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Varian Fry - the American Schindler

Varian Fry was known as the American Schindler. He helped save thousand of endangered refugees in Vichy France to escape from Nazi terror during WWII. Despite having no training in underground work and no knowledge of forgers, black marketers or secret passages, Fry committed himself to a mission that saved trade unionists, British soldiers, prominent scientists, including Nobel Prize winning chemist Otto Meyerhoff, and some of the most famous cultural figures of our age. They include Max Ernst, Marc Chagall, André Masson, Hannah Arendt, André Breton, Marcel Duchamp, Franz Werfel, Jacques Lipchitz and Wanda Landowska.

In August 1940 Varian Fry, a 32 year old Harvard educated classicist and editor from New York City, volunteered to go to France for the Emergency Rescue Committee which had been set up after the fall of France to rescue intellectuals and others hunted by the Nazis in Vichy France. He had $3,000 and a list of 200 prominent European artists and intellectuals in France who were considered to be in the greatest danger of Nazi persecution. He intended to stay one month, disbursing money, messages and advice to the people on his list but he quickly realized that he had seriously underestimated his task. Working in Marseilles, he stayed 13 months. Using mainly illegal means and always facing possible arrest, by the time he left France he had set up secret escape routes, changed money on the black market, conspired with gangsters, forged documents and chartered ships that sailed illegally. On account of his activities, he was pursued by the Vichy authorities and was arrested and detained. Soon thereafter, American consular representatives refused to renew his passport and in September 1941 he was expelled from France and forced to return to the USA. His article in the New Republic of December 21, 1942 entitled “The Massacre of the Jews” predicted the storm ahead.

Shortly before his death, France awarded him their Legion of Honor in 1967. In 1991, 50 years after those events and 24 years after his death, Fry finally received official recognition from the United States Holocaust Memorial Council. In 1996 he was named “Richeous Among the Nations” by Yad Vashem, the Holocaust Heroes and Martyrs Remembrance Authority in Jerusalem – the first American recipient of Israel’s highest honor for rescuers during the Holocaust, an honor also received by Raul Wallenberg and Oskar Schindler. In 1998 the State of Israel awarded him Commemorative Citizenship.

Varian Fry was raised in Ridgewood, NJ. Varian Fry was 14 years old when he joined West Side Presbyterian Church June 25, 1922 as its member number 674.

© 2001 Christopher C. Stout

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