic efforts.
Known as the American Schindler
Oskar Schindler
Oskar Schindler was an ethnic German industrialist born in Moravia. He is credited with saving over 1,100 Jews during the Holocaust by employing them in his enamelware and ammunitions factories, which were located in what is now Poland and the Czech Republic respectively.He is the subject of the...
, in 1995 Varian Fry became the first United States citizen to be listed in the Righteous among the Nations
Righteous Among the Nations
Righteous among the Nations of the world's nations"), also translated as Righteous Gentiles is an honorific used by the State of Israel to describe non-Jews who risked their lives during the Holocaust to save Jews from extermination by the Nazis....
at Israel's national Holocaust Memorial, Yad Vashem
Yad Vashem
Yad Vashem is Israel's official memorial to the Jewish victims of the Holocaust, established in 1953 through the Yad Vashem Law passed by the Knesset, Israel's parliament....
(in 2006, fellow Americans Waitstill Sharp
Waitstill Sharp
Waitstill Hastings Sharp was a Harvard College graduate and Unitarian minister. He was the son of naturalist author and professor Dallas Lore Sharp and Grace Hastings and a descendant of Thomas Hastings who came from the East Anglia region of England to the Massachusetts Bay Colony in 1634...
and Martha Sharp
Martha Sharp
Martha Ingham Dickie Sharp-Cogan was an American philanthropist who, along with her husband Waitstill Sharp, helped hundreds of Jews to escape Nazi persecution by sending them off through Czechoslovakia-Social Work:...
were added to the list). He was awarded the additional honor of "Commemorative Citizenship of the State of Israel" on 1 January 1998.
On the initiative of Samuel V. Brock, the U.S. Consul General in Marseille from 1999 to 2002, the square in front of the Consulate was renamed Place Varian Fry. A street in the newly reconstructed East/West Berlin Wall area in the Berlin borough of Mitte at Potsdamer Platz was named Varian-Fry-Straße in recognition of his work. In 2005, a street in his home town of Ridgewood, New Jersey
Ridgewood, New Jersey
Ridgewood is a village in Bergen County, New Jersey, United States. As of the 2010 United States Census, the village population was 24,958. Ridgewood is an affluent suburban bedroom community of New York City, located approximately northwest of Midtown Manhattan.The Village of Ridgewood was...
was renamed Varian Fry Way.
In 1997, Irish film director David Kerr made a documentary entitled Varian Fry: The America's Schindler that was narrated by actor Sean Barrett
Sean Barrett
Sean Barrett may refer to:*Sean Barrett , British actor whose credits include Z-Cars*Sean Barrett , Irish transport economist and Senator...
. Fry's story was also told in dramatic form on film in 2001 when Barbra Streisand
Barbra Streisand
Barbra Joan Streisand is an American singer, actress, film producer and director. She has won two Academy Awards, eight Grammy Awards, four Emmy Awards, a Special Tony Award, an American Film Institute award, a Peabody Award, and is one of the few entertainers who have won an Oscar, Emmy, Grammy,...
co-produced the made-for-television motion picture, Varian's War, written and directed by Lionel Chetwynd
Lionel Chetwynd
Lionel Chetwynd is a London-born Canadian-American screenwriter, motion picture and television film director and producer.-Life and career:...
and starring William Hurt
William Hurt
William McGill Hurt is an American stage and film actor. He received his acting training at the Juilliard School, and began acting on stage in the 1970s. Hurt made his film debut as a troubled scientist in the science-fiction feature Altered States , for which he received a Golden Globe nomination...
and Julia Ormond
Julia Ormond
Julia Karin Ormond is an English actress who has appeared in film and television and on stage.-Early life and education:...
.
See also
- Charles Fernley FawcettCharles Fernley FawcettCharles Fernley Fawcett was a wrestler, resistance worker, soldier, airman, film star, film maker, and co-founder of the International Medical Corps...
- Chiune SugiharaChiune Sugiharawas a Japanese diplomat who served as Vice-Consul for the Japanese Empire in Lithuania. During World War II, he helped several thousand Jews leave the country by issuing transit visas to Jewish refugees so that they could travel to Japan. Most of the Jews who escaped were refugees from...
- List of Righteous among the Nations by country
External links
- http://www.ushmm.org/wlc/article.php?lang=en&ModuleId=10005740 Article about Fry at the US Holocaust Museum
- Varian Fry Institute
- A Tribute to Varian Fry from Holocaust Survivors and Remembrance Project
- online biography retrieved Feb. 15, 2008
- Award-winning biography for young readers. IN DEFIANCE OF HITLER: The Secret Mission of Varian Fry