The American Emergency Rescue Committee was formed in New York after the fall of France in 1940. It was supported by Eleanor Roosevelt. It was created by intellectuals to help refugee anti-Nazi writers and artists and Jews. Varian Fry (pictured below) was one of the founders. He graduated from Harvard a year late as he was held back because of a prank. He became a journalist. He was a foreign correspondent in Berlin in 1935. There he witnessed the mistreatment of the Jews. “I saw one man brutally kicked and spat upon as he lay on the sidewalk, a woman bleeding, a man whose head was covered with blood, hysterical women crying. . . . Nowhere did the police seem to make any effort whatever to save the victims from this brutality.” He became an ardent anti-Nazi. “I could not remain idle as long as I had any chances at all of saving even a few of its intended victims.” He raised money for anti-Nazi movements before helping found the ERC. Fry was 32 years old when he started. He kept it up for 13 months until he was arrested by French police and exiled. He returned to America. He was the first of five Americans to be recognized by Israel as a “Righteous Among the Nations”.
Fry was in Marseilles when France fell. The port was in Vichy France. Officially, Vichy France was independent from occupied France, but in reality it was a puppet government that collaborated with the Nazis. The government agreed to turn over anyone the Nazis demanded. Many refugees fled to Marseilles, thinking they could take a ship to a free nation. Vichy police tried to prevent that, so Fry and his organization had to sneak people out. They established headquarters in a hotel. His cohorts included Mary Jane Gold. Mary Jane was an heiress who had been spending her time flying her plane all over Europe to enjoy the life of the rich. She was in Paris when the Germans invaded France. She fled to France and joined Fry. She was a do-gooder who was willing to spend enormous amounts to help refugees. She was always seen with her little dog Dagobert.
The key to getting people out of Marseilles was providing them with visas. Although the American consul Hugh Fullerton reflected the position of the Roosevelt Administration which was neutral and thus unwilling to give aid to refugees. However, his Vice Consul Hiram Bingham IV secretly gave many visas to the ERC. He was pulled back to America when the Vichy government put pressure on the U.S. State Department. It did not take long for the authorities to shut down sneaking refugees onto ships. An ex-French Foreign legionnaire and local gangster helped the ERC. When the hotel was raided, the ERC switched to a chateau in the country. It was Bohemian, like many of its occupants. Under one roof were celebrities like Marc Chagall (Modernist artist) and his wife, Marcel Duchamp (Cubist painter and sculptor), Max Ernst (Surrealist painter), Hannah Arendt (historian and political philosopher), and Peggy Guggenheim (art collector).
After operations from the hotel were shut down, the ERC needed another way to get the refugees out of France. Albert Hirschman, a German economist who fought in the Spanish Civil War on the side of the republicans, mapped out a route over the Pyrenees. The ERC shifted to helping relatives to get to neutral Spain. Lisa Fittko, a resistance fighter, made 2-3 trips per week for seven months.
It is estimated that the ERC saved over 2,000 refugees. The Emergency Rescue Committee became part of the International Rescue Committee in 1942. It still continues its humanitarian efforts today.
https://www.netflix.com/tudum/articles/transatlantic-true-story-varian-fry-mary-jayne-gold
https://www.rescue.org/article/true-story-behind-transatlantic-and-irc
https://exhibitions.ushmm.org/americans-and-the-holocaust/personal-story/varian-fry
https://www.transatlanticperspectives.org/entries/emergency-rescue-committee/
0 Comments