Varian Mackey Fry (October 15, 1907 – September 13, 1967) was an American journalist. Fry ran a rescue network in Vichy France from August 1940 to September 1941 that helped 2,000 anti-Nazi and Jewish refugees, mostly artists and intellectuals, escape from persecution by Nazi Germany during World War II.
Fry spent "thirteen months directing a bold, high-risk, and much celebrated refugee-smuggling operation in the south of France that included an all-star cast of Kulturträger [culture carriers], among them artists Marc Chagall and Max Ernst, and writer André Breton and philosopher Hannah Arendt." His activities, illegal under the laws of Vichy France, contrary to the policies of the United States government, and opposed by many of the other refugee relief organizations in France resulted in his expulsion and the severing of ties with him by his organization, the Emergency Rescue Committee.
He was the first of five Americans to be recognized as "Righteous Among the Nations", an honorific given by the State of Israel to non-Jews who saved the lives of many Jews and anti-Nazi refugees during World War II.
Early life
Fry was born in New York City. His parents were Lillian (Mackey) and Arthur Fry, a manager of the Wall Street firm Carlysle and Mellick. The family moved to Ridgewood, New Jersey, in 1910. He grew up in Ridgewood and enjoyed bird-watching and reading. During World War I, at 9 years of age, Fry and friends conducted a fund-raising bazaar for the American Red Cross that included a vaudeville show, an ice cream stand and fish pond. He was educated at Hotchkiss School from 1922 to 1924, when he left the school due to hazing rituals. He then attended the Riverdale Country School, graduating in 1926."Ridgewood Son: Varian Fry (1907-1967)." Ridgewood Library. Retrieved: March 25, 2016.
An able and multilingual student, Fry scored in the top 10% of the Harvard University entrance exams. In 1927, as a Harvard undergraduate, he co-founded Hound & Horn, an influential literary quarterly, in collaboration with Lincoln Kirstein. He was suspended for a prank just before graduation and had to repeat his senior year.Gewen, Barry. "For the American Schindler, writers and artists first." Literature of the Holocaust, August 6, 2004. Retrieved: March 25, 2016 Through Kirstein's sister, Mina, he met his future wife, Eileen Avery Hughes, an editor of Atlantic Monthly, who was seven years his senior and had been educated at Roedean School and Oxford University. Although Fry was a closeted homosexual, according to his son James, they married on 2 June 1931.
Journalist While working as a foreign correspondent for the American journal The Living Age, Fry visited Berlin in 1935, and witnessed Nazi abuse against Jews on more than one occasion, which "turned him into an ardent anti-Nazi". He said in 1945, "I could not remain idle as long as I had any chances at all of saving even a few of its intended victims."Paldiel 2011, p. PT83.
Following his visit to Berlin, in 1935 Fry wrote about the savage treatment of Jews by Hitler's regime in The New York Times. He wrote books about foreign affairs for Headline Books, owned by the Foreign Policy Association, including The Peace that Failed.Fry, Varian. The Peace that Failed: How Europe Sowed the Seeds of War. The Foreign Policy Association, 1939. It describes the troubled political climate following World War I, the break-up of Czechoslovakia and the events leading up to World War II."Varian Fry - Bibliography." United States Holocaust Memorial Museum. Retrieved: March 25, 2016.
Emergency Rescue Committee
In June 1940, during World War II, the army of Nazi Germany invaded and quickly defeated France. The northern and western half of France was occupied by Germany; the southeastern half, called Vichy France, remained nominally independent, but with the obligation to "surrender upon demand" all German citizens if requested by the German government. Tens of thousands of refugees from Nazi Germany, and many others from elsewhere, had fled to Vichy France, mostly ending up in Marseille or in one of the squalid refugee camps scattered around Vichy.
The United States was still neutral in the war and maintained a diplomatic and commercial presence in Vichy France. Marseille was a beehive of refugees and British soldiers stranded after the Dunkirk evacuation. Humanitarian and relief organizations in the city, including the American Friends Service Committee (Quakers), Unitarians, YMCA, Red Cross, and seven Jewish organizations, especially HICEM whose funding came mostly from American Jews, were present to aid refugees. The Pat O'Leary Line in the city mostly helped stranded soldiers escape to Spain.
On June 25, 1940, two hundred prominent people met at the Hotel Commodore in New York City and founded the Emergency Rescue Committee (ERC). They raised $3,500 in contributions and in mid-July began looking for a representative to serve in Marseille. When none of the candidates seemed viable or willing, Fry volunteered and was accepted, albeit with reservations.
Fry was given three tasks for what was projected to be a three-week visit to France: (1) report on conditions impacting refugees; (2), help people identified as in danger from the Nazis escape to Portugal or Morocco; and (3) identify people who would work with the ERC. The emphasis would be on rescuing the elite intellectuals and artists trapped in Vichy France. Fry remained in France for thirteen months.
Fry was an unlikely choice as ERC's representative. One of the founders of the ERC, Karl Frank, said, "Send him to France, and he's dead." That being said, Fry was probably not in great danger in France. At that time, "an American passport gave most Americans abroad a reasonably justified sense of invulnerability." A biographer, Andy Marino, called Fry a "neurasthenic intellectual and expert on the ancient Greeks." His advantages were that he was an American and thus from a neutral country, spoke some French and German, would be unknown to the German Gestapo, and might be seen by them as just-another "high-minded dumb Yank."
American First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt supported the ERC; her husband, President Franklin, less so. He had an election to win in 1940 and refugees were not his priority. Moreover, the temper of the country was hostile to the admission of more refugees. A 1938 Roper Poll indicated that only 8.7 percent of the American populace wanted the United States to increase the number of refugees permitted to enter the U.S. beyond the number in the immigration quota. Another poll, taken after the anti-Jewish Kristallnacht riots in Germany, found that only 21 percent of Americans wanted more Jewish immigrants to be admitted to the U.S. Department of State officials in charge of approving entry visas to refugees were often accused of being antisemitic and anti-refugee, but they reflected the views of the U.S. government and its people.
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 (IRC). The IRC has continued into the 21st century as a nonsectarian, nongovernmental international relief and development organization.
France
In August 1940, Fry arrived in Marseille representing the ERC in an effort to help persons seeking to flee the Nazis.Renaud, Terence. "The Genesis of the Emergency Rescue Committee." , terencerenaud.com, 2005. Retrieved: March 24, 2016.Renaud, Terence. "Karl B. Frank and the Politics of the Emergency Rescue Committee." terencerenaud.com, 2008. Retrieved: March 24, 2016. Fry had $3,000 taped to his leg and a list of 200 artists and intellectuals, mostly German Jews, under imminent threat of arrest by agents of the Gestapo. He worked to circumvent bureaucratic processes set up by French authorities, who would not issue exit visas. Other anti-Nazi writers, avant-garde artists, musicians, and hundreds of others came to him, desperately seeking any chance to escape France.Kassof, Anita. "A resource guide for teachers: Varian Fry and the Emergency Rescue Committee." , Holocaust Teacher Resource Center, 2015. Retrieved: March 25, 2016. Fry's organization in Marseille was called the Centre Americain de Secours (American Center for Relief).
Initially, Fry relied on the experienced Waitstill Sharp of the Unitarian Service Committee to help him. Sharp said he spent three days orienting Fry on the techniques of semi-clandestine life.Horn, Dara. "The Rescuer." Tablet Magazine, January 17, 2012. Retrieved: March 25, 2016. Fry's first major operation in September 1940 was in cooperation with Sharp. Four refugees in Marseille judged likely to be deported to Nazi Germany were novelists Lion Feuchtwanger and Heinrich Mann, Golo Mann, the son of novelist Thomas Mann, and writer Franz Werfel, plus their family members and a few others. Determined to take the refugees to Spain and from there to the United States, Fry and Sharp accompanied the group to the Spanish border, and Sharp continued on with them to Lisbon. An American named Leon "Dick" Ball guided them via smugglers' foot trails across the Pyrenees to an illegal entry into Spain. Sharp was less than complimentary about Alma Werfel who crossed the border in a white flowing dress that could be seen for miles. Her "legendary appeal" was lost on him. All the party of refugees made it to the United States.
Back in Marseille, despite the watchful eye of the collaborationist Vichy regime,Brown, Nancy. "No longer a haven: Varian Fry and the refugees of France." Yad Vashem: The Holocaust Martyrs' and Heroes' Remembrance Authority, October 13, 1999. Retrieved: March 25, 2016. Fry and a small group of volunteers hid people at the Villa Air-Bel until they could be smuggled out through neutral Spain and then to the relative safety of neutral Portugal where they took ships, mostly to the United States. Some of the exiles escaped on ships leaving Marseille for the French Caribbean colony of Martinique, from where they might also go to the United States.Subak 2010, p. 91.
Fry's most important associate was a young French Protestant named Daniel Bénédite who functioned as his Chef de Cabinet and often his eyes and ears. Bénédite was briefly imprisoned by the French for his activities with ERC, but released through the intervention of one of the American diplomats in Marseille. American Charles Fernley Fawcett was the security guard, responsible for policing the long line of refugees waiting to be interviewed at Fry's headquarters. Fawcett also secured the release of several interned women by claiming to be married to them. Among Fry's closest associates were Americans Miriam Davenport, a former art student at the Sorbonne, and Chicago heiress Mary Jayne Gold, a lover of the arts and the "good life" who had come to Paris in the early 1930s. Gold was wealthy and financed many of the operations of the ERC.Moulin 2007, p. 174.Riding, Alan. "Mary Jayne Gold, 88, heiress who helped artists flee Nazis." The New York Times. October 8, 1997. Retrieved: March 25, 2016.