Fry, Varian, 1907-1967

Varian Fry, an American journalist, was sent to France in 1940 as an emissary of the Emergency Rescue Committee, a private American relief organization formed in 1940 in New York to aid refugees in Vichy, France who stood in danger of Nazi persecution; Fry expedited the emigration of many prominent intellectuals. He made the acquaintance of Alma Mahler and Franz Werfel in Marseilles in August 1940 and helped them make their way safely across the border into Spain and then to Portugal, from whence they emigrated to the U.S.

Fry, a 32 year old Harvard-educated classicist and editor from New York City, helped save thousands of endangered refugees who were caught in the Vichy French area during World War II. His efforts saved prominent persons: Max Ernst; Marc Chagall; Hannah Arendt; Andre Breton; Marcel Duchamp; Franz Werfel; Jacques Lipchitz; Lion Feuchtwanger; Heinrich Mann; Hans Sahl; Wilfredo Lam; Walter Mehring; Otto Meyerhoff; and Alma Mahler. In total, Fry and his collaborators helped to save around 4,000 people. In 1991, 24 years after his death (1967) in obscurity, Fry received his first official recognition from a United States agency, the United States Holocaust Memorial Council. In 1996, Varian Mackey Fry was named as "Righteous Among the Nations" by Yad Vashem, the Holocaust Heros and Martyrs Remembrance Authority in Jerusalem. He was the first American recipient of Israel's highest honor for rescuers during the Holocaust. After the war, Fry wrote a memoir of his days in marseilles, "Assignment Rescue". The FBI kept a file on him throughout his life, viewing his activities with some suspicion.

Varian Fry (1907-1967) was a Harvard-educated journalist who travelled to Marseilles in 1940 on behalf of the Emergency Rescue Committee in order to aid in the escape of endangered citizens, predominantly artists, writers, and intellectuals, from occupied France.

Fry assisted over 2000 people in fleeing the Third Reich and earned the nickname "the American Schindler." Among those whose exits he facilitated were Hannah Arendt, Jean Arp, Marc Chagall, Max Ernst, André Breton, Max Ophuls, and Marcel Duchamp. In the last years of his life, Fry assigned himself to the task of family genealogist, and began collecting family papers and researching his family's origins both in the United States and abroad.

Born in New York City in 1907, Varian Fry was a Harvard-educated journalist who traveled to Marseilles in 1940 on behalf of the Emergency Rescue Committee in order to aid in the escape of endangered citizens, predominantly artists, writers, and intellectuals, from occupied France. In the thirteen months before his ouster by the Vichy government, Fry assisted over 2000 people in fleeing the Third Reich and earned the nickname "the American Schindler." Among those whose exits he facilitated were Hannah Arendt, Jean Arp, Marc Chagall, Max Ernst, Andr Breton, Max Ophuls, and Marcel Duchamp.

After the war, Fry returned to his writing career, and later, turned again to humanitarian efforts. He served on the board of the American Civil Liberties Union and the International League for the Rights of Man.

In the last years of his life, Fry assigned himself to the task of family genealogist, and began collecting family papers and researching his family's origins both in the United States and abroad. Fry died in 1967 at the age of 59.