The Unsung Hero Of

that he was, almost certainly, gay. “Most stairs was the Hotel Splendide. It was from arrest leaked out, the Vichy regime would of his biographies have denied he was a room there that Fry set up the Centre be gravely embarrassed. He threatened to THE UNSUNG HERO OF gay, but the more I read his archives, the Américain de Secours (the American call The New York Times if Chagall wasn’t more I wanted to include this part of his Rescue Centre). Officially this was a released in half an hour. The police met the character, which I felt had been sunk by charity that helped refugees with food deadline. In 1945, Fry wrote, ‘’Marc Chagall other writers.” and financial support. But word spread is well satisfied with American trees and Fry is also the subject of an upcoming that it was offering help that was far more American cows and finds Connecticut just film, And Crown Thy Good, directed by significant: securing visas. Fry was soon as good to paint in as Southern France.’’ MARSEILLE Pierre Sauvage, filmmaker and founder of overwhelmed with refugees. Although he had support from other the Varian Fry Institute at the Chambon His first aim was to issue American Americans in Marseille, including the Foundation, an organization dedicated visas for those who needed to flee the American vice consul Hiram Bingham to exploring the American experience country. But once visas were secured IV, the hotel soon became unsuitable as a of the Holocaust. In a paper he gave in there was a more dangerous hurdle: each base. “There were crowds in the reception 2000, Sauvage describes how Fry became a refugee needed an exit authorisation from and the management was not happy with journalist and on an assignment in Berlin the French authorities. Even applying for ‘hosting’ the CAS within its walls,” says in 1935, he witnessed an incident in a café such a document could put lives in danger, Guiraud. Eventually, the CAS set up its HQ on Kurfürstendamm that changed his life. so Fry’s team produced fake papers. In at 18 Boulevard Garibaldi. A group of artists “Two Hitler Youth boys approached a man order to keep the real nature of his work and writers (including André Breton and who was drinking a beer and who they hidden, he ran his operation from his hotel other surrealists) also had a base at the thought was Jewish. As the man put out bathroom, where running water could Villa Air-Bel, a chateau outside Marseille. his hand to lift his mug, one of the thugs drown out conversations he suspected the In December 1940, Fry was arrested wielded a dagger and nailed the man’s authorities might be tapping, says Guiraud. with some artists and activists. They were hand to the table,” writes Sauvage. Fry also worked with the Spanish held on a prison boat in the port, but were For Fry, hanging around with anti-Nazi and Portuguese authorities to get transit released a few days later. But when his intellectuals in New York was not enough. visas so the refugees could cross Spain passport expired, the US State Department, He needed to act, especially after France and leave Lisbon by boat for the USA or who were keen to keep the French onside, surrendered to Germany in June 1940. Mexico. But Fry was not able to create exit refused to issue another for him unless Hitler divided the country into an occupied authorisations for everyone. Some had to he returned to the USA. He was finally zone in the north and an unoccupied zone trek on foot through the Pyrenees to safety arrested by the French police in August in the south, where a puppet government in Spain on the other side. 1941, was given one hour operated out of the region’s capital in Vichy. The ERC’s list included to pack his things, and was Jews, artists and writers who opposed the Jewish and non-Jewish “What is accompanied to the Spanish National Socialists fled south, as well as refugees from the Third urgently border. refugees, getting as far as Marseille. There Reich and opponents of the needed now is After his forced return to they lined up in their hundreds at the US Vichy regime, among them the States, Fry was put under Consulate to beg for documents that would famed artists Marc Chagall, a new Scarlet FBI surveillance. “When I let them leave. But US policy was to stall. André Breton and Marcel Pimpernel” was researching his archives Fry was alarmed by the news. In June Duchamp, Nobel laureate at Columbia University I 1940, at an event at New York’s Hotel physiologist Otto Meyerhof, writers found letters to Fry from many of the artists As the net tightened around arian Fry never saw the A retired historian, Guiraud is an Commodore, he and other activists set up Hannah Arendt and Heinrich Mann, and he had saved who had written to him after Mediterranean tree expert in Marseille’s World War II history. the Emergency Rescue Committee (ERC), the anthropologist Claude Lévi-Strauss. the war,” says Orringer. She adds that Fry Jews and opponents of the planted in recognition In 1999 he created the Varian Fry France a body that aimed to secure visas for those When Fry first encountered Chagall in has been criticised for placing the lives Nazi regime in Vichy France, of his bravery at Israel’s Association after being contacted by Walter in danger in France. The ERC compiled a the Provençal town of Gordes, the artist of artists above those of other refugees. Holocaust memorial Meyerhof, an American professor, whose list of around 200 people considered most refused to leave France because he couldn’t “It was a moral conundrum: which a daring rescue mission swung centre, Yad Vashem, in family was saved by Fry. “Walter felt he had at risk. Thanks to the work of the Jewish get an exit visa for his daughter, Ida. Fry refugees should be saved? These issues into operation in Marseille led 1996. Fry was the first American citizen to a duty to make the name of Fry known. Labor Committee, the Department of State didn’t press him. Then the anti-Jewish have resonance in the States right now Vbe honoured by the centre as a Righteous He had created the Varian Fry Foundation delivered several hundred emergency laws were adopted in France. Fry tried following President Trump’s clampdown by an American journalist, Among the Nations (non-Jews who Project in the US and asked me if I’d be visitors’ visas for German refugees in again: the story goes that Chagall asked on immigrants.” Varian Fry. Now Fry’s story is risked their lives to save Jews from Nazi interested in creating a sister organisation France. More were secured by Eleanor him if there were cows in America and he According to Fry’s estimate, assistance being told in an upcoming novel extermination). He died aged 59 in 1967 in Marseille,” says Guiraud, who had Roosevelt, wife of the US president. said yes. Soon afterwards, Chagall went was provided to about 4,000 people; 1,000 – just after starting a job as a Latin already been working with schools to But the ERC felt that someone was to Marseille with his family to begin their of them were smuggled from France in and film. Elisabeth Blanchet teacher in a private school. It was make Fry’s story known. needed on the ground. “What is urgently journey to the States. Almost immediately various ways. Shortly before his death, reports on the legacy of this an unremarkable ending for a Fry was born in 1908 in New needed now is a new Scarlet Pimpernel he was taken from his hotel after the police the French government awarded Fry the little-known activist man who was responsible for York to a wealthy Protestant who will go to France and risk his life…I began rounding up Jews. Fry called a police Chevalier of the Legion d’Honneur. saving thousands of Jews and family. He attended prep have volunteered to go myself,” Fry wrote to official and warned that if news of the He later described his departure other refugees from wartime schools and majored in classics Mrs Roosevelt. from Marseille: “It was grey and rainy France, and who is lauded as a at Harvard. He read Greek and as I boarded the train. I looked out of ‘Héro de la Résistance Française’ Latin poetry in his spare time. FRY IN MARSEILLE the windows and innumerable images (hero of the French Resistance) in “But he always had a rebellious Fry arrived in Marseille on 14 August 1940. crowded my mind. I thought of the faces an inscription on a blue plaque in a streak,” says Julie Orringer, an He was 32. Along with the list of names – of the thousand refugees I had sent out of small Marseille square. American writer whose latest novel, The and a dress suit – he carried $3,000 taped France, and the faces of a thousand more I “When he returned from Marseille Flight Portfolio, is based on Fry’s life. “He to his leg. His first sight of the city was had had to leave behind…” n to America, Fry was seen as a non- was kicked out of boarding schools because the view from the top of the Gare Saint- conformist,” says Jean-Michel Guiraud, he opposed their initiation rituals; at Charles’ glorious stairs.At the bottom of the The Flight Portfolio by Julie Orringer will be president of the Varian Fry France Harvard he had a reputation for partying, published by Knopf in spring 2019.

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