Varian Fry Guide, Meaning , Facts, Information and Description
Varian Mackey Fry (October 15, 1907–September 13, 1967) was a New York-born American journalist who ran a rescue network in WWII-era France that helped approximately 2,000 anti-Nazi and Jewish refugees to escape the Nazis.While working as a foreign correspondent for the American journal "The Living Age", Varian Fry visited Berlin, Germany in 1935 and personally witnessed Nazi savagery against Jews on more than one occasion. Greatly distubed by what he saw, once back home he helped raise money to support European anti-nazi movements. Following the occupation of France by the German army in World War II, he went to Marseille in an effort to help persons wishing to flee the Nazis. Beginning in 1940, in Marseille, France, despite the watchful eye of the collaborationist Vichy regime, he and a small group of volunteers hid people at the Villa Air-Bel until they could be smuggled out. More than 2,200 people were taken across the border to the safety of neutral Portugal from where they made their way to the United States. Others he helped escape on ships leaving Marseille for the French colony of Martinique from where they could go to the United States. Among Fry's closest associates were Americans Miriam Davenport, a former art student at the Sorbonne, and the beautiful U.S. heiress, Mary Jayne Gold, a lover of the arts and the "good life" who had come to Paris in the early 1930s. When the Nazis seized France in 1940, the rich WASP girl went to Marseille where she worked with Fry and helped finance his operation.
Amongst those Fry aided were painters Andre Breton, Max Ernst, Andre Masson, Marc Chagall and Wilfredo Lam, musician Wanda Landowska and the pianist Heinz Jolles, the sculptor, Jacques Lipchitz, writers Hannah Arendt, Lion Feuchtwanger, the poet Franz Werfel and his wife, Alma Mahler Gropius Werfel.
Back home in the States, in 1945 Fry's book about his time in France was published under the title, Surrender on Demand. He wrote and spoke critically against U.S. immigration policies particularly relating to the issue of the fate of Jews in Europe. In a December 1942 issue of the New Republic he wrote a scathing article titled: "The massacre of Jews in Europe."
In 1967, the government of France recognized his heroic contribution to freedom with the Legion of Honor. Beyond that, he was basically forgotten in life and death until recent years when his deeds began to be recognized after Mary Jayne Gold's 1980 book titled Crossroads Marseilles 1940, sparked an interest in Fry and his heoric efforts. Now being called the "American Schindler," in 1995 Varian Fry became the first United States citizen to join Raoul Wallenberg and Oskar Schindler among the gentiles designated as "Righteous Among the Nations" at Israel's national Holocaust Memorial, Yad Vashem. He was awarded the additional honor of "Commemorative Citizenship of the State of Israel" on January 1, 1998.
On the initiative of Samuel V. Brock, the U.S. Consul General in Marseilles from 1999 to 2002, the square in front of the Consulate was renamed "Place Varian Fry." Varian Fry's story was told on film in 2001 when American entertainer Barbra Streisand co-produced the made-for-television motion picture, Varian's War starring William Hurt and Julia Ormond.
Books:
- by Andy Marino (1999)
- by Sheila Isenberg (2001)
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