Varian Fry
Institute
(a
division of the Chambon Foundation)
dedicated
to exploring and communicating
the American experience of the Holocaust
While the world
turned away,
Varian Fry led the most determined and successful
private American
rescue operation of the Nazi era.
“In
all we saved some two thousand human beings.
We ought to have saved many times that number.
But we did what we could.”
Varian Fry
Viewed within the context of its times, Fry's mission
in Marseille, France, in 1940-41 seems not
"merely" an
attempt to save some threatened writers, artists, and political figures. It appears in hindsight like a doomed final quest to reverse the very
direction in which the world—and not merely the Nazis—was heading.
from Varian Fry in
Marseille, by Pierre Sauvage
Charles Fernley Fawcett
1915-2008
We will not see the likes of him again soon...
We wish we could have cheered the publication in
2006 of the book Villa Air-Bel,
dealing with the Varian Fry mission...
Rosemary Sullivan's book Villa
Bel-Air
and its improper use of Mary Jayne
Gold's Crossroads Marseilles 1940
In a challenging time, Varian
Fry, Miriam Davenport Ebel, Mary Jayne Gold, Charles Fawcett, Leon
Ball and Hiram Bingham IV, were Americans who joined with others in
the U.S. and in Marseille, France, to further brotherhood from sea to shining
sea...
We believe that at least seven non-Jews
who worked with Varian Fry in Marseille would be worthy of joining
Varian Fry as Righteous Among the Nations, a distinction granted by Israel's Yad Vashem
memorial:
-
Leon F.
Ball, USA
-
Daniel
Bénédite, France
-
Hiram
Bingham IV, USA
-
Miriam
Davenport Ebel, USA
-
Charles
Fawcett, USA
-
Jean Gemähling,
France
-
Mary
Jayne Gold, USA
In February 1941, in Marseille,
France, an American wrote to his wife back in New York:
Among the people who have come into my office, or
with whom I am in constant correspondence, are not only some of the greatest
living authors, painters, sculptors of Europe . . . but also former cabinet
ministers and even prime ministers of half a dozen countries. What a
strange place Europe is when men like this are reduced to waiting patiently
in the anteroom of a young American of no importance whatever.
Varian Fry, the young American, was 32 when he
arrived in Marseille early in the morning of Aug. 14, 1940—only two months
after France's traumatizing defeat by the Nazis,
and a full year and a half before Americans finally allowed themselves to
get dragged into the war.
In that summer of 1940, high-level Nazis were
talking among themselves about the need for a final solution to the Jewish
question, but there is no evidence that anybody was seriously thinking of
mass murder. Throughout the coming year, the German policy would
remain one of emigration and resettlement.
What was possible when Fry arrived in Europe would,
however, no longer be possible by the time Fry left Europe at the end of
October 1941. By then, it wouldn’t only be the doors of the U. S. and
other Western countries that were largely closed to refugees; the doors of
departure from Europe would be shut too, and the Final Solution would be
underway.
These are the circumstances in which a New
York intellectual led what we know to have been the most
determined and successful private American rescue operation during World War
II. At a time of tragic American apathy about the refugee crisis in
Europe, Varian Fry was assisted locally in his struggle by other singular
and similarly non-Jewish Americans: the late Miriam Davenport Ebel,
Mary Jayne Gold, Charles Fawcett,
and Leon Ball, as well as the late
righteous consul Hiram Bingham IV.
Banding together with Jewish and non-Jewish refugees
from the Third Reich, as well as early French opponents to Vichy, this tiny
group, with erratic assistance from colleagues in New York,
may have helped to save as many as 2,000
people: Marc Chagall, Max Ernst, Jacques Lipchitz, Heinrich Mann, Franz
Werfel, Alma Mahler Werfel, André Breton, Victor Serge, André Masson, Lion
Feuchtwanger, Konrad Heiden, Marcel Duchamp, Hannah Arendt,
Max Ophuls, Walter Mehring, Jean Malaquais, Valeriu Marcu, Remedios Varo,
Otto Meyerhof… The list—Fry’s list—goes on and on.
“There is a fire sale on brains going on here, and
we aren’t taking full advantage of it,” an American official in
Lisbon told Fry in August 1940, long before the Holocaust became
established as a metaphor.
Even if many of the names on Fry’s list have faded into relative obscurity,
the list as a whole represents much of the intelligentsia of Europe at that
time; the population shifts Fry helped produce would have major
ramifications for American culture.
Though Fry was not specifically concerned with
saving Jews—and indeed the German and Austrian anti-Nazi émigrés in France
then seemed the most vulnerable of all, whether Jewish or not—Fry became in
1998 the first American singled out to be honored as a Righteous Among the Nations by
Israel’s Yad Vashem, the Jerusalem memorial to the Holocaust.
Many basic facts about the man and his mission are
still unfamiliar even to scholars, while some of
what is “known” is in fact erroneous or misleading. Furthermore, there
have been no attempts as yet to place the rescue effort in its full historical
context.
Filling some of these gaps and drawing on extensive
research and over one hundred and fifty interviews conducted for the author’s upcoming
feature documentary,
And Crown Thy Good: Varian Fry in Marseille,
this account of the mission will lead naturally enough to some
fundamental questions about what we are to make of it, what still remains
unknown, and whether the story is more than a mere footnote, however
culturally significant, in the history of the Holocaust.
Continues
here...
NEW
Smithsonian
magazine, March 2009: Bingham's List
This article, beginning with its misleading title, does not serve
the memory of a good man
a letter to the editor was sent by Annette Riley Fry, Sylvia Fry-Severino,
and Pierre Sauvage [pending]
World War II
magazine, March 2008: Rescue Mission to Vichy:
American Varian Fry saved a generation of France's greatest artists from
the Nazis
The
swashbuckling Charles Fernley Fawcett
Varian Fry et le Centre américain de secours
par Pierre Sauvage (in
French)
On
Mary Jayne Gold, with excerpts from her published memoir
Crossroads
Marseille 1940,
which chronicles her participation in the rescue
effort
Oh
You Must Not Peek Under My Sunbonnet,
the first peek at Mary
Jayne Gold's delightful, still unpublished memoir of her early years
Americans Who Cared
and why we should care about them
Tribute to Miriam Davenport Ebel,
Varian
Fry's close aide who died September 13, 1999, at the age of 84
An Unsentimental Education,
Miriam Davenport Ebel's memoir of
1940
The
Indomitable Lisa Fittko
A
Hero Of Our Own: The Story of Varian Fry,
a biography (2001) by Sheila Isenberg
A Quiet American: The Secret War
of Varian Fry, a biography (1999) by Andy Marino
Interview with
Andy Marino
Villa Air-Bel (2006) by Rosemary Sullivan
and its improper use of Mary Jayne Gold's Crossroads Marseilles 1940
Question: what is copyrighted in a memoir?
Some
of the 2,000 people helped...
Officers of the
Emergency
Rescue Committee
Crossroads
Marseille—the movie
project
Varian's War,
2001 Showtime movie, which
purported to be about Varian Fry
The following need to be updated...
Chambon Foundation presentations
Other Varian Fry-Related Resources and Internet Links
Varian Fry Exhibit
Internet
Links on righteous Gentiles
America
and the Holocaust—a few recommendations
Varian Fry Photo Gallery
[pending]
On-line
video clips [pending]
The Varian Fry Institute is sponsored by the
Chambon Foundation
Pierre Sauvage, President (contact
information)
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Foundation Home]
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Copyright 2009. Chambon Foundation. All rights
reserved.
Revised:
June 03, 2009
