Varian Fry and the Emergency Rescue Committee
This is a compilation document about the rescue activity of the Emergency Rescue Committee (ERC) led by American Varian Fry. The ERC was tasked with saving artists, writers, composers, and intellectuals who were trapped in Vichy France after the Nazi takeover of the country. It is estimated that the ERC aided in the rescue of more than 2,000 individuals. Varian Fry's organization had more than 50 volunteers acting in the dangerous work of aiding Jews and non-Jewish refugees. Varian Fry has been honored by Yad Vashem, the World Holocaust Remembrance Center, as a Righteous Person.
This document was prepared in 2013 and submitted to Yad Vashem to nominate other worthy individuals within the ERC for recognition. Yad Vashem ruled that only the leader of organizations would be recognized. In addition, Yad Vashem does not recognize organizations (with very few exceptions).
This document contains material from the Varian Fry papers, located in the library at Columbia University.
The ERC was just one of numerous rescue and relief organizations and networks operating in and around Marseilles, France. For information and details of these rescue operations, please see Rescue by Country - France.
Hiram "Harry" Bingham, IV, an American diplomat stationed at the U.S. consulate in Marseilles, France, worked closely with Varian Fry, the ERC, and other rescue and relief organizations. He supplied numerous visas and identification papers to refugees, enabling them to successfully escape Southern France. For information on Hiram Bingham and his colleague, Consul Myles Standish, please click here.
Table of Contents
Background and History - See Below
Background
The Holocaust in France
Roundup of Jews (“Râfles”)
Concentration Camps in France
Emergency Rescue Committee Members
Sponsors of the Emergency Rescue Committee (Comité de Patronage)
Friends of the Emergency Rescue Committee (Comités Amis)
Advisory Committee for the Emergency Rescue Committee
Diplomats Who Aided the Emergency Rescue Committee
Emergency Rescue Committee Timeline
Abbreviations
Bibliography
Acknowledgements
Appendix 1: Administrative Report, Daniel Benedite
Appendix 2: Administrative Report, Varian Fry, 14/1/41
Appendix 3: Cables from Embassy in Vichy to US State Department
Appendix 4: Fry Letter to Cordell Hull Dated November 18, 1940
Appendix 5: Letter from H. Freeman Matthews re Varian Fry
Appendix 6: Fry Letter Dated October 15, 1941
Appendix 7: Fry Letter to Daniel Bénédite of November 25, 1941
Appendix 8: Fry Letter to Bénédite of December 24, 1941
Appendix 9: Fry Letter to Bénédite on February 2, 1942
Appendix 10: Fry Letter to Daniel Bénédite of April 3, 1942
Appendix 11: Fry Letter to Daniel Bénédite of May 28, 1942
Appendix 12: Fry Unpublished Comments re Difficulties with American Consular Officials in France
Appendix 13: Fry Unpublished Comments re Uncooperative Attitudes of American Diplomats in France
Appendix 14: Fry Unpublished Comments re Noncooperation by the Consul General’s Office in Marseille
Appendix 15: Fry Unpublished Comments re Obtaining Exit Visas
Appendix 16: Fry Unpublished Comments re Vice Consul Bingham Aiding Refugees
Appendix 17: Telegram, US Department of State
“I’ve always thought that what we did for the refugees in France resembled the obligation of soldiers to bring back their wounded from the battlefield, even at the risk of their own lives. Some may die. Some will be crippled for life. Some will recover and be the better soldiers for having had experience of battle. But one must bring them all back. At least one must try.”
- Albert “Beamish” Hirschman, in conversation with Varian Fry
The text of article 19 of the surrender of France to Germany, as cabled from Berlin by the Associated Press, read as follows:
"All German war and civil prisoners in French custody, including those under arrest and convicted who were seized and sentenced because of acts in favor of the German Reich, shall be surrendered immediately to German troops. The French Government is obliged to surrender upon demand, all Germans named by the German Government in France, as well as in French possessions, Colonies, Protectorate, Territories and Mandates. The French Government binds itself to prevent removal of German war and civil prisoners from France into French possessions or into foreign countries. Regarding prisoners already taken outside of France, as well as sick and wounded German prisoners who cannot be transported, exact lists with the places of residence are to be produced. The German High Command assumes care of sick and wounded German war prisoners."
Background
Varian Fry was among a number of courageous individuals of the Emergency Rescue Committee (ERC) who were responsible for saving thousands of Jewish and non-Jewish refugees in southern France.
Many of these people risked their lives to save those in need.
The Visas for Life: The Righteous and Honorable Diplomats Project is pleased to recognize these brave souls. They are, in alphabetical order: Leon “Dick” Ball, Daniel “Danny” Bénédite, Mme. Theodora Benedite-Ungemach, W. Bohn, Marcel Chaminade, L. Coppée, Mme. A. Dalsace, Miriam Davenport, M. Diamont, A. (Alfonso) Diaz, Charles Fawcett, Mlle. C. Feibel, Mlle. J. Fialin, Lena Fischmann, Hans Fittko, Lisa Fittko, Bill Freier (Bill Spira), Jean Gemahling, Mary Jayne Gold, Mme. Anna Gruss, B. F. Heine, S. Hessel, Mme. Ch. Heyman, Mlle. I. Heyman, Franz “Franzi” von Hildebrand, E. Hirschberg, Otto Albert “Beamish” Hirschmann, M. Kokoczinski, K. Landau, E. Lewinski, A. Marck, Walter Mehring, Heinrich Mueller, H. Namuth, O. de Neufville, Heinz Ernst “Oppy” Oppenheimer, K. Oppenheimer, Mlle. A. Pouppos, Justus “Gussie” Rosenberg, Mme. R. Rosenthal, H. Sahl, P. Schmirer, Mme. V. Schmirer, Mlle. M. Soïfer, K. Sternberg, E. Urbach, Dr. Marcel “Monsieur Maurice” Verzeanu, Mlle. E. Weil, Jacques Weisslitz and Charles Wolff.
In addition to members of the ERC, we recognize Dr. Frank Bohn, of the American Federation of Labor (AFL), Captain Dubois, of the French police in Marseilles, and Donald Lowrie, of the Young Men’s Christian Association (YMCA). These individuals and organizations worked extremely closely with the ERC. It was not possible for the Committee to operate without these individuals.
We have also included a list of diplomats, consular officials, both accredited and not accredited, as part of this document. Fry’s work would have been impossible without the cooperation of these individuals.
In documenting these worthy individuals, we have tried to use the words of Varian Fry himself in describing his comrades, assistants and helpers of the Emergency Rescue Committee. We also used information from Daniel Benedite’s letters and papers housed in the Varian Fry archives at Butler Library, Columbia University, New York, and from Mary Jayne Gold’s book, Crossroads Marseilles. In addition, we used a number of other historic references. Please see the historic references, including page numbers, following each of the biographies.
The members of the Emergency Rescue Committee were operating under extreme danger. They could have been arrested at any time by Vichy officials. In fact, a number of members of the ERC were arrested for their activities. Charles Wolff was in fact later killed by French officials.
Probably the most danger was to the Jewish members of the Emergency Rescue Committee. Not only were they breaking French law in helping refugees, but they were obviously subject to the anti-Semitic persecutions of both the Nazis and Vichy officials. We have indicated in the biographies when it is known who the Jewish volunteers with the ERC were.
This document is dedicated to the memory of the members of the Emergency Rescue Committee, who were responsible for saving hundreds of lives in southern France, 1940-1942. This document has been prepared in the spirit of the Hebrew phrase hakarat hatov [in the recognition of good].
About the ERC, Andy Marino says it most eloquently in his book, The Quiet American:
“By any standard, the achievements of Fry and those around him deserve to be written up in the annals of both bravery and humanitarianism. But they must also be noted in the cultural history of the West, for the people Fry rescued and brought to America were destined to change the course of the postwar world. In her book Illustrious Immigrants, Laura Fermi, herself an illustrious immigrant and the wife of the great physicist Enrico Fermi, called it simply and accurately ‘a unique phenomenon in the history of migration.’” [Marino, 1999, p. 335]
The Holocaust in France
Even though France was occupied by German forces in June 1940, and was continuously occupied for more than four and a half years, it had one of the highest per capita survival rates for Jews in all of Europe. 86% of native French Jews survived and 72% of foreign born Jews survived.
Himmler and Eichmann consider the deportation of Jews from France to be a dismal failure. Himmler states that the total removal of Jews from France was “extremely difficult” because of the “very strained relations with the French military administration.”
This high survival rate for Jews in France was due, in part, to the courageous activities of diplomats like Mexican Consul General Gilberto Bosques and numerous other heroes.
At the outbreak of World War II in September 1939, Jews constituted far less than one percent of the population of France. Nonetheless, France had the largest Jewish population in Western Europe.
After the German invasion and occupation of France in June 1940, thousands of refugees streamed into France from Belgium, Luxembourg and Holland, increasing the Jewish population of France even further.
In June 1940, there were more than 300,000 Jews residing in France. Half of the Jews in France were native citizens, and the other half were recent refugees. Many of these Jewish refugees had become stateless, as they had fled from German-occupied territories.
The French Vichy government was one of the most cooperative governments in Nazi-occupied Europe with respect to handing over Jews. Without the initial cooperation of French officials, the Germans would not have been able to carry out much of their genocidal policy in France. Germany had a relatively small civil and military occupation in force in both the northern and southern sectors. There were fewer than 3,000 German military police and soldiers to cover the entire French country. In the early years of the war, Vichy officials tried to protect Jews who were French citizens. On the other hand, the French police and officials were more than willing to hand over foreign Jews.
In June 1940, only a few weeks after the German armistice, the French government instituted its own Nuremberg-style anti-Jewish laws. These laws were called the Statut des Juifs [Statute on the Jews]. These laws were passed by the French legislature and had constitutional authority. Under the Statut des Juifs, Jews were defined as Jews not by religion, but by race. This legislation was signed by French president Phillipe Pétain and his deputy, Pierre Laval, along with eight ministers in the French government. The Statut effectively removed all civil rights and protections for Jews. Jews were forbidden from holding government positions, military service, teaching, and other public positions. Eventually, Jews could no longer own or manage businesses.
Under the Statut des Juifs, Jews were required register with the French police. Jews were also required to carry an ID card with the words “Juif” or “Juife” [Jew] in bold red letters.
Under the German occupation, Jewish businesses were confiscated from their owners and given to non-Jews. The process was called “Aryanization.” These actions were intended to force both French Jewish citizens and refugees to leave France.
When Jews had no means of self-support, nor the ability to leave the country, thousands were arrested and interned in French concentration camps. The conditions in these French camps were horrific. Thousands of Jews starved to death or died from the poor conditions in these camps.
The prospect of being interned in one of the French camps was the signal to many Jews in France that the time to leave was imminent.
Leaving the country was no easy task. Vichy officials set up a web of complicated procedures that made it extremely difficult for Jews to leave the country. Overlapping agencies, petty governmental rivalries, and a general lack of organization made emigrating an almost impossible task. Most emigration regulations were vague, confusing and complicated. A regulation in force one week might be rescinded or changed the following week. In the end, Vichy was at cross-purposes with itself, both encouraging and impeding emigration at the same moment.
Obtaining an exit visa from Vichy authorities was extremely difficult. Requests were often lost, sometimes intentionally.
Fortunately for many refugees, there was a means of escape. Numerous sympathetic foreign diplomats were willing to extend valuable exit visas and identification papers to the throngs of refugees seeking escape. Diplomats from Mexico, the United States, Czechoslovakia, Yugoslavia and even China provided valuable documents to facilitate exiting the country.
In addition, there were a number of relief and rescue agencies in Marseilles and southern France. Most prominent among these was the Nimes Committee. The Committee was comprised of a number of independent agencies that were operating throughout France. These groups included the Red Cross, Emergency Rescue Committee (ERC), American Federation of Labor (AF of L), Young Men’s Christian Association (YMCA), American Friends’ Service Committee (Quakers), Unitarian Committee, Jewish Joint Distribution Committee (JDC), Hebrew Immigration Aid Society (HIAS) and HICEM. These groups were extremely helpful in having Jews released from concentration camps, giving them money and helping to arrange visas and transportation to leave France.
Between 1940 and 1942, more than 100,000 Jews escaped France through both legal and illegal means. Legal emigration was possible between 1940 and the end of 1941. After October 1941, the Nazis made emigration illegal. Now, refugees were forced into desperate escape attempts by illegally crossing the borders, usually without proper papers.
Ironically for refugees, the safest places to escape were often fascist regimes—Italy, Spain and Portugal. Portugal provided safe haven and a transit point to other destinations. Many of the refugees who traveled through Portugal went on to North America, Latin and South America, Australia and Palestine.
In November 1942, Germany occupied most of southern France. Jews were forced to hide. Jewish refugees were helped by thousands of sympathetic French people. Hundreds of French clergy hid Jews in churches and schools. Several entire towns, such as Le Chambon, conspired to hide Jews.
After 1942, many French government officials, including federal and local police, soldiers, bureaucrats and others, helped Jews escape arrest and deportation.
From 1942 through September 1943, more than 50,000 French Jews found refuge in the Italian occupied zones of southern France around Nice. Many of these Jews later escaped to Switzerland and to Italy.
Hitler had not achieved his aim of making France Judenrein.
Roundup of Jews (“Râfles”)
The Nazis asked French authorities to round up refugees and individuals wanted by both the Germans and the Vichy government.
Fry describes the rounding up of Jews and other refugees in Marseille:
“The situation was especially bad in big cities like Marseille, where there was a large and constantly changing refugee population which kept the police nervous and occasionally stirred them to arrest large numbers on the streets. These sudden mass arrests were called ‘râfles.’ You never knew when one was coming, or where. It might be on the Canebière in broad daylight, or it might be in a smart café or hotel after dark. Only one thing was certain. If you were picked up in a ‘râfle,’ you would spend several days in jail, even if you were found to be ‘en règle’ in the end; if you weren’t ‘en règle’ you’d go from the jail to a concentration camp.
[Section deleted from manuscript: “We never knew when a ‘râfle’ was coming. But we always knew a few minutes after one had begun. The refugees would come rushing to us with the news, and we could tell by the hunted-animal look in their eyes what was the matter even before they could stammer out the dread word.
“Some of the refugees were so hysterical that we were afraid they’d have nervous breakdowns before we could get their papers ready and get them out of France.”] (Varian Fry, unpublished manuscript for Surrender on Demand, p. 119, Varian Fry Papers, Butler Library, Columbia University, New York)
Concentration Camps in France
At the end of September 1940, immediately after the French surrender, there were 31 concentration camps in the French zone. This total was compiled and reported by the Kundt Commission, which was created by Article 19 of the armistice. This total includes smaller, temporary camps. The major camps were:
Rivesaltes (Pyrenees-Orientales) – 6,000 internees at the end of 1941.
Le Vernet (Ariège)
Rieucros (Lozère) – Women’s camp.
Argelés (Pyrenees-Orientales) – 15,000 population at the end of 1940, mostly Spanish refugees.
Les Milles (Aix-en-Provence) – This was a transit center for refugees expecting to obtain papers to leave France. It was located near Marseilles. Many of the diplomats went to Les Milles to have refugees released.
Gurs (Basses-Pyrenees) – Received thousands of Jewish deportees from Germany, Austria and Czechoslovakia.
Noé (Haute-Garonne) – Camp for sick and elderly.
Récébédou (Toulouse)
Refugees were interned in 10 hospitals and 16 prisons in the unoccupied zone.
In the occupied zone, there were 15 camps. During 1941, the Jews in the north were deported to these three principle camps:
Beaune-la-Rolande (Loiret) – Originally built as a camp to hold Canadian troops, then French prisoners of war, after 1941 it became a center for Parisian Jews.
Pithiviers (Loiret) – Established to intern French prisoners of war, after May 1941 it was used to hold French and foreign Jews.
Drancy (Paris) – Opened in August 1941 in a suburb of Paris. Eventually, most of the Jews deported to Auschwitz would first be sent to Drancy.
All of the camps were administered by French authorities.
Emergency Rescue Committee Members
The Emergency Rescue Committee established its office in Varian Fry’s small hotel room in Marseille. Thinking the task would be accomplished relatively easily, Fry set out on his mission to help to save the intellectual lights of Europe. Soon, dozens, and later hundreds, of refugees poured into the office. The staff and Fry enlisted the aid of volunteers, most of whom were refugees themselves.
Bénédite writes of the expanding staff and its tasks in his report of November 6, 1941:
“The offices were necessarily open to all, and many who visited us were not clients but people who needed information concerning visas, and others who had to be directed to organizations better adapted to unravel their problems than we.
“These extensions of our activities made it necessary to enlarge the staff. In September six people had been able to handle the work, but by December it had become too much for fifteen. Four interviewers were not too many for the visitors who crowded our reception room. Other workers kept the clerical work up to date, sent and received cables, kept the books, paid the weekly allowances and mailed more than a hundred money orders every week.
“It was found necessary to delegate to one person the task of keeping in contact with other organizations and with the authorities to handle delicate questions better arranged personally rather than by correspondence, and to allot to another the work of preserving contact with those of our clients who were dispersed throughout unoccupied territory; and the work of the Director became so heavy that an administrative secretary was employed to relieve him.
“In order that we might be informed about all those appealing to the Centre, we formed a volunteer council of technical advisors to aid us with information concerning the importance and leanings of political and intellectual refugees.” (Danny Bénédite, Marseille, November 6, 1941, Administrative Report: The Stages of the Committee’s Development [draft], Emergency Rescue Committee, p. 4)
Daniel Bénédite, Fry’s replacement, wrote in his report that there were 46 employees and volunteers of the ERC in Marseille:
“Departures have taken from us many valuable workers hard to replace: forty-six secretaries, volunteer workers, and technical advisers served for varying periods in the Centre offices between August 1940 and August 1941. The problem of recruiting replacements is a difficult and delicate one, since staff members require special qualities of self-sacrifice and self-reliance. Our teamwork was outstanding among relief organizations in France, and inspired admiration in observers from other groups. (Danny Bénédite, Marseille, November 6, 1941, Administrative Report: The Stages of the Committee’s Development [draft], Emergency Rescue Committee, p. 12)
The people who comprised the staff of the Centre in Marseille were largely refugees themselves. Many were Jews. All of them risked their safety to stay behind and help others, when they could have escaped. They worked countless hours under adverse conditions.
There were threats of arrest, internment and even possible deportation to their deaths.
Yet the staff maintained a sympathetic and sensitive attitude toward the other refugees they were trying to help.
Bénédite wrote of the staff:
“At the same time, the Centre Américain de Secours tried to perform its task of giving assistance in a new spirit, aiming to avoid as far as possible all resemblance to a forbidding, impersonal administrative organization. It tried to avoid the pitfall of a rigid bureaucracy, not wishing to give to its protégés, disappointed in their hopes and obliged to accept an inferior mode of existence, the impression that they were dealing with people without heart, who had become blasé about individual hardships, hardened to all emotional appeal and too much concerned with the letter of the rules.
“On the contrary, we strongly urged giving each protégé the maximum of personal attention. All the workers, often themselves individuals who had fled from Paris, learned to understand their own particular clients and took a sympathetic interest in them. They kept them as well informed as possible, gave them encouragement, often taking it upon themselves to solve their difficulties and to act in their stead whenever they felt able to do so with greater competence and effectiveness. It was not always easy to find just the right word of encouragement for refugees who had for months been clinging to hopes which seemed doomed to disappointment. But we tried to make them feel they were among friends and to create as friendly an atmosphere as possible at the Centre. Among the workers there was a doctor who helped certain refugees, gave them medical advice, and recommended them to his colleagues in the profession in Marseille.
Even when people came to us for whom we could do almost nothing, we saw to it that they did not leave entirely empty-handed: if not a small sum of money, we gave them at least food or meal tickets, or we recommended tem to a committee which was better able than we to help them. Our efforts during this period reaped their reward and the results achieved furnished the justification for the growth of our activity in various directions. (Danny Bénédite, Marseille, November 6, 1941, Administrative Report: The Stages of the Committee’s Development [draft], Emergency Rescue Committee, p. 6 [insert])
- Varian Fry, Director, Emergency Rescue Committee, 1940-41
In June 1940, France fell to the German army. The official armistice between Germany and France included a clause that provided for the French to surrender on demand any German refugees who had fled to France.
“All German war and civil prisoners in French custody, including those under arrest and convicted who were seized and sentenced because of acts in favor of the German Reich, shall be surrendered immediately to German troops.
“The French Government is obliged to surrender upon demand all Germans named by the German Government in France, as well as in French possessions, Colonies, Protectorates Territories and Mandates.” [Article 19, German Armistice Agreement with France]
These refugees included artists, writers, scholars, politicians, and labor leaders who were wanted by the Nazis. Among these were German, Austrian and other refugees.
Eleanor Roosevelt, wife of President Franklin Roosevelt, helped publicize the need to rescue refugees in Europe.
Almost immediately, a group of American citizens formed an Emergency Rescue Committee (ERC) to rescue these individuals from France before they could be arrested and deported to French and German concentration camps.
Varian Fry volunteered to head the Emergency Rescue Committee. In 1940, he was sent to Marseilles, in Vichy France. He was given a list of 200 refugees and $3,000 with which to save them from the grip of the Gestapo.
“I left with my pockets full of lists of men and women I was to rescue, and my head full of suggestions on how to do it. Altogether, there were more than two hundred names on my lists, and many hundreds more were added later.” [Fry, 1945, p. xii]
After coming to Marseilles, Fry opened a refugee relief agency under the cover name of the American Center for Relief (Centre Américain de Secours) in the Hôtel Splendide in Marseilles.
“Thus, quite apart from any sentimental reasons, I accepted the assignment out of deep political convictions.
“But the sentimental reasons were also there; and they were strong. Among the refugees who were caught in France were many writers and artists whose work I had enjoyed: novelists like Franz Werfel and Lion Feuchtwanger; painters like Marc Chagall and Max Ernst; sculptors like Jacques Lipchitz. For some of these men, although I knew them only through their work, I had a deep love; and to them all I owed a heavy debt of gratitude for the pleasure they had given me. Now that they were in danger, I felt obliged to help them, if I could; just as they, without knowing it, had often in the past helped me.
“Most of all, it was a feeling of sympathy for the German and Austrian Socialist Parties which led me to go to France in the summer of 1940, a sympathy born of long familiarity with their principles and their works.” [Fry, 1945, pp. x-xi]
Fry immediately set out to provide financial support for refugees and to secure all the necessary papers to escape France. These papers included immigration visas, transit visas and destination or end visas. The gathering of these papers was perhaps the most difficult task for Fry and his assistants in the ERC. In 1940-41, most countries had closed their borders to refugees.
“Our days began at about eight o’clock in the morning, when the first of the refugees arrived, and went on until twelve or one the following morning…In the evenings, after the last of the refugees had gone, we would have a kind of conference, going over all the cards we had made out during the day and trying t decide what action to take on each case… Our final job was to write the daily cable to New York. Generally it consisted of the names and references of applicants for United States visas.” [Fry, 1945, p. 29]
“Every morning at eight o’clock the grind would begin again, and each day it would be a little worse than the day before, with more people asking for help, more harrowing stories to listen to, more impossible decisions to make. Deciding who should be helped and who not was one of the toughest jobs of all. My lists were obviously arbitrary. They had been made up quickly and from memory by people who were thousands of miles away and had little or no idea of what was really going on in France. Some names had been put on them which ought not to have been there. Others had been left off which ought to have been on.” [Fry, 1945, pp. 30-31]
Varian Fry and the ERC relied heavily on sympathetic diplomats stationed in and around Marseilles. Of particular and important help to Fry was Hiram “Harry” Bingham IV, the American Vice Consul and head of the Visa Section at the consulate. Bingham had been providing assistance to refugees before the arrival of Fry in Marseilles in 1940. Bingham had been in violation of the Bloom-Van Nuys immigration law in his liberally issuing visas to refugees.
Fry also obtained visas from other foreign diplomatic officials in Marseilles. Among these was Consul Vladimir Vochoc, representing Czechoslovakia. Fry also was helped by a Chinese diplomat stationed in Marseilles who liberally issued him exit visas, ostensibly to Shanghai, China. Fry also worked with Mexican Consul General Gilberto Bosques, Brazilian Ambassador de Sousa Dantas, and the Siamese, Lithuanian, Cuban and Panamanian consuls in Marseilles.
Fry and the ERC worked closely with many other rescue and relief agencies in Marseilles. Among these were HIAS (Hebrew Immigration Aid Society, a division of HICEM). These Jewish relief agencies helped facilitate transportation and money for refugees. The records of HIAS speak highly of all the refugee agencies operating in Marseilles. The ERC also worked with other groups, including the American Friends Service Committee (Quakers), the Mennonites, and the Unitarian Service Committee of Boston.
Fry’s rescue activities were in direct violation of the regulations of both the French and American governments. Fry and his volunteers organized elaborate escape routes for the refugees. Fry used Austrian refugees Hans and Lisa Fittko as guides. The Emergency Rescue Committee forged passports and visas, and exchanged money on the Marseilles black market.
Fry’s activities on behalf of Jewish refugees were conducted right under the noses of the Nazi’s, the Gestapo and French police. These activities soon caught the eye of French officials and numerous protests were posted to the American consulate in Washington and France. The US State Department was fearful that Fry’s unauthorized activities would violate US neutrality and cause a major diplomatic incident. US Secretary of State Cordell Hull sent a memorandum to the American embassies in Paris and Marseilles warning them of Fry’s activities on behalf of refugees.
By early 1941, the Emergency Rescue Committee was helping between 25 and 100 refugees per day.
In 1945, Fry wrote in his autobiography of his difficulty in deciding which refugees to save:
“Every morning at eight o’clock the grind would begin again, and each day it would be a little worse than the day before, with more people asking for help, more harrowing stories to listen to, more impossible decisions to make. Deciding who should be helped and who not was one of the toughest jobs of all. My lists were obviously arbitrary. They had been made up quickly and from memory by people who were thousands of miles away and had little or no idea of what was really going on in France. Some names had been put on them which ought not to have been there. Others had been left off which ought to have been on.
But how could we decide whom to help and whom not, except by sticking to the lists? We couldn’t help everybody in France who needed help. We couldn’t even help every intellectual and political refugee who really needed help, or said he did. And we had no way of knowing who was really in danger and who wasn’t. We had to guess, and the only safe way to guess was to give each refugee the full benefit of the doubt. Otherwise we might refuse help to someone who was really in danger and learn later that he had been dragged away to Dachau or Buchenwald because we had turned him down. But we had one fixed rule from which we never varied: we refused to help anybody who wasn’t known to people we could trust. We weren’t taking any chances with police stooges.” [Fry, 1945, pp. 30-31]
Fry had virtually no support from the American embassy in Vichy or from the State Department in Washington, DC. In this quote, Fry talks about his passport being confiscated by the consulate.
“The weakest thing about our position was the fact that we could get no support at all from the American Embassy or the Department of State. The Department continued to take the attitude that I should go home, and the Embassy cooperated with the French police in bringing pressure on me to go.”
“In January, when my passport expired, and I went to the Consulate to have it renewed, the Consul put on a very solemn face.
“’I’m sorry,’ he said, ‘but I have instructions not to renew your passport until I’ve consulted the Department. If you’ll leave it with me, I’ll cable the department and see what they say.’
“When I went back a few days later, he told me that instead of being renewed, my passport had been confiscated.
“’I’ve had a reply from the Department about your passport,’ he said. ‘My instructions are to renew it only for immediate return to the United States, and then only for a period of two weeks. So I’m afraid I’ll have to keep it here until you’re ready to go. When you are, let me know, and I’ll get it ready for you.’” [Fry, 1945, p. 219]
The US embassy in Vichy had lied to Fry, informing him that the Emergency Rescue Committee was recalling him. He found out later that this was a ruse by the US Foreign Service.
“After Danny’s arrest the Consul told me the police had informed him that unless I left France voluntarily they would have to arrest me or expel me. He said he had sent the State Department a coded cablegram asking the Department to ask the Emergency Rescue Committee to recall me.
“A few weeks later he said he had had an answer. He wouldn’t show it to me, on the grounds that it was an official communication and therefore not to be seen by anyone outside the Foreign Service. But he claimed that in substance it said the Emergency Rescue Committee had agreed that I should return to the United Sates ‘without delay.’
“As I had been getting cables from the committee almost daily telling me to stay, I found this difficult to believe. But I cabled New York once again, and promptly received the reply that they had never agreed to my recall and had done everything they could to make it possible for me to stay. The Consul, they said, had ‘acted entirely on his own responsibility.’” [Fry, 1945, p. 200]
In the fall of 1941, under pressure from the French government, Fry was ordered to leave France. In his last interview before he left Marseilles, Varian Fry met with French Vichy official Rodellec du Porzic:
“’Tell me,’ I said, ‘frankly, why are you so much opposed to me?’
“’Parce que vous avez trop protégé des juifs et des anti-Nazis,’ he said. ‘Because you have protected Jews and anti-Nazis.’” [Fry, 1945, p. 224]
In his 13 months in Marseilles, between August 1940 and the fall of 1941, Fry and his committee were able to rescue more than 2,000 people from France.
Varian Fry worked with a number of important individuals in the rescue of Jewish refugees from southern France. Fry was only the tip of a larger iceberg of courageous individuals who risked their lives and safety to help others. They are listed below.
[Fry, Varian. Assignment Rescue. (New York: Scholastic, 1997). Fry, Varian. Surrender on Demand. (New York: Random House, 1945), pp. 10-12, 14, 17-18, 32-33, 49, 56-57, 69-70, 83, 87-90, 147, 172, 215. Varian Fry Papers, Butler Library, Columbia University, New York. Gold, Mary Jayne. Crossroads Marseilles, 1940. (New York: Doubleday, 1980). Marino, Andy. A Quiet American: The Secret War of Varian Fry. (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1999), pp. 99-100, 196, 107-108, 117, 120, 187, 209, 231, 268, 285, 287. Isenberg, Sheila. A Hero of Our Own: The Story of Varian Fry. (New York: Random House), pp. 75-76, 83, 86, 89, 125, 142, 150, 152-153, 193, 193n. Ryan, Donna F. The Holocaust and the Jews of Marseille: The Enforcement of Anti-Semitic Policies in Vichy France. (Urbana, IL: The University of Illinois Press, 1996), pp. 130, 142, 144. Hockley, Ralph M. Freedom is not Free. (2000). US Holocaust Memorial Museum. Assignment Rescue: The Story of Varian Fry and the Emergency Rescue Committee. [Exhibit catalog.] (Washington, DC: US Holocaust Memorial Museum, 1997), p. 7.]
Mrs. Eleanor Roosevelt, First Lady of the United States
Karl Frank and Joseph Buttinger appealed to Mrs. Eleanor Roosevelt to help provide emergency visas for Jewish refugees, particularly artists and accomplished scientists trapped in Nazi occupied Europe. Mrs. Roosevelt intervened directly with her husband to force the US State Department to provide emergency visas. These visas would expedite the rescue of hundreds of refugees. Joseph Buttinger writes:
“After a short discussion Mrs. Roosevelt decided to call her husband in the White House, which she did in our presence. [Karl] Frank and I were greatly astonished and impressed when Mrs. Roosevelt, after trying for twenty minutes to persuade her husband with reasonable arguments, ended her conversation with the following threat: ‘If Washington refuses to authorize these visas immediately, German and American émigré leaders, with the help of their American friends, will rent a ship and in this ship will bring as many of the endangered refugees as possible across the Atlantic. If necessary, the ship will cruise up and down the East Coast until the American people, out of shame and anger, force the President and the congress to permit these victims of political persecution to land!’” [cited in Gold, 1980]
Mrs. Roosevelt kept a list of names of refugees and personally sent them to the State Department. She lobbied Assistant Secretary of State Sumner Wells, who was sympathetic. Mrs. Roosevelt said to Wells: “Is there no way of getting our consul in Marseilles to help a few of these people out?” or “I would like a report as to why…?” [Cited in Gold, 1980, xiii.]
It was because of Mrs. Roosevelt’s perseverance on this and many other refugees issues that hundreds of Jewish refugees were able to bypass the restrictive US immigration system and were issued emergency visas.
Karl Frank wrote to Mrs. Roosevelt later: “I notice it is due to your interest that many hundreds of people have been saved.” [Cited in Gold, 1980, xiii.]
[Fry, Varian. Assignment Rescue. (New York: Scholastic, 1997). Fry, Varian. Surrender on Demand. (New York: Random House, 1945). Varian Fry Papers, Butler Library, Columbia University, New York. Gold, Mary Jayne. Crossroads Marseilles, 1940. (New York: Doubleday, 1980), pp. xiii-iv. Marino, Andy. A Quiet American: The Secret War of Varian Fry. (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1999), pp. 47, 50, 52, 94, 97.]
Daniel “Danny” Bénédite, Emergency Rescue Committee, 1940-41
Daniel “Danny” Bénédite was one of Varian Fry’s most able assistants. Bénédite was a young French socialist who had previously worked to help refugees in Paris. While in Paris, he became learned in the ways of relief activities and avoiding French and Gestapo officials. In Paris, he helped German and Austrian refugees renew their residential permits and thus avoid deportation.
“Daniel Bénédite [was] a young Frenchman of the Left who had worked in the office of the Prefect of Police in Paris before the war, dictating many of the Prefect’s letters and helping to write many of his speeches. He was slight and dark and wore a small mustache, but his most conspicuous characteristic was his extreme cocksureness which his mother attributed to the Alsatian blood in her son’s veins.
“In Paris Danny Bénédite had had much to do with refugees, winning their friendship by his kindness and his readiness to renew their permis de séjour.
“Danny became my chef de cabinet, taking my place whenever I was too busy to see someone myself, and performing a hundred other tasks ably and cheerfully. When I hired him I warned him that it would only be for two or three weeks. Believing the Consul-General, I didn’t expect the police to let us operate any longer than that. Actually, his job lasted four years. In the course of that time he advanced from private secretary to leader of the underground network which rescued many of the refugees and kept many others safe in hiding after the Germans had occupied the whole of France.” [Fry, 1945, pp. 100-101]
Fry sent Bénédite to collect information on numerous visits to French concentration camps. Bénédite made extensive reports for Fry.
“To obtain the release of our protégés in the concentration camps, we decided on a campaign of pressure on the Vichy government. We sent Danny Bénédite on a trip around Southwest France, visiting the camps and writing long reports on the conditions he found. At the same time we prepared lists of the most distinguished of our clients who were interned in them.” [Fry, 1945, p. 124]
“The next morning he went down to the douane to report, as he had promised to, and he didn’t come back. By the end of the afternoon I had grown sufficiently anxious to consult a lawyer. The lawyer made inquiries, and then telephoned to say that Danny had been indicted on four counts and locked up in the Prison Chave. He was charged with illegal possession of gold, transporting gold illegally, intention of changing it illegally, and presumptive intention of diverting it to his own use. The total penalties might amount to four or five years in prison, the lawyer said.
“For a long time I hadn’t made any important decisions without first consulting Danny, and, though I frequently acted against his advice, I always considered it carefully and respected it even when I didn’t follow it. We had breakfast together in the morning, went to the office together, went home again together, dined together—did almost everything, in fact, but sleep together. It was about as close a companionship as I have ever had with anybody. To a large extent Danny had become the new Beamish, and, despite his highly critical attitude toward a part of my work, I was very fond of him.
“The worst of it was that if Danny had told the truth, I would have been arrested too. It was that I found the hardest of all to accept. Twice a day, on my way to and from the office, I passed the Prison Chave, and I thought of Danny, down there at the bottom of one of the narrow shafts of light the long prison windows must let through.” [Fry, 1945, pp. 212-213]
“After making further inquiries, the lawyer told us he thought the Ministry of Finance at Vichy might be persuaded to let Danny off with a heavy fine if the American Embassy would intervene for him. Knowing the Embassy, and its attitude toward ‘aliens’ in general, and us in particular, I had no hope whatever, but I went to the Consul at Marseille to ask him what he thought about the chances. I told him exactly what had happened, and exactly how I felt about it. Without consciously trying to, I think I must have touched something very deep in him, because he did an extraordinary thing: he went down to the douane and told them that as Danny was the employee of an American relief organization the Consulate was following his case closely and was surprised that he had not yet been brought before a magistrate.
“The next day, when I again saw the lawyer, his attitude had changed. He said that the douane had been greatly impressed by the Consul’s visit, and that the case looked much better than it had before. A few days later he got a court to issue an order to the Administration to produce Danny for a hearing, and, thanks very probably to the Consul’s visit, the douane obeyed the order. Until that time Danny had simply been arrested ‘administratively,’ without any court hearing at all.
“When the court heard the charges, it decided at once to release Danny on bail, pending the trial. But under Vichy’s methods, the douane was free to ignore the decision and keep him in prison anyway.
“All that day we waited to learn what the douane would do… Danny arrived about six o’clock, in a police car… he was free.” [Fry, 1945, pp. 213-214]
In Varian Fry’s memoirs, he discusses the fate of Danny Bénédite after he left Marseilles.
“Danny, too, is back in Paris, though it is only by a miracle that he is still alive. Some time in 1942 he joined a maquis, becoming the leader of the group. In May, 1944, he was arrested by the Gestapo. Luckily, the Germans didn’t find the arms his group had been receiving by parachute, so he was not immediately shot, as he would have been if they had. Instead he was kept in prison, as a hostage. In August, however, a member of his maquis confessed, under torture, and Danny was about to be led before a firing squad when the American troops landed in Southern France and he was saved.” [Fry, 1945, p. 237]
After Fry left Marseilles, Bénédite, along with Jean Gemahling and Charles Wolff, ran the Centre Américain de Secours [American Rescue Committee]. After Gemahling’s arrest in November 1941, Bénédite took over the leadership of the ERC. He kept the Centre open until June 1942, when the French police closed it down.
The ERC operated secretly in various locations and continued to distribute funds to help refugees.
In September 1942, Bénédite was asked to set up a spy network for the OSS.
Bénédite went into hiding under a false name between January and June 1943. Bénédite set up a business as a woodcutter and charcoal maker in Haut Var. Bénédite’s business and woodcutting camp became a maquis [underground/guerrilla] center. Bénédite was arrested in May 1944 and was held in jail until August 1944. He was condemned to death by the Nazis, but escaped from confinement before the sentence of execution could be carried out.
During the liberation, Bénédite became an adjutant to the French high command of the FFI (Forces Françaises de l’Intérieur). Bénédite was awarded the Legion of Honor in June 1951.
Bénédite was a Protestant.
[Fry, Varian. Surrender on Demand. (New York: Random House, 1945), pp. 100-101, 103, 116-117, 120-122, 124-127, 134, 140, 148, 149, 180, 183, 195-197, 199, 202, 204-205, 207, 209, 211-215, 217-218, 220-227, 229-232, 237-238. Varian Fry Papers, Butler Library, Columbia University, New York. Gold, Mary Jayne. Crossroads Marseilles, 1940. (New York: Doubleday, 1980), pp. 26-27, 34-35, 41, 45, 74, 203, 229-231, 237, 243, 245, 247-248, 256, 265, 271, 293, 326, 334, 336-337, 340, 357, 360, 371, 381, 383-384, 387-389. Marino, Andy. A Quiet American: The Secret War of Varian Fry. (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1999), pp. 205, 218, 224, 227, 231, 238-239, 268, 271, 276, 279 287-288, 298, 306-307, 317-320, 328-329. Isenberg, Sheila. A Hero of Our Own: The Story of Varian Fry. (New York: Random House). Klein, Anne. “Conscience, conflict and politics: The rescue of political refugees from southern France to the United States, 1940-1942.” Leo Baeck Institute Year Book, 43 (1998), 287-311. Ryan, Donna F. The Holocaust and the Jews of Marseille: The Enforcement of Anti-Semitic Policies in Vichy France. (Urbana, IL: The University of Illinois Press, 1996), pp. 141-142.]
Mme. Theodora (Theo) Benedite-Ungemach
[Fry, 1945, pp. 101, 116, 117, 124, 180, 221, 228, 238. Varian Fry Papers, Butler Library, Columbia University, New York. “Liste des Collaborateurs Ayant Fait Partie du Staff du ‘Centre Americain de Secours’ Dupuis sa Fondation,” 2/9/41, Varian Fry Papers.]
Jay Allen, Centre Américain de Secours, The American Relief Center, Marseilles, France
“Jay Allen has been arrested by the Germans. They caught him at the demarcation line, trying to get back to the unoccupied zone. This is bad.
“Suppose they torture him? Will he be able to keep his mouth shut about us and our work? Or will he break down and talk when the matches are pushed up under his fingernails and the fire bites into the flesh?
“Saturday Freier. Yesterday Vochoc. Today Jay. They are getting the range.” (Dated “Tuesday, March 18th [1941]/Morning.” Varian Fry, unpublished manuscript for Surrender on Demand, p. 482, Varian Fry Papers, Butler Library, Columbia University, New York)
“The [American] Consul thinks that Jay’s [Jay Allen’s] arrest had nothing to do with us. He was recognized in Paris and followed down to the line by secret police, who arrested him for trying to cross without permission. He will probably be in jail for several months.” (Dated “Wednesday, March 26 [1941].” Varian Fry, unpublished manuscript for Surrender on Demand, p. 491, Varian Fry Papers, Butler Library, Columbia University, New York)
[Varian Fry Papers, Butler Library, Columbia University, New York. Fry, 1945, pp. 154, 155, 208; Marino, 1999, pp. 251-253, 255-258, 281]
Leon (Dick) Ball, Emergency Rescue Committee, 1940-41
Leon “Dick” Ball was one of the earliest volunteers for the Emergency Rescue Committee (ERC). Ball had been friends with Charlie Fawcett and both were in the French Ambulance Corps. Ball was born in the United States and was a US citizen. In 1932, he arrived in France and eventually became the owner of a lard factory in Paris. Ball was one of the most effective members of the Rescue Committee.
Fry said of him, in his autobiography:
“He was a rough diamond, a knight in overalls, eager to help wherever he could and whomever he could, and fond of boasting of the things he had done to help refugees and the remnants of the B.E.F. on the way down from Paris. He and Charlie claimed to have gotten quite a lot of English soldiers out before the Germans occupied the whole of the Atlantic coast of France. Ball certainly knew France inside out, and for a long time he was one of the most valuable members of our little band of conspirators. He made trips from Marseille to the frontier every other day or so, taking two or three refugees with him each time he went, and seeing that they got safely over the frontier into Spain before he started back to Marseille to get the next lot.”
Ball was most effective when he guided refugees out of Marseilles and over the Pyrenees. On one occasion, Ball helped guide Heinrich Mann and Golo Mann, son and nephew of Thomas Mann, and their families along with Mr. and Mrs. Franz Werfel, over the Pyrenees.
“On our way down to the hotel, they told me what had happened. It had been a very difficult climb, especially for Heinrich Mann, who was seventy. Ball and Golo Mann virtually had to carry him most of the way. Not that he wasn’t game. He was the gamest of the lot. It was simply that he couldn’t make the grade without help.” [Fry, 1945, p. 68]
These missions over the Pyrenees were extremely dangerous and Ball was able to evade being discovered or captured with his precious cargo.
Ball also was able to obtain various documents and papers from various sources. He obtained false documents, exit visas and papers, even purchasing them on the black market, when necessary.
“I hadn’t been back in Marseille more than a few days before someone brought us word that Georg Bernhard and his wife were at Narbonne. Bernhard was one of the three men Barrelet had told me the Gestapo was looking for. We sent Ball down to Narbonne to get the Bernhard’s and bring them back toe Marseille, with the idea of sending them through Spain as fast as we could. We hid them in one of these hotels called maisons de passé which serve, in France, one of the principal functions of tourist camps in the United States. The proprietor, thinking them just another amorous—if somewhat over-age—couple enjoying a clandestine romance, obligingly overlooked the formality of reporting their presence to the police. Their American visas were waiting for them at the Consulate.” [Fry, 1945, p. 83]
Dick Ball attempted to obtain a boat to take refugees from Marseilles to the port of Lisbon. This attempt failed. Ball had been duped by some Marseilles racketeers. Deeply ashamed, he left the ERC. Varian Fry called Ball one of his most effective operatives.
[Fry, Varian. Surrender on Demand. (New York: Random House, 1945), pp. 53-54, 58, 61-64, 68, 83, 91-92, 106-110, 112-113. Varian Fry Papers, Butler Library, Columbia University, New York. Gold, Mary Jayne. Crossroads Marseilles, 1940. (New York: Doubleday, 1980), pp. 163, 173, 191-195, 235-236, 322. Marino, Andy. A Quiet American: The Secret War of Varian Fry. (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1999), pp. 148-149, 151, 155-156, 164-171, 185-186. Isenberg, Sheila. A Hero of Our Own: The Story of Varian Fry. (New York: Random House).]
Dr. Frank Bohn, American Federation of Labor, Marseilles, France, 1940
Dr. Frank Bohn, of the American Federation of Labor, was active in the rescue of Jews in Marseilles, 1940-41. He worked alongside the Emergency Rescue Committee (ERC) to help save labor leaders, union officials, democratic politicians and other refugees who were being sought under article 19 by the Gestapo and the Nazis. Varian Fry was told about Frank Bohn’s activities before he left for Marseilles. In addition, many of these refugees had been opposition forces against the Nazi’s and had been fighting fascism’s rise in Europe since the early 1930’s. Many of the refugees rescued by Bohn were Jews.
American foreign policy in the late 1930’s and early 1940’s had declared many of these refugees to be undesirable and did not always qualify for immigration papers. The American Federation of Labor (AFL) had pressured Roosevelt to grant a number of emergency “visitors visas-not for permanent residence in the US.” These temporary emergency visas would temporarily get these refugees out of danger.
Frank Bohn, like Varian Fry, was heavily involved in the illegal activity of smuggling refugees into Spain over the Pyrenees Mountains. Bohn worked with various foreign consulates in Marseilles to obtain passports, visas and other papers. Frank Bohn received much help from Hiram “Harry” Bingham at the American consulate in Marseilles. Bohn was not above obtaining fake documentation and passports for his refugees. Early on in their missions, Fry and Bohn agreed to divide their activities in the rescue of refugees. Fry and the ERC would help artists, and Bohn would take care of labor leaders, politicians and political activists.
Varian Fry writes of meeting Frank Bohn when he arrived for his mission in Marseilles:
“The truth was that I was at a complete loss about how to begin, and where. My job was to save certain refugees. But how was I to do it? How was I to get in touch with them? What could I do for them when I found them? I had to find the answers before it was too late, and the first person to consult was Frank Bohn. A few weeks after the French defeat, the American Federation of Labor had succeeded in persuading the State Department to grant emergency visitors’ visas to a long list of European labor leaders, and had sent Bohn over to Marseille to help them escape. He was one of two or three Americans already in France whose names had been given me, in the strictest confidence, just before I left New York. I called on Bohn the morning of my second day in Marseille. I found him in his small room on the third floor of the Hotel Splendide. When he opened the door to my knock, and I told him who I was and why I had come to France, he grabbed my hand in a great big friendly clutch and fairly yanked me across the threshold into the room. ‘Oh, I’m so glad you’ve come,’ he said, in the tones of an itinerant revivalist, pumping my arm up and down vigorously. ‘We need all the help we can get. Come in, come in. I’m so glad you’ve come.’” [Fry, 1945, p. 7]
“’Well, then,’ I said, ‘perhaps you can tell me just what the situation is and what I have to do to get my people out.’
“’Certainly, old man,’ Bohn said. ‘For most of them it’s very simple. The disorder is working in our favor, you see. The French aren’t giving any exit visas to refugees at all, and it’s even very hard for them to get safe conduct to come to Marseille and get their American visas. But the police don’t seem to be paying much attention to them, and the Gestapo doesn’t seem to have gotten around to them either. This has been a lucky thing for the refugees. It’s given them time to get away. So far we’ve found that the ordinary refugee can travel pretty safely without a safe conduct. If they have overseas visas they can get Portuguese and Spanish transit visas, and once they have these they can go down to the frontier and cross on foot.’” [Fry, 1945, p. 8]
“After talking to Bohn, I decided to alter my plans. Instead of traveling around Southern France on a bicycle, pretending to be a relief worker investigating the needs of the French people, but really locating refugees on my lists and helping them escape, I’d set up headquarters at the Splendide, as Bohn had done, and have the refugees come to me. Bohn got me a room at the Splendide like his own, and I moved down from the Suisse that same day.” [Fry, 1945, p. 12]
“Then I wrote letters to all the refugees on my lists whose addresses I had, telling them I had just arrived from the States with messages for them, and asking them to come to Marseille to see me if they could. I got more addresses from Bohn. Some of the people on my lists he had already seen himself. About others he or his assistant, Erika Bierman and Bedrich Heine, had some information. But most of them were still missing. Nobody knew where they were or what had become of them.” [Fry, 1945, p. 12]
Fry describes meeting with Vichy authorities regarding their activities in Marseilles.
“Bohn and I decided we’d have to take steps to square ourselves with the authorities or the jig would be up before the job was half finished. We had been doing our ‘underground’ work almost literally in the open. The term is always a misnomer, because ‘underground’ work is almost never really carried on under ground. Instead, it is carried on behind a screen, the screen of some ‘cover’ activity or other which is entirely innocent in itself but serves to explain the part of the work which can’t be hidden and to conceal the rest. In our case the obvious cover activity was relief work.
“When I got my appointment at the Prefecture, I took Bohn with me… At the Prefecture we were received by a high official, the Secretary-General. We told him we had come to France to help refugees in distress and asked for permission to found a small committee for the purpose.
“The Secretary General was very correct, but very frigid. He said the French authorities would welcome the committee provided it did nothing illegal. We pretended to be amazed and hurt by the suggestion that we would even think of doing anything illegal, and the Secretary-General gave us the permission we had asked for. But we felt we’d have to be very careful after that if we weren’t to land in the jug, or be expelled.” [Fry, 1945, p. 34]
Bohn and Fry discuss Bingham at the consulate and how he supports them:
It was early in the morning. My telephone rang while I was eating breakfast in my room. When I answered it, I heard Bohn’s voice at the other end of the line. He was speaking in a hoarse stage whisper.
“It’s the police, old man,” he said. “Don’t worry. We had to expect this. The Consulate will take care of us if anything serious happens. I’m going down now. You’d better look around your room and destroy your papers before they come for you. I’ll see you downstairs.” [Fry, 1945, p. 33]
The French Prefecture called to complain about the activities of Bohn, Fry and Lowrie:
“The Prefecture had also called in the American Consul and told him it was inquiet—uneasy—about the ‘activities of Dr. Bohn and Mr. Fry.’ It had also complained about Lowrie’s activities in behalf of the Czech soldiers, and had warned Vochoc not to use any more false passports. Lowrie had given up his illegal activities, and Vochoc had decided to issue no more passports.” [Fry, 1945, p. 80]
Fry talks about how he, Bohn and other persons were evading the laws of the countries with which the US maintains friendly relations:
“Then I went to the American Consulate and saw the Consul-General. He advised me to leave France at once, before I was arrested or expelled. He wouldn’t tell me what the Prefecture had said, or show me the text of the report he had cabled the State Department while I was in Spain. But he did give me the text of the Department’s reply, which contained the definite statement that ‘THIS GOVERNMENT CANNOT COUNTENANCE THE ACTIVITIES AS REPORTED OF DR. BOHN AND MR. FRY AND OTHER PERSONS IN THEIR EFFORTS IN EVADING THE LAWS OF COUNTRIES WITH WHICH THE UNITED STATES MAINTAINS FRIENDLY RELATIONS.’” [Fry, 1945, p. 81]
Under pressure from the US government, Bohn left Marseilles in October 1941.
“During all this time Bohn and I had been summoned to the Consulate almost every day to be asked when we were planning to leave France. We had also been receiving cables from our relatives, friends and employers in the United States urging us to come back. Bohn succumbed to the pressure and left Marseille at the end of the first week of October.” [Fry, 1945, p. 92]
Bohn was replaced by his chief assistant, Bedrich Heine.
“A few days after Bohn had left, his chief assistant, Bedrich Heine, the young German socialist, began coming to our little office in the rue Grignan to consult us about his people and advise us about ours.” [Fry, 1945, p. 93]
“About the time the police came to look for Mehring and the others, the prefecture called in the Consul and said it was ‘uneasy’ about ‘the activities of Dr. Bohn and Mr. Fry.’ Friedlander supposed it had had something to do with Bohn’s boat—probably the Italian armistice commission had put the screws on the prefecture to get rid of both of us. Whatever the explanation, the Consulate was bringing tremendous pressure on Bohn to persuade him to leave France, and had thrown my staff into confusion by telling them that I would never be permitted to reenter the country.” (Varian Fry, unpublished manuscript for Surrender on Demand, p. 184, Box 14, Folder 1, Varian Fry Papers, Butler Library, Columbia University, New York)
[Fry, Varian. Surrender on Demand. (New York: Random House, 1945), pp. 7-12, 22-23, 33-34, 51, 54-56, 59, 80-81, 92-93. Varian Fry Papers, Butler Library, Columbia University, New York. Marino, Andy. A Quiet American: The Secret War of Varian Fry. (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1999), pp. 114-117, 134, 151, 158, 160, 186. Isenberg, Sheila. A Hero of Our Own: The Story of Varian Fry. (New York: Random House), pp. 12, 15-17, 74, 81, 85, 86, 97, 105. Ryan, Donna F. The Holocaust and the Jews of Marseille: The Enforcement of Anti-Semitic Policies in Vichy France. (Urbana, IL: The University of Illinois Press, 1996), p. 141.]
Mme. E. Hené-Bohn
[Varian Fry Papers, Butler Library, Columbia University, New York. “Liste des Collaborateurs Ayant Fait Partie du Staff du ‘Centre Americain de Secours’ Dupuis sa Fondation,” 2/9/41, Varian Fry Papers.]
Marcel Chaminade
[Fry, 1945, pp. 102, 107, 108, 125, 221. Varian Fry Papers, Butler Library, Columbia University, New York. “Liste des Collaborateurs Ayant Fait Partie du Staff du ‘Centre Americain de Secours’ Dupuis sa Fondation,” 2/9/41, Varian Fry Papers.]
L. Coppée
[Varian Fry Papers, Butler Library, Columbia University, New York. “Liste des Collaborateurs Ayant Fait Partie du Staff du ‘Centre Americain de Secours’ Dupuis sa Fondation,” 2/9/41, Varian Fry Papers.]
Ludwig Copperman
Ludwig Copperman took the name Louis Coppée. He was a German employee of the ERC. [Varian Fry Papers, Butler Library, Columbia University, New York. Marino, 1999, p. 267]
Mme. A. Dalsace
[Varian Fry Papers, Butler Library, Columbia University, New York. “Liste des Collaborateurs Ayant Fait Partie du Staff du ‘Centre Americain de Secours’ Dupuis sa Fondation,” 2/9/41, Varian Fry Papers.]
Miriam Davenport, Emergency Rescue Committee, Marseille, France
Miriam Davenport (Ebel) was one of the important core volunteers of the Emergency Rescue Committee in Marseilles, France, 1940-41. She graduated from Smith College and went to study art in Paris. While traveling from Paris, she ran into the German poet Walter Mehring in Toulouse. Miriam Davenport helped Walter Mehring escape the Nazi’s. After meeting Miriam, Fry states in his autobiography,
“I added her to the staff immediately. She spoke French and German as few Americans do, and her knowledge of art and artists made her very useful when we had to distinguish between the many refugees who claimed to be artists worthy of our help. When she had never heard of them, and they had no specimens of their work to show, she would tell them to go down to the View Port and make a sketch. When they brought the sketch back, she would look at it and decide right away whether they were any good or not. She also handled university professors with tact and skill…”
In 1999, just before her death, Miriam wrote of her experiences in interviewing refugees:
“These conferences marked the end of long, hard-working days. Ostensibly we were a general relief agency; no sign at the door said more than Centre Américain de Secours, a bland American aid center. When asked what we were doing, we replied that we were there to advise people on how to emigrate to America and to give financial assistance where needed—all perfectly legal. Our financial assistance was either enough to live on and/or travel on, or none; general relief cases were sent to other agencies. When we opened at eight every morning, a long, snaking queue of desperate people was already jamming the two corridors and the flight of stairs leading to our office. From eight until noon we interviewed as many as we decently could. I know that I saw some forty every day and the others saw as many. After the sacred two hours of lunch, we began our conferences in the office, stopped at seven for dinner, ate between seven and nine, and then went to Varian’s room to continue conferring. Before the next day we had to decide among us who could be helped and who not. Our day usually ended between midnight and one a.m. This went on seven days a week. The only leisure time was mealtime and, at times, that was business, too.”
In summarizing her experiences with the ERC, Davenport concludes:
“I knew then that this was a moment of rare privilege. Somehow, through a strange confluence of chance encounters and unlikely coincidences, I had been swept into a place where grief, consternation, disillusionment, and anger had become the gentle servants of justice…Our little tribe of amateurs, relying solely on brute intellect and the leadership of a reincarnated ‘Scarlet Pimpernel,’ had been successfully outwitting Hitler’s Gestapo to save the very people Nazism most feared.”
After leaving the ERC, Miriam Davenport escaped to Lisbon. She arrived in the United States just before Pearl Harbor. During the war, Davenport did public relations and raised money for the International Rescue and Relief Committee. She was also active in other cultural areas.
In 1960, Miriam taught art and French to local children in Riverside, Iowa.
[Fry, Varian. Surrender on Demand. (New York: Random House, 1945), pp. 38-39, 87, 117. Varian Fry Papers, Butler Library, Columbia University, New York. “Liste des Collaborateurs Ayant Fait Partie du Staff du ‘Centre Americain de Secours’ Dupuis sa Fondation,” 2/9/41, Varian Fry Papers. Gold, Mary Jayne. Crossroads Marseilles, 1940. (New York: Doubleday, 1980), pp. 74-76, 90-91, 103-113, 138-142, 148, 152, 159-162, 167, 185, 200-201, 209, 211, 229, 238-239, 243, 259, 382-383, 394-395. Marino, Andy. A Quiet American: The Secret War of Varian Fry. (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1999), pp. 133-134, 139, 145, 186-187, 202, 267, 314. Isenberg, Sheila. A Hero of Our Own: The Story of Varian Fry. (New York: Random House), pp. 17-18, 34-35, 38, 69, 104, 112, 117-127. Ryan, Donna F. The Holocaust and the Jews of Marseille: The Enforcement of Anti-Semitic Policies in Vichy France. (Urbana, IL: The University of Illinois Press, 1996), pp. 142, 145. Ebel, Miriam Davenport. An Unsentimental Education: A Memoir by Miriam Davenport Ebel. (1999).]
O. de Neufville
[Varian Fry Papers, Butler Library, Columbia University, New York. “Liste des Collaborateurs Ayant Fait Partie du Staff du ‘Centre Americain de Secours’ Dupuis sa Fondation,” 2/9/41, Varian Fry Papers.]
M. Diamont
[Varian Fry Papers, Butler Library, Columbia University, New York. “Liste des Collaborateurs Ayant Fait Partie du Staff du ‘Centre Americain de Secours’ Dupuis sa Fondation,” 2/9/41, Varian Fry Papers.]
A. (Alfonso) Diaz
[Fry, 1945, pp. 209, 227. Varian Fry Papers, Butler Library, Columbia University, New York. “Liste des Collaborateurs Ayant Fait Partie du Staff du ‘Centre Americain de Secours’ Dupuis sa Fondation,” 2/9/41, Varian Fry Papers.]
Captain Dubois, French Police Inspector, Marseilles, France
Captain Dubois was a French police inspector in Marseilles, France. Captain Dubois was an early contact with Hiram “Harry” Bingham, the Vice Consul at the US consulate in Marseilles. Dubois was introduced to Fry by US Vice Consul Bingham.
“Just before the Bouline left, Harry Bingham invited me to dinner at his villa, to meet Captain Dubois. Captain Dubois was a member of the Marseille staff of the Sûreté Nationale. Though a Vichy policeman, he was friendly to England and America, and Harry thought it would be useful for me to know him.
“It was. Dubois was the first French official I had met who was familiar with my case and willing to talk about it. When I asked him what the police had against me, he said, with a sly smile I couldn’t quite fathom, ‘Smuggling people out of the country.’
“’Anything else?’ I asked.
“’Yes, trading in foreign exchange.’” [Fry, 1945, pp. 89-90]
Dubois provided reports on police raids to Bingham and later to Varian Fry and the Emergency Rescue Committee (ERC).
“It was during the same week, I think, that Beamish and I ran across Captain Dubois, our police friend. He was having a drink with some pals in the rear of a café on the Canebière when we came in to get a late supper. After a few minutes he got up and came over to our table…
“’What do you know about the Consul of Siam?’ he asked.
“’Nothing much,’ I answered. ‘Why?’
“’Ever had any dealings with him?’
“’No,’ I said honestly, ‘none at all. I’ve met him, and heard him talk about his “possibilities”; but I haven’t tried them. Why do you ask?’
“’Well, since it’s you who tell me, I believe you,’ he said. ‘We’re going to raid him tomorrow, and I wouldn’t want you to have an histoire.’” [Fry, 1945, p. 132]
He was entirely sympathetic to the rescue activities of the various agencies operating in Marseilles. Dubois’ information helped Fry and his ERC to stay out of trouble.
“For two weeks after the Sinaïa affair I was followed by a group of eight dicks, working in shifts. I know, because Captain Dubois told me. The filature was being done by the Commissariat Spécial at the Prefecture, he said, on direct orders of the Sûreté Nationale at Vichy.
“Thanks to the tipoff, I saw to it that the flics’ [detectives’] daily reports were wholly innocuous and, after a couple of weeks, the Sûreté apparently got tired of learning where I had lunch and dinner every day and called the whole thing off. But as long as it lasted it was uncomfortable enough, and I had to be very careful what I did and whom I saw.
“As soon as I learned I was being followed, I warned everybody to be extremely careful.” [Fry, 1945, p. 150]
Eventually, Dubois was found out and was transferred to an undesirable post in Rabat, Morocco. Dubois had also been transferred for his pro-British sentiments. On one occasion, Dubois had warned the ERC of a planned police raid on the consulate of Siam, which had been supplying the ERC with visas. After Dubois’ transfer, Fry had to begin bailing people out of prison and paying bribes to French police.
“Captain Dubois, our friend and protector in the Service de la Surveillance du Territoire, has been ordered to Rabat. For him it is a demotion; for us it is a calamity a serious loss. He generally managed to warn us of impending police raids before they happened. Now we have no one we can count on for that.
Dubois thinks he is being sent down to Morocco as a kind of punishment because he is pro-British and pro-American. (Dated Wednesday, April 2 [1941], Varian Fry, unpublished manuscript for Surrender on Demand, p. 499, Varian Fry Papers, Butler Library, Columbia University, New York)
[Fry, Varian. Surrender on Demand. (New York: Random House, 1945), pp. 89-91, 132, 148-150, 208. Varian Fry Papers, Butler Library, Columbia University, New York. Gold, Mary Jayne. Crossroads Marseilles, 1940. (New York: Doubleday, 1980), pp. 333. Ryan, Donna F. The Holocaust and the Jews of Marseille: The Enforcement of Anti-Semitic Policies in Vichy France. (Urbana, IL: The University of Illinois Press, 1996), pp. 147, 173, 209. Marino, Andy. A Quiet American: The Secret War of Varian Fry. (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1999), pp. 209-210, 238-239, 277.]
Charles Fawcett, Emergency Rescue Committee, Marseille, France
Charles Fawcett was a volunteer and organizer of the rescue activities of refugees in Marseilles. Fawcett was one of several young Americans in Marseilles who had volunteered in the American Volunteer Ambulance Corps before the armistice of June 1940. Fawcett was originally from Georgia. He volunteered with the ERC to process refugees and to guard the door to the offices of the ERC in the Hôtel Splendide.
“The opening of the office made the crowds of frantic refugees who came to us for help larger than ever. We had to get someone to handle the traffic in the waiting room and outside in the hall and stairs. There were several young Americans in Marseille who had served in the American Volunteer Ambulance Corps before the armistice. We picked out one of them as doorman and reception clerk. His name was Charles Fawcett, but everyone in Marseille called him Shar-lee.
“Charlie was a youngster from the South—Georgia, I think—who had been doing ‘art’ work in Paris before the war. I put that word in quotation marks because as far as I could see Charlie’s conception of art consisted of drawings of pretty girls, preferably nude. He had many feminine admirers, and there was always at least one of them in the office as long as he worked for us. Most of the time it was a young Polish girl named Lili. Charlie was so chivalrous about Lili that he was actually trying to get her husband up from North Africa, where he was stranded, so the two could be together again.
“As a doorman, Charlie had one great drawback. He couldn’t speak anything but English, and most of the refugees didn’t speak any English at all. But his ambulance-driver’s uniform awed the over-insistent ones, and his good nature cheered the depressed among them. If few understood what he said, none disliked him. In fact, I think he was probably the most popular member of the staff.” [Fry, 1945, pp. 37-38]
[Fry, Varian. Surrender on Demand. (New York: Random House, 1945), pp. 37-38, 53, 93, 108, 131, 149, 152-153. Varian Fry Papers, Butler Library, Columbia University, New York. “Liste des Collaborateurs Ayant Fait Partie du Staff du ‘Centre Americain de Secours’ Dupuis sa Fondation,” 2/9/41, Varian Fry Papers. New York. Gold, Mary Jayne. Crossroads Marseilles, 1940. (New York: Doubleday, 1980), pp. 163-164, 168, 173, 232, 257-258, 309. Marino, Andy. A Quiet American: The Secret War of Varian Fry. (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1999), pp. 86-88, 103, 106, 213, 131-132, 139-140, 144, 192, 199, 202, 209, 217, 261. Isenberg, Sheila. A Hero of Our Own: The Story of Varian Fry. (New York: Random House).]
Mlle. C. Feibel
[Varian Fry Papers, Butler Library, Columbia University, New York. “Liste des Collaborateurs Ayant Fait Partie du Staff du ‘Centre Americain de Secours’ Dupuis sa Fondation,” 2/9/41, Varian Fry Papers.]
Mlle. J. Fialin
[Varian Fry Papers, Butler Library, Columbia University, New York. “Liste des Collaborateurs Ayant Fait Partie du Staff du ‘Centre Americain de Secours’ Dupuis sa Fondation,” 2/9/41, Varian Fry Papers.]
Lena Fischmann, Emergency Rescue Committee, 1940-41
Lena Fischmann was a volunteer organizer and administrator for the Emergency Rescue Committee. Fry recalls, in his memoirs:
“Meanwhile my work had grown so that I had to get more help. Besides callers, I had begun to get letters from all over the unoccupied zone appealing for help, many of them from the concentration camps. An American relief worker whom I asked to recommend a secretary sent me Lena Fishman. Before the occupation, Lena had worked in the Paris office of the Joint Distribution Committee—the great agency which distributes the funds of the various American Jewish charities to the functional organizations which spend it. Lena was vivacious and ebullient, like her Polish ancestors. She could take shorthand with equal ease in English, French and German, and she spoke and wrote Russian, Polish and Spanish as well.
“By this time Beamish’s work was keeping him out most of the day, so Lena took his desk. With great difficulty we managed to buy a typewriter—for an astronomical price—and Lena wrote answers to the letters all day and typed the cables every night. She also took a hand at interviewing and was generally useful, especially in calming the excited.
“…She was always mixing languages. At the end of the day, when she was about to go, she would take out her compact and say, ‘Je fais ma petite beauté, and I leave you.’
“She was the best-natured secretary I’ve ever had. She would work all day and half the night, under the most difficult and trying circumstances, and then bounce in again the next morning, fresh and bright, ready to begin another day.” [Fry, 1945, pp. 34-35]
Andy Marino describes how Lena found her way to the ERC:
“Lena’s story of transit to the secret city was another hair-raising tail. Before the war she had worked in Paris at the Liaison Committee for the High Commissioner for Refugees, and continued to help the stateless until the Germans were at the point of entering Paris, when she fled with four friends in the direction of Bordeaux. When she arrived there, the American consulate gave Lena, who said she was Polish, a particularly stiff refusal to her request for a visa.”
[Fry, Varian. Surrender on Demand. (New York: Random House, 1945), pp. 35, 38-39, 42, 70, 74-75, 79-80, 93-94, 100, 127, 129, 131, 133-139, 141, 148-149, 208-209, 239. Varian Fry Papers, Butler Library, Columbia University, New York. “Liste des Collaborateurs Ayant Fait Partie du Staff du ‘Centre Americain de Secours’ Dupuis sa Fondation,” 2/9/41, Varian Fry Papers. Gold, Mary Jayne. Crossroads Marseilles, 1940. (New York: Doubleday, 1980), pp. 157, 197, 201, 225, 264. Marino, Andy. A Quiet American: The Secret War of Varian Fry. (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1999), pp. 132-133, 139, 182, 185-187, 202, 228-231, 235, 338-339. Isenberg, Sheila. A Hero of Our Own: The Story of Varian Fry. (New York: Random House).]
Hans and Lisa Fittko, Emergency Rescue Committee, Marseille, France
Hans and Lisa Fittko led many refugees over the various escape routes from Marseilles into Spain. The Fittko’s were recruited by Varian Fry. The route they took over the mountains was called the “F” route, after Fittko. They would trek across the Pyrenees, sometimes several times a week. More than 100 refugees were rescued in this manner.
Fry writes in his memoirs about the Fittko’s:
“It was in this period that Beamish and I organized and perfected the ‘F’ route. Johannes F[ittko] was a German social democrat who had smuggled underground workers in and out of Germany across the Dutch border before and during the war. At our request, he and his wife went down to Banyuls, near Cerbère, and took rooms in a house on the outskirts of the town. They could do this because they had beautiful French identity cards, made for them by the little Austrian cartoonist, Bill Freier. The cards made [Fittko] and his wife French citizens from the forbidden zone, where no Frenchman could go to check up on their credentials.
“In Banyuls… [Fittko] and his wife established themselves as French refugees who could not return to their homes. They applied for and received the small weekly allowances the Pétain government granted such persons. They became friendly with their neighbors. They worked in the vineyards. Often they took jobs in fields near the frontier. On weekends they walked in the hills, studied the trails and observed the habits of the frontier guards. When they knew every footpath intimately, they gave us a prearranged signal, and we began sending the clients down to them.
“So that the clients might not risk arrest on the way, we usually provided them with Freier identity cards. So that no police agent could present himself to [Fittko] as a client and discover our system, we also gave each of our departing protégés half of a torn strip of colored paper. On the end of each strip there was a number. [Fittko] had the other half, with the same number on it. If the numbers agreed, and the two pieces of paper fitted each other perfectly, he knew that the person was what he represented himself to be.
“[Fittko] had already explained to his neighbors in Banyuls that he had many French friends he intended to invite when he got settled. They were, he said, like him, refugees from the forbidden zone, and, like him, unable to rejoinder leurs foyers—rejoin their hearths—as the official phrase had it. They would enjoy a reunion with old friends from the same district or town. The neighbors were sympathetic and welcomed the refugees as they would have welcomed any French citizens driven from their homes by the Germans. They readily offered them work in their fields.
“Dressed as farm laborers, or country people on a holiday, [Fittko]and the clients would go out in the early morning, carrying their few possessions in colored handkerchiefs or string bags, as though they were loaves of bread and bottles of wine for lunch. Sometimes they would work in the fields all day. At other times they would go straight to the hills for a picnic. After dark, [Fittko] would come back to Banyuls alone. If asked, he would explain that his friends had had to return unexpectedly to their temporary homes in other towns. Generally he wasn’t even asked; he did his work so skillfully that no one was suspicious of him.
“In the course of about six months [Fittko] passed more than 100 people over the frontier this way. Not a single one of them was ever arrested, or even questioned by the police.” [Fry, 1945, pp. 123-124]
The story of Hans and Lisa Fittko’s escape from Marseilles eloquently describes the plight of refugees. Hans and Lisa Fittko were Austrian refugees. Hans was Christian and Lisa was Jewish. They were both wanted by the Nazis.
“In the apocalyptic atmosphere of 1940 Marseille, there were new stories every day about absurd escape attempts; plans involving fantasy boats and fictitious captains, visas for countries not found on any map, and passports issued by nations that no longer existed. One got used to hearing via the grapevine which sure-fire plan had fallen apart like a house of cards that day.” [Fittko, 1991, p. 105]
“Governments of all countries seemed to be involved in this ‘era of new decrees,’ issuing commands and instructions, revoking them, first enforcing and then lifting them again. In order to get through, one had to learn to slip through the cracks and loopholes, using every trick and stratagem to slither out of this labyrinth, which was continually taking on new configurations.” [Fittko, 1991, p. 113]
“Faut se débrouiller: one must know how to help oneself, to clear a way out of the debacle—that’s the way one lived and survived in France back then. Faut se débrouiller meant: buy counterfeit food stamps, scrounge milk for the children, obtain some—any—kind, of permit—in short, manage to do or obtain what didn’t officially exist. For many that also meant to do or obtain such things by means of going along with officialdom, by collaborating. But for us, the apatrides, everything we did revolved around avoiding the concentration camps, not falling into the hands of the Gestapo.” [Fittko, 1991, pp. 113-114]
Lisa Fittko, in her book, discusses her plans to cross the border through the Pyrenees. In it, she discusses the mayor of Banyuls, Monsieur Azéma.
“We’d heard about people who in the meantime had gotten across to Spain; in Banyuls, the last town before the border, there was a mayor, Monsieur Azéma. He was a Socialist, and was able and willing to help the emigrés.
“So first of all I had to make cautious contact with him and, if possible, with other local residents favorably inclined toward the emigrés. Everything clicked surprisingly fast, although conditions had recently become more difficult; the usual route via the border town Cerbère was now closely watched and must be avoided. But Monsieur Azéma revealed a safe and secret smuggler’s route to me; he called it la route Lister. General Lister of the Republican army had used it for his troops during the Spanish Civil War.
“Maire Azéma insisted that the emigrés themselves should organize the border crossing, thus making sure that the new route would also be known to and used by those who came after. ‘Perhaps one day I will no longer be here,’ he said. Also it was quite imprudent for so many refugees to be reporting to him at the mairie. Not until later did I understand just why he’d figured on disappearing some day: he was known to the authorities for his activities during the Civil War. It would be best (he said) if someone could remain here in Banyuls for a time, to help the refugees over the Pyrenees.
“’I can provide you with housing and food-ration cards temporarily.’ He said, and took a few cans of milk and vegetables from a crate under his desk. ‘Pour le bébé,’ he added.” [Fittko, 1991, p. 101]
Fittko continues:
“First I’d gone down to the harbor and gotten into conversation with several dock workers. One of them took me to the union shop steward. Without asking many questions, he seemed to understand what it was all about. He had advised me to look up the mayor in Banyuls-sur-Mer, Monsieur Azéma. He was the man, as I had already been told in Marseille, who would help me to find a safe route for my family and friends who wanted to cross the border.
“’He’s a wonderful man, this Mayor Azéma,’ I continued telling Benjamin. ‘He spent hours with me working out every detail.’” [Fittko, 1991, p. 104]
“The only really safe route that still remained, declared the mayor, was la route Lister. That meant that we had to cross the Pyrenees farther west, where the mountain crests were higher and thus the climb more strenuous.” [Fittko, 1991, p. 104]
In this quote, Varian Fry, of the ERC, and Frank Bohn, of the AF of L, recruit Hans and Lisa Fittko to be guides and to lead refugees over the Pyrenees into Spain. Hans and Lisa had just led Walter Benjamin over the Pyrenees. Despite the fact that they were wanted refugees and in danger, they agreed to stay on and lead these dangerous border crossings.
“Fry came right to the point (we learned later that Bohn didn’t understand French): Yes, it had to do with the border crossing. They knew that now it was difficult and that I had guided Benjamin over a new route. There were still many emigrés waiting whom the Centre had supplied with papers. Would I help these people, or better, would both of us help them?
“’Yes, certainly,’ I answered. ‘I can sketch and describe the route to you.’ Indeed, that was precisely our intention, that the information be passed on to those who came after.
“Fry said that he and his friend Bohn had actually thought differently about it. In order to rescue hundreds of the imperiled it was vital to have the border crossing organized, with a take-off point and guides who knew the mountains; someone must be there who had experience in this border project.
“Really, it was almost too good to be true. Then the new committee would help us with our border plans? Did they have capable coworkers? Whatever the case, they wanted to come up with the money needed to keep people there for a time.
“Fry and Bohn whispered a few words in English. Then Fry cleared his throat like someone who was about to make a speech: ‘That’s exactly what we want to talk to you about. The money is no problem; this all centers around finding the right person with border experience, someone who is prepared to do the job and on whom we can depend.’ He hawked again. ‘We’ve been told that both of you have brought people and anti-Nazi literature across the German border. Would you, for a few months—?’
“’We?’ said Hans. ‘No, that’s impossible.’
“’No,’ I echoed Hans, ‘we can’t afford to do that. Now that we finally have our papers, we must see if we ourselves can get across the mountains and out of France.’
“’Or, if that’s not feasible, we’ll hole up somewhere before the rest of the country is occupied.’ Hans paused. ‘Oh, maybe for a short time we can break someone in there.’ He looked at me. ‘What do you think?’
“I nodded. ‘The best thing would be if a Frenchman could be found…’
“’I promise you,’ Fry said, ‘that if you remain here during the border project, we will help you get out.’ [Fittko, 1991, pp. 118-119]
The F-Route was named after the Fittko’s.
“Fry believed it would be best if the committee let the new border project have a free hand in supplying the refugees with funds for the journey, each according to need. ‘When you have the new crossing route organized,’ he said, ‘what did you call it? La route—from now on let’s call it The F-Route. We can and will come up with financial support.”
“That all sounds reasonable, I thought, but what does he mean by ‘F-Route’? He was acting as if we’d already consented.” [Fittko, 1991, p. 120]
An entry in Lisa’s diary:
“1 November
“This week we brought people across three times, and twice the week before. Hans wrote to Fry in Marseille: ‘it’s going well with us, our friends have had no trouble…we take delight in mountain-climbing but we don’t want to overdo it, and possibly go on outings not more than twice weekly…the people around here will think we’re crazy if we continually go scrambling around in the mountains.’
“Each evening before, we sit down with the refugees and go over all the details: don’t speak until we’re in a safe area; carry nothing, don’t attract attention; how to talk your way out of it if something goes wrong. We describe the crossover to them in order to allay their fear of the unknown. We repeat with them what they have to do on the Spanish side: descent, customs post, entry stamp (take note: it’s called entrada), train to Portugal.” [Fittko, 1991, p. 126]
“The mayor of Cerbère (the French border town), Monsieur Cruzet, is a Socialist and ready to help; besides, he owns a transport firm. His business partner is the mayor of Port-Bou, the Spanish border town.” [Fittko, 1991, p. 127-128]
“Hans has ridden to Cerbère to work things out with Cruzet. He really shouldn’t do it without valid papers, for there’s a train inspection between Banyuls and Cerbère, and sometimes the Armistice Commission comes sniffing around. But, plainly, one of us must go, so Hans is off with the new assistant he’s meanwhile annexed, young Meyerhof, the eighteen-year-old son of the physiologist. His parents crossed the border some time ago but he’s lacking some papers, so he sits around here looking lonesome and forlorn. Monsieur Azéma related the story with great relish, how he, Monsieur le Maire de Banyuls, carried the youngster’s mother, the wife of the Nobel Prize-winner Meyerhof, from France to Spain piggyback because the path along the cemetery wall was too difficult for her.” [Fittko, 1991, p. 128]
“We brought the Groetzsches from Sopade across okay, it just went rather slowly; they’re not so young anymore. They relayed greetings from Fritz Heine—a succession of his friends are now arriving with United States visas.” [Fittko, 1991, p. 130]
“Monsieur Azéma, our elected mayor, has been quietly removed from office and replaced by a man from the Pétain government. The new mayor is some collaborationist official who isn’t even from this region. They’re being replaced everywhere, Socialist mayors especially, not to mention Communist ones.
“Azéma hasn’t been seen since. He’s no longer on the beach nor at the harbor as before, where he used to greet and converse with people now and then like an ordinary citizen.
“Now I remember how he’d said at the beginning: ‘Perhaps one day I’ll no longer be here.’” [Fittko, 1991, p. 133]
[Fry, Varian. Surrender on Demand. (New York: Random House, 1945), pp. 122-124, 133, 189, 198, 200, 203. Varian Fry Papers, Butler Library, Columbia University, New York. Fittko, Lisa. Escape through the Pyrénées. (Evanston, IL: Northwestern University Press, 1991). Gold, Mary Jayne. Crossroads Marseilles, 1940. (New York: Doubleday, 1980), pp. 256, 264, 288, 327, 375. Marino, Andy. A Quiet American: The Secret War of Varian Fry. (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1999), pp. 84-86, 156, 166, 193-195, 198, 241, 245-246. Isenberg, Sheila. A Hero of Our Own: The Story of Varian Fry. (New York: Random House, 1945). Klein, Anne. “Conscience, conflict and politics: The rescue of political refugees from southern France to the United States, 1940-1942.” Leo Baeck Institute Year Book, 43 (1998), 300-302. Ryan, Donna F. The Holocaust and the Jews of Marseille: The Enforcement of Anti-Semitic Policies in Vichy France. (Urbana, IL: The University of Illinois Press, 1996), pp. 83, 173.]
Bill Freier (Bill Spira), Emergency Rescue Committee, 1940-41
Bill Freier was an early volunteer for the Emergency Rescue Committee (ERC). Freier was an able and extremely competent artist who was able to forge necessary documents and especially various official stamps. Freier had been one of the most popular cartoonists in France before the war and, according to Fry:
“he went through the usual experiences: internment in a concentration camp, escape, flight to Marseille. He was a likable little fellow, and he seemed, and I’m sure was, a perfectly honest young man who wanted to help his fellow refugees and at the same time make enough money to keep alive. Freier had a girl-friend named Mina with whom he was deeply in love. They were hoping to get married and go to America together, and I guess he needed money for Mina’s support as well as his own. He was a very skilled draftsman, and he could imitate a rubber stamp so well that only an expert could have told it had been drawn with a brush. He used to buy blank identity cards at the tobacco shops, fill them in, and then imitate the rubber stamp of the Prefecture which made them official. I think he used to charge us only twenty-five francs—fifty cents—for the finished job. We made extensive use of his services, as did many other people. We also added him and his fiancée to the list of our clients, and cabled New York to ask the committee to get them visas.” [Fry, 1945]
Bill Freier was arrested by the French police.
“The police surprised him with all his [Freier’s] identity-card-forging paraphernalia around him. Though we hired a lawyer to defend him, we had little hope of being able to get him off, and every reason to believe that the finger of suspicion would point to us.” [Fry, 1945, p. 132]
Freier was arrested, but survived the war.
Fry wrote of Freier, in an unpublished portion of his Surrender on Demand manuscript:
“I have been to the Prefecture about Freier. They were very cold, asking superciliously why I was particularly interested in him: ‘Pourquoi est-ce que vous vous y intéressez tellement?’ I didn’t like that question, or the way it was put. Though Freier had begun to forge papers for his friends before I ever met him, and I was only one of his customers, I can’t afford to show an unusual interest in his case. I am afraid he will have to stay in Vernet until his visa arrives.” (Dated “Wednesday, March 19 [1941],” Varian Fry, unpublished manuscript for Surrender on Demand, p. 483, Varian Fry Papers, Butler Library, Columbia University, New York)
[Fry, Varian. Surrender on Demand. (New York: Random House, 1945), pp. 44-45, 123, 131, 132, 208, 238. Varian Fry Papers, Butler Library, Columbia University, New York. Marino, Andy. A Quiet American: The Secret War of Varian Fry. (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1999), pp. 141-142, 148, 155, 242, 267, 345. Isenberg, Sheila. A Hero of Our Own: The Story of Varian Fry. (New York: Random House).]
N. Friedlander
[Varian Fry Papers, Butler Library, Columbia University, New York. “Liste des Collaborateurs Ayant Fait Partie du Staff du ‘Centre Americain de Secours’ Dupuis sa Fondation,” 2/9/41, Varian Fry Papers.]
Jean Gemähling, Volunteer, Emergency Rescue Committee, Marseilles, France, 1940-41
Jean Gemahling was one of the principal volunteers with the Emergency Rescue Committee in Marseilles. He staffed the office and participated in numerous dangerous missions.
“Still another new recruit to the staff was Danny’s war comrade, Jean Gemahling, a blue-eyed, flaxen-haired youth from Strasbourg…Jean was a Catholic—at least, he had been born a Catholic. His father had been professor of history at the University of Strasbourg, and Jean had been educated at an English boarding school. He spoke English extremely well, though with a slight French accent, discernible under the English public schoolboy’s intonation. In Paris he had been a research chemist. Why, I could never find out, for he seemed to have very little interest in chemistry, and a great deal in the arts. In our office in Marseille he started as an interviewer but quickly graduated to other and more dangerous tasks. He was very quiet, and strongly inclined to blush furiously when spoken to, but in the course of time he displayed a courage and a devotion to duty as he saw it which many far rougher men would have had difficulty matching.” [Fry, 1945, pp. 101-102]
In 1945, Varian Fry published his memoirs. In it, he discusses the fate of Jean Gemahling.
“We have now accounted for all the members of the staff who remained in France, and for most of our co-conspirators. Jean was arrested for his underground activities only three months after I left—apparently the police had been observing him for a long time—but he was released on bail a few months later, and immediately disappeared. He was arrested once and perhaps twice subsequently, but both times he got away.” [Fry, 1945, p. 237]
After Fry’s forced departure from France, Bénédite, Wolff and Gemahling ran the ERC. Gemahling was arrested in November 1941.
Gemahling was active in the resistance movement and founded Service de Renseignements de Combat (Information Service of Combat—Combat was one of the early Resistance groups). It was later called Services de Renseignements du Mouvement de la Libération Nationale (MLN). The MLN became one of the chief resistance groups in both zones of France.
Jean Gemahling became one of the heads of this important intelligence network.
Gemahling was arrested twice and was imprisoned for six months.
For his activities, he was made an officer of the Legion of Honor.
Jean Gemahling was not Jewish.
[Fry, Varian. Surrender on Demand. (New York: Random House, 1945), pp. 101-102, 116, 122, 134, 140, 148, 151-152, 154, 164-165, 180-181, 184, 192-195, 198, 202, 205, 210, 214, 218, 221, 225, 228, 230, 237. Varian Fry Papers, Butler Library, Columbia University, New York. “Liste des Collaborateurs Ayant Fait Partie du Staff du ‘Centre Americain de Secours’ Dupuis sa Fondation,” 2/9/41, Varian Fry Papers. Gold, Mary Jayne. Crossroads Marseilles, 1940. (New York: Doubleday, 1980), pp. 203-204, 229, 238-239, 243, 245-246, 265, 271, 299, 322, 326, 335-340, 357, 371, 383, 390-391. Marino, Andy. A Quiet American: The Secret War of Varian Fry. (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1999), pp. 205, 213, 224, 271, 274, 287, 317-320.]
Mary Jayne Gold, Volunteer, Emergency Rescue Committee, Marseilles, France, 1940-41
Mary Jayne Gold was one of the principal volunteers for the Emergency Rescue Committee, 1940-41. She went on numerous missions to help Jewish refugees. In addition, she financed some of the operations of the ERC. Mary Jayne Gold was not Jewish.
Before Fry was expelled from France, one of his last missions was to help release prisoners at the French concentration camp at Vernet. Fry had tried in vain to get them released and sent Mary Jayne Gold on a mission. In his autobiography, Fry speaks of Mary Jayne Gold’s mission to release the men at Vernet:
“We had sent letters to the commandant in the name of the committee, and Bingham had sent him letters and telegrams in the name of the Consulate—all to no avail. There were only two things left to try: escape, and feminine wiles. Escape from Vernet was extremely difficult. Because it was the camp of the “undesirables,” Vernet was more closely guarded than any other concentration camp in France. It was surrounded by a high, barbed-wire fence, and the section where Paul’s friends were interned had a second barbed-wire fence inside the first. The sentries were old soldiers, armed with rifles. They were held personally responsible for all escapes, and their instructions were to shoot to kill. Feminine wiles were safer, and we had a made-to-order charmer in the person of Mary Jayne Gold. The gregarious Miriam had met Mary Jayne at Toulouse. Young, blonde and beautiful, she was one of those fabulous Americans who used to live in France in the good old days. In Paris she had had a large apartment and a Vega Gull low-wing monoplane, in which she used to toot around Europe, flying to Switzerland for the skiing and to the Italian Riviera for the sun. At the outbreak of the war, she had presented the plane to the French government. It would have been hard to find a better person for the job we had in mind. Miriam spoke to Mary Jayne and Mary Jayne said she was willing. A few days after my return from Lisbon, she went to Vernet, saw the commandant, and succeeded where everybody else had failed. Accompanied by two soldier guards, the four men were allowed to come to Marseille and take their American visas.”
They eventually got visas from Harry Bingham at the American consulate and were able to escape to Lisbon.
In addition, Mary Jayne Gold lent money for the rescue of refugees. Miriam Davenport wrote in her autobiography:
“As the days wore on, I became more and more depressed by the number of endangered people who deserved help but were unknown to the old-boy network; recommendations made in New York fixed our conditions for giving assistance. We had our “first list” of some two hundred names which was augmented from time to time by others approved in New York. When I told Mary Jayne about this problem, she understood immediately and wanted to help right the wrong. But how? She had already decided to postpone going home but she was, herself, running out of funds. Most of her money was blocked in the States. More could be had only by dealing in a black market where she had no connections. She offered to give the Committee $3,000 to help those not recommended by New York provided we could also help her to get sufficient money for her personal needs. Varian bristled and refused outright to have anything to do with this proposal when I put it to him… Hermant, who had witnessed this scene, later took me aside and said, ‘Take me to your friend. I’ll help her.’ He was as good as his word and, in a very short time, the Centre Américain de Secours was some 330,000 francs richer. The money was specifically earmarked for those not on the New York lists. I called the new arrangement the “Gold List” and supervised its disbursements until I left Marseilles. One of those who was so helped, Karol Sternberg, has just retired from directing the International Relief Committee in New York, a descendant of our old outfit. Mary Jayne more than repaid Hermant’s kindness by later running a successful errand for him to get some men released from a high security concentration camp.”
[Gold, Mary Jayne. Crossroads Marseilles, 1940. (New York: Doubleday, 1980). Fry, Varian. Surrender on Demand. (New York: Random House, 1945), pp. 87, 101, 117, 137, 145-146, 150, 185. Varian Fry Papers, Butler Library, Columbia University, New York. “Liste des Collaborateurs Ayant Fait Partie du Staff du ‘Centre Americain de Secours’ Dupuis sa Fondation,” 2/9/41, Varian Fry Papers. Marino, Andy. A Quiet American: The Secret War of Varian Fry. (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1999), pp. 203-205, 229, 240, 256, 208-209, 224, 254, 279. Isenberg, Sheila. A Hero of Our Own: The Story of Varian Fry. (New York: Random House). Ryan, Donna F. The Holocaust and the Jews of Marseille: The Enforcement of Anti-Semitic Policies in Vichy France. (Urbana, IL: The University of Illinois Press, 1996), pp. 142, 145. Ebel, Miriam Davenport. An Unsentimental Education: A Memoir by Miriam Davenport Ebel. (1999).]
Anna Gruss, Volunteer Administrator with the Emergency Rescue Committee in Marseilles, 1940-1941
Anna Gruss was a faithful volunteer and senior administrator at the Emergency Rescue Committee in Marseilles. She stayed with the Rescue Committee until the very end. Fry remained friends with her until the end of his life.
“Thus, when Lena [Fischmann] left for the frontier, I replaced her with a new secretary named Mrs. Anna Gruss, a queer little gnome about four and a half feet tall, with a good heart, a sharp tongue, an immense capacity for work, and the virtue of genuine innocence of our undercover work. If Mrs. Gruss realized what we were doing, she never let on to it. When Lena came back from Cerbère, I took her back on the staff, and she stayed until she left France for good, the following Spring.” [Fry, 1945, p. 100]
In Fry’s memoirs, he extols his faithful secretary Anna Gruss.
“Mrs. Gruss, my gnome-like secretary, turned out to be a heroine. Throughout the long years of the total occupation she worked in our underground, helping to get money to the refugees or guide them to the frontier.” [Fry, 1945, p. 238]
[Fry, Varian. Surrender on Demand. (New York: Random House, 1945), pp. 100, 107, 149, 227, 238. Varian Fry Papers, Butler Library, Columbia University, New York. “Liste des Collaborateurs Ayant Fait Partie du Staff du ‘Centre Americain de Secours’ Dupuis sa Fondation,” 2/9/41, Varian Fry Papers. Marino, Andy. A Quiet American: The Secret War of Varian Fry. (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1999), pp. 213, 328.]
B. F. Heine
[Fry, 1945, pp. 8, 10-12, 93, 168, 170-173, 189, 203, 239. Varian Fry Papers, Butler Library, Columbia University, New York. “Liste des Collaborateurs Ayant Fait Partie du Staff du ‘Centre Americain de Secours’ Dupuis sa Fondation,” 2/9/41, Varian Fry Papers.]
Stephen Hessel
“Stephen Hessel is also leaving soon. He has his American visa, and he thinks his commanding officer in the Deuxième Bureau will give him a passport and exit visa.” Dated “Villa Air-Bel, Sunday, February 9 [1941], Morning.” (Varian Fry, unpublished manuscript for Surrender on Demand, p. 421, Box 14, Folder 1, Varian Fry Papers, Butler Library, Columbia University, New York)
[Varian Fry Papers, Butler Library, Columbia University, New York. “Liste des Collaborateurs Ayant Fait Partie du Staff du ‘Centre Americain de Secours’ Dupuis sa Fondation,” 2/9/41, Varian Fry Papers.]
Mme. Ch. Heyman
[Varian Fry Papers, Butler Library, Columbia University, New York. “Liste des Collaborateurs Ayant Fait Partie du Staff du ‘Centre Americain de Secours’ Dupuis sa Fondation,” 2/9/41, Varian Fry Papers.]
Mlle. I. Heyman
[Varian Fry Papers, Butler Library, Columbia University, New York. “Liste des Collaborateurs Ayant Fait Partie du Staff du ‘Centre Americain de Secours’ Dupuis sa Fondation,” 2/9/41, Varian Fry Papers.]
Lucie Heymann
Lucie Heymann was one of the replacements for Lena Fischmann. She was office manager for the ERC.
“Lucie Heymann, our new office manager, pleases me very much. She is a very civilized and cultured woman, and she gives the office an air of distinction it has always previously lacked. I confess I even like the way she comes into my office every morning to shake hands and say, Bonjour, patron.’
“Her daughter, Isabelle, is also working with us now.” (Dated “Thursday, February 27th [1941].” Varian Fry, unpublished draft of Surrender on Demand, pp. 456, Varian Fry Papers, Butler Library, Columbia University, New York)
[Varian Fry Papers, Butler Library, Columbia University, New York. Marino, 1999, p. 267]
Franz “Franzi” von Hildebrand, Emergency Rescue Committee, 1940-41
One of Varian Fry’s original volunteers and most able helpers was Franz “Franzi” von Hildebrand. Hildebrand originally was from a prominent Catholic family in Austria. He had already gained much experience working for a relief refugee agency in Paris. He held a Swiss passport, which helped provide important cover for his activities. Working with Fry, he helped process hundreds of refugees who came to the Hôtel Splendide in Marseilles. Hildebrand spoke many languages and was invaluable in helping to interview the many refugees who came for help. Hildebrand would prepare reports on the refugees and transmit these applications to the ERC’s New York office. The ERC New York office would then petition the State Department for exit papers. Hildebrand’s father, Professor Dietrich von Hildebrand, was a refugee himself hiding in Marseilles and was in danger of extradition.
Fry wrote of Hildebrand in his autobiography in 1945:
“Franzi had two other useful qualities besides being a Catholic. He had worked with an Austrian committee in Paris, and so he knew how a relief committee should be run. He also knew many of the non-socialist refugees and could advise me about them. I could get all the advice I needed about the socialists from Beamish and Paul Hagen’s friends, but I depended on Franzi and his father to tell me about many of the others” (pp. 26-27).
Hildebrand did much of the interviewing, along with Fry and Albert Hirschmann. In his autobiography, Fry writes:
“For a while Beamish [Hirschmann], Franzi [Hildebrand] and I handled all the work. There was a small writing table and a flat-topped dressing table, with mirror attached, in my room. We used the writing table as an interviewer’s desk and unscrewed the mirror from the dressing table and used it as a second interviewer’s desk. Beamish sat at one table and Franzi at the other. I usually sat on the edge of the bed, or stood up. The refugees waited in the corridor outside my door, and we let them in one at a time. I’d talk to them a little first, and then, if there seemed to be any chance at all that they were one of “our cases,” I’d pass them on to Beamish or Franzi, who would take down their names and addresses and other information about them on ordinary white file cards.”
If the refugee had no papers, or was not in possession of a proper passport, Hildebrand would arrange with Hiram Bingham at the US consulate in Marseilles for an Affidavit in Lieu of Passport. This valuable document, provided liberally by Vice Consul Bingham, was absolutely necessary in helping establish legitimacy of refugees trying to leave France.
Hildebrand was an able assistant to Varian Fry for the entire existence of the ERC’s mission in Marseilles. The work was extremely dangerous and he could have been arrested at any time for his activities.
[Fry, Varian. Surrender on Demand. (New York: Random House, 1945), pp. 26-30, 35, 38-39, 73-74, 102, 239. Varian Fry Papers, Butler Library, Columbia University, New York. “Liste des Collaborateurs Ayant Fait Partie du Staff du ‘Centre Americain de Secours’ Dupuis sa Fondation,” 2/9/41, Varian Fry Papers. Marino, Andy. A Quiet American: The Secret War of Varian Fry. (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1999), pp. 122-123, 214. Isenberg, Sheila. A Hero of Our Own: The Story of Varian Fry. (New York: Random House).]
E. Hirschberg
[Varian Fry Papers, Butler Library, Columbia University, New York. “Liste des Collaborateurs Ayant Fait Partie du Staff du ‘Centre Americain de Secours’ Dupuis sa Fondation,” 2/9/41, Varian Fry Papers.]
Otto Albert “Beamish” Hirschmann, Emergency Rescue Committee, 1940-41
Otto Albert Hirschmann was one of Varian Fry’s principal aides in the Emergency Rescue Committee (ERC). Hirschmann was a German Jewish political refugee. He was born in Berlin in 1915. He was a young, enthusiastic Francophile and attended French school in Berlin. He left Berlin just after Hitler came to power, on his 18th birthday. Hirschmann had been active in the democratic socialist opposition to the Nazis. In the fall of 1939, Hirschmann found himself in Paris. After war was declared, he joined the French army. After the fall of France, he deserted the French army and took the name of Albert Hermant. Fry called Hirschmann “Beamish” because of his broad smile.
According to Fry’s autobiography:
“Beamish had had a good deal of experience with underground work already, and, despite his youth (he was only twenty-five), he was a veteran anti-fascist with two wars to his credit. He had fought in the Spanish Republican army for nearly a year, and had then signed up for service in the French army.”
Fry later adds:
“Beamish soon became my specialist on illegal questions. It was he who found new sources of false passports when the Czech passports were exposed and couldn’t be used any more. It was he who arranged to change and transfer money on the black bourse when my original stock of dollars gave out. And it was he who organized the guide service over the frontier when it was no longer possible for people to go down to Cerbère on the train and cross over on foot.”
“Beamish had three problems to crack. One was to find new sources of passports; the second was to provide a supply of identity cards; and the third was to discover ways of getting fairly large sums of money into France without having the authorities know we were getting them or where they were coming from.
“The Czech passports were working all right, but we felt it was risky to send too many people through Spain with them.” [Fry, 1945, p. 40]
Beamish also obtained Lithuanian visas from a consul at Aix-en-Provence.
“It was these three problems that Beamish was working on. He solved them all. He got Polish passports from the Polish Consul in Marseille, and Lithuanian passports from the Lithuanian Consul at Aix-en-Provence. He also found a way of sending men to Casablanca who wouldn’t go through Spain under any circumstances.” [Fry, 1945, p. 41]
“Beamish made an arrangement with one of the army officers to buy some demobilization orders for refugees. The price was reasonable enough—200 francs an order, or about $5.00. With each order, the officer supplied detailed information about the regiment the refugee was supposed to have been a member of, the names of all the officers, the place and date of mobilization, the engagements the regiment had been through, its losses, and so on. Once he had memorized this information, the refugee could pass any sort of superficial examination. All he needed, besides an ability to speak fluent French, was a private’s uniform, and you could buy uniforms for practically nothing from the soldiers who had been demobilized in Marseille. We sent several refugees to Casablanca this way. It wasn’t until October that the officer who had been selling the demobilization orders was arrested and court-martialed.
“Beamish also discovered an Austrian refugee named Reiner who sold everything—demobilization orders, French identity cards, passports and forged exit visas. He seemed to be on good terms with the Czech and Polish Consulates. In fact, he could get Czech and Polish passports à volonté—and also French identity cards…” [Fry, 1945, p. 42]
In addition to his work in guiding refugees over the frontier, Hirschmann did much of the interviewing of refugees, along with Fry and Franzi Hildebrand. In his autobiography, Fry writes:
“For a while Beamish, Franzi and I handled all the work. There was a small writing table and a flat-topped dressing table, with mirror attached, in my room. We used the writing table as an interviewer’s desk and unscrewed the mirror from the dressing table and used it as a second interviewer’s desk. Beamish sat at one table and Franzi at the other. I usually sat on the edge of the bed, or stood up. The refugees waited in the corridor outside my door, and we let them in one at a time. I’d talk to them a little first, and then, if there seemed to be any chance at all that they were one of “our cases,” I’d pass them on to Beamish or Franzi, who would take down their names and addresses and other information about them on ordinary white file cards.”
Hirschmann also made contacts with the French underground and the Marseilles mafia for exchanging money on the black market, which was very dangerous work.
The French government was now tightening the vice on the ERC.
“One day toward the middle of the month, two plainclothesmen came into my office, showing their badges. When I asked them what they wanted, they said they were looking for ‘un nommé Hermant.’ Fortunately Beamish was still out of town, so I told them he had resigned his job several weeks before. When I asked them why they were interested in him, they said there were some serious charges against him.
“’Probably a dirty de Gaullist,’ on of the plainclothesmen said. ‘If you see him again, let us know.’
“I solemnly promised I would.
“When Beamish got back to Marseille, I told him the story, and he decided the time had come for him to leave France. We took a sad leave of one another, and he set off to see [Fittko] at Banyuls. A few days later I learned that he had reached Lisbon safely.
“I felt peculiarly lonely after he left. I suddenly realized how completely I had come to rely on him, not only for solutions to the most difficult problems, but also for companionship. For he was the only person in France who knew exactly what I was doing, and why, and was therefore the only one with whom I could always be at ease. With everyone else I had to pretend, sometimes more, sometimes less; with Beamish and Beamish alone I could be perfectly candid and natural. After he left I was completely alone, and I felt my solitude as I had never felt it before.” [Fry, 1945, pp. 150-151]
Beamish told Fry:
“I’ve always thought that what we did for the refugees in France resembled the obligation of soldiers to bring back their wounded from the battlefield, even at the risk of their own lives. Some may die. Some will be crippled for life. Some will recover and be the better soldiers for having had experience of battle. But one must bring them all back. At least one must try.” [Fry, 1945]
Hirschmann arrived in the United States in 1941. He was two years at the University of California at Berkeley.
He served in the US army from March 1943 to December 1945 in North Africa and Italy.
After the war, he became a noted author and expert on economics.
Hirschmann was Jewish.
[Fry, Varian. Surrender on Demand. (New York: Random House, 1945), pp. 24-30, 35-48, 79-82, 87-91, 103-104, 107-109, 111-115, 122, 125, 131-133, 150-152, 213, 239. Varian Fry Papers, Butler Library, Columbia University, New York. “Liste des Collaborateurs Ayant Fait Partie du Staff du ‘Centre Americain de Secours’ Dupuis sa Fondation,” 2/9/41, Varian Fry Papers. Gold, Mary Jayne. Crossroads Marseilles, 1940. (New York: Doubleday, 1980), pp. 155-156, 158-159, 160-162, 169, 200, 204, 206, 209-211, 227-229, 231, 235, 243, 246, 256, 264, 288, 392. Marino, Andy. A Quiet American: The Secret War of Varian Fry. (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1999), pp. 77-81, 120-122, 127-128, 136, 139, 142-143, 145, 156, 158-159, 165, 167, 185, 192-194, 202, 209, 218, 223-224, 241-246. Isenberg, Sheila. A Hero of Our Own: The Story of Varian Fry. (New York: Random House). Ryan, Donna F. The Holocaust and the Jews of Marseille: The Enforcement of Anti-Semitic Policies in Vichy France. (Urbana, IL: The University of Illinois Press, 1996), p. 142.]
M. Kokoczinski
[Varian Fry Papers, Butler Library, Columbia University, New York. “Liste des Collaborateurs Ayant Fait Partie du Staff du ‘Centre Americain de Secours’ Dupuis sa Fondation,” 2/9/41, Varian Fry Papers.]
K. Landau
[Varian Fry Papers, Butler Library, Columbia University, New York. “Liste des Collaborateurs Ayant Fait Partie du Staff du ‘Centre Americain de Secours’ Dupuis sa Fondation,” 2/9/41, Varian Fry Papers.]
Erich Lewinsky
Erich Lewinsky was a highly qualified volunteer and himself a refugee. Lewinsky took responsibility for many of the ERC cases. [Varian Fry Papers, Butler Library, Columbia University, New York. “Liste des Collaborateurs Ayant Fait Partie du Staff du ‘Centre Americain de Secours’ Dupuis sa Fondation,” 2/9/41, Varian Fry Papers. Marino, 1999, p. 267]
Dr. Donald Lowrie, Young Men’s Christian Association (YMCA), Marseilles, France, 1940
Dr. Donald Lowrie worked for the North American and later the world service of the YMCA. Lowrie worked with a number of other relief agencies in the French internment camps. He helped set up the YMCA relief activities in the unoccupied zone of Vichy. He worked closely with Czech diplomat in Marseilles Vladimir Vochoc to distribute illegal passports. Later, Lowrie helped Jews escape the French Foreign Labor Battalions by setting up a protected area. Lowrie also obtained visas from other diplomats, including Cambodian, Portuguese and Mexican. These documents helped Jewish refugees flee to Switzerland. Lowrie also helped with an attempt to rescue Jewish children who lost their parents when they were deported in 1942.
“Donald Lowrie, first of the North American and later the World Service of the YMCA, had extensive experience in relief work in France and eastern Europe. During the 1920s Lowrie had worked in Russia and then spent eight years in Czechoslovakia before going to Paris to direct the outbreak of the war. Like his French friends, Lowrie fled south during the late spring of 1940, taking what he expected to be temporary lodging near the Gare Saint Charles at the Hôtel Terminus, which remained his home for the next two and a half years.
Lowrie coordinated the work of a number of relief agencies present in the internment camps and directed aid to the neediest individuals. Along with Tracey Strong, he set up YMCA relief headquarters for the Unoccupied Zone on the rue Pythéas. He personally oversaw the distribution of nonmaterial aid from the North American YMCA, such as books and musical instruments. Like Varian Fry, Lowrie also engaged in clandestine and illegal activities with a group called Czech Aid. He worked with the Czech consul Vochoc to distribute illegal passports and to set up the Château de la Blancherie on the outskirts of Marseille. The Chateau was a farming community of Czechs, which not only provided a safe place for able-bodied men to escape service in the Foreign Labor Battalions but also was a self-sufficient unit that often raised a surplus for Czech compatriots struggling in Marseille. Lowrie later wrote that the community was severely criticized because it housed an abnormally high proportion of Jews, yet this experiment remained one of the few success stories of combating Vichy antiforeign and anti-Jewish legislation. Eventually Czech refugees established a school-colony for Czech children in Vence and a Czech nucleus for the Resistance in southern France. Somehow these experiments won the respect of some French authorities, for the French never turned these colonies over to the Nazi Todt Commission, which sought able-bodied men to work on construction projects, and even warned them of the imminent Nazi arrival in late 1942. Clearly, there were alternatives to docile compliance with German intentions and Vichy laws. It is perhaps surprising that this colony never fell under Rodellec du Porzic’s scrutiny, but possibly his affinity for the enemies of Germany outweighed his tendency toward slavish implementation of Vichy anti-Jewish and xenophobic policies.
Lowrie also obtained forged Cambodian, Portuguese, and Mexican visas to help refugees into Switzerland, for Swiss authorities sometimes admitted foreigners with visas for other destinations. He made contact with the first underground organizations, which he later claimed appeared during the summer of 1941, and worked with Abbé Perceval, prior of the Dominican monastery in Marseille that hid Jews. To avoid incurring greater suspicion from government authorities, Lowrie carefully avoided the temptation of exchanging money on the “grey market,” an activity that brought much trouble to Varian Fry, and made only legal exchanges, although he did admit to sometimes obtaining his funds from illegal sources. Lowrie’s best-known efforts, however, occurred in connection with a large-scale American attempt to rescue Jewish children abandoned when their parents were deported in 1942.
In November 1940 Lowrie helped set up the Coordination Committee for Relief Work in Internment Camps, commonly called the Nîmes Committee, because its monthly meetings were held there. The committee of twenty-five agencies devoted itself to relief work, primarily in the internment camps but also on behalf of individuals in Marseille. The Nîmes Committee collectively made reports on camp conditions, which Vichy must have taken seriously, because André Jean-Faure, the government’s camp inspector, attended all meetings. Whether Vichy actually took notice of committee suggestions, perhaps as a concession to public opinion, or simply intended to keep track of the committee’s activities is unclear” (Ryan, pp. 148-149).
“But if a refugee’s American visa hadn’t yet been authorized, of he wasn’t willing to travel under his own name even if it had been, there was usually only one solution—a false passport. It was the Czech Consul at Marseille who solved that problem, and it was Donald Lowrie who put me in touch with him. Lowrie was one of the representatives of the Y.M.C.A. in France, and also the delegate of the American Friends of Czechoslovakia. He had been in Prague when the Germans came in, and he had helped a good many German and Czech anti-Nazis escape. When he got to Marseille he was already known to the Czech Consul as a good friend of the Czechs. I met him very soon after my arrival, and he took me down to the Czech Consulate and introduced me to the Consul.
“Vladimir Vochoc was a diplomat of the old school He had been chief of the European personnel division of the Czech Foreign Office before the fall of Prague, and a professor at the University of Prague. I don’t think he liked the idea of handing out false passports, but he was wise enough to realize that his country had been invaded by the Nazis, and that it wouldn’t be liberated by legal means alone. He was willing to help any anti-Nazi save his life if there was any chance at all that, once saved, the man would be useful in overthrowing the Nazis and so restoring the independence of Czechoslovakia. Vochoc’s own job consisted in smuggling the Czech volunteers out of France so they could fight again with the British.
“At Lowrie’s suggestion, I made a deal with Vochoc. He agreed to grant Czech passports to any anti-Nazis I recommended to him. In return I gave him enough money to have new passports printed when his limited supply had run out. He couldn’t get any more from Prague, obviously, but as a Consul he had the right to have them printed in France. The work was actually done at Bordeaux, in the occupied zone, under the noses of the Germans. It was a very nice job. The covers were pink, whereas the old Prague passports had been green, but otherwise you couldn’t tell one from the other.
“After that there was nothing left to do but work out a safe way to receive the passports. Lowrie was living at the Hotel Terminus, and I used to go over to his room and have breakfast with him twice a week. Each time I went I would take him an envelope of photographs and descriptions of my candidates for Czech passports, and he would give me an envelope of the passports Vochoc had already prepared for the previous lot. Then I’d go back to my room at the Splendide and hand the passports to the refugees as they came in to get them.” [Fry, 1945, pp. 18-19]
The French Prefecture called to complain about the activities of Bohn, Fry and Lowrie:
“The Prefecture had also called in the American Consul and told him it was inquiet—uneasy—about the ‘activities of Dr. Bohn and Mr. Fry.’ It had also complained about Lowrie’s activities in behalf of the Czech soldiers, and had warned Vochoc not to use any more false passports. Lowrie had given up his illegal activities, and Vochoc had decided to issue no more passports.” [Fry, 1945, p. 80]
[Fry, Varian. Surrender on Demand. (New York: Random House, 1945). Varian Fry Papers, Butler Library, Columbia University, New York. Marino, Andy. A Quiet American: The Secret War of Varian Fry. (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1999), pp. 107, 132, 137, 191. Isenberg, Sheila. A Hero of Our Own: The Story of Varian Fry. (New York: Random House). Ryan, Donna F. The Holocaust and the Jews of Marseille: The Enforcement of Anti-Semitic Policies in Vichy France. (Urbana, IL: The University of Illinois Press, 1996), p. 148-149, 152, 167, 216.]
A. Marck
[Varian Fry Papers, Butler Library, Columbia University, New York. “Liste des Collaborateurs Ayant Fait Partie du Staff du ‘Centre Americain de Secours’ Dupuis sa Fondation,” 2/9/41, Varian Fry Papers.]
Walter “Baby” Mehring
[Fry, 1945, pp. 38, 48-50, 52, 74, 80, 83, 84, 92, 102, 111, 173, 174, 209. Varian Fry Papers, Butler Library, Columbia University, New York. “Liste des Collaborateurs Ayant Fait Partie du Staff du ‘Centre Americain de Secours’ Dupuis sa Fondation,” 2/9/41, Varian Fry Papers.]
Heinrich Mueller
Heinrich Mueller, a former worker in the German underground, was a volunteer with the ERC.
“Received a message from Lisbon today, in reply to my toothpaste letters to Heine. Heine has left for England, but Müller opened the letters and sent the answers by a Portuguese businessman. He says that Aufricht wasn’t able to get the salvos conductos, and that people arriving in Portugal with false transit visas are in a very difficult position and are likely to be arrested and sent back to Spain. But in very special cases he can take care of them. Lussu?” (Dated “Monday, June 9 [1941].” Varian Fry, unpublished manuscript for Surrender on Demand, p. 581, Varian Fry Papers, Butler Library, Columbia University, New York)
[Fry, 1945, p. 189. Varian Fry Papers, Butler Library, Columbia University, New York. “Liste des Collaborateurs Ayant Fait Partie du Staff du ‘Centre Americain de Secours’ Dupuis sa Fondation,” 2/9/41, Varian Fry Papers. Marino, 1999, pp. 194, 275.]
H. Namuth
[Varian Fry Papers, Butler Library, Columbia University, New York. “Liste des Collaborateurs Ayant Fait Partie du Staff du ‘Centre Americain de Secours’ Dupuis sa Fondation,” 2/9/41, Varian Fry Papers.]
Heinz Ernst “Oppy” Oppenheimer, Volunteer, Emergency Rescue Committee
Heinz Oppenheimer was instrumental in keeping the records for the ERC. He was important in creating accounting methods that would protect the ERC from police scrutiny and save them money in the exchange process in Marseilles.
“We had given away so much money without keeping proper records that we hardly knew where we stood. Franzi used to keep the money in a rubber-lined toilet bat. Whenever we took something out of the bag, we would put in a slip of paper. At night Franzi would take the bag home with him, so the police wouldn’t find it if they made a surprise visit to my room in the early morning. But we needed someone to set up our books and keep proper records for us.
“It was Heinz Ernst Oppenheimer who took over that job, as an unpaid volunteer. He was a German-Jewish production engineer who had run a relief committee in Holland after Hitler came to power and had been sent on a mission to the United States by the French Ministère d’Armement just before the war. For months he worked away on our books, disguising the illegal expenses in various ingenious ways and preparing beautiful statistical charts, all utterly legal and aboveboard. Instead of entering the grants to departing refugees as ‘travel expenses,’ which would have implicated us 9in illegal departures, he put them down as ‘living expenses.’ It was also illegal to 0pay out dollars, but we had to pay travel expenses in dollars, because francs couldn’t be changed in Spain. Oppy translated all the dollar payments into francs before entering them in the books. Thanks to him, we were always ready for the police.
“After the frosty little talk at the Prefecture, I went to a Marseille lawyer and had him draw up papers establishing the Centre Américain de Secours. It was Oppy who chose the name.
“‘Ça fait bien français,’ he said.” [Fry, 1945, p. 36]
[Fry, Varian. Surrender on Demand. (New York: Random House, 1945), pp. 35-39, 171-172. Varian Fry Papers, Butler Library, Columbia University, New York. “Liste des Collaborateurs Ayant Fait Partie du Staff du ‘Centre Americain de Secours’ Dupuis sa Fondation,” 2/9/41, Varian Fry Papers. Gold, Mary Jayne. Crossroads Marseilles, 1940. (New York: Doubleday, 1980), p. 157. Marino, Andy. A Quiet American: The Secret War of Varian Fry. (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1999), pp. 126-127, 202, 261-262.]
K. Oppenheimer
[Varian Fry Papers, Butler Library, Columbia University, New York. “Liste des Collaborateurs Ayant Fait Partie du Staff du ‘Centre Americain de Secours’ Dupuis sa Fondation,” 2/9/41, Varian Fry Papers.]
Mrs. Margaret Palmer, Centre Américain de Secours, The American Relief Center, Marseilles, France
[Varian Fry Papers, Butler Library, Columbia University, New York. Fry, 1945, p. 154-156; Marino, 1999, 251-252]
Mlle. A. Pouppos
[Varian Fry Papers, Butler Library, Columbia University, New York. “Liste des Collaborateurs Ayant Fait Partie du Staff du ‘Centre Americain de Secours’ Dupuis sa Fondation,” 2/9/41, Varian Fry Papers.]
Justus “Gussie” Rosenberg
Miriam Davenport and Mary Jayne Gold “adopted” 13-year old “Gussie” Rosenberg. He quickly became a volunteer at the ERC and was extremely efficient in his activities. Rosenberg was a foreign Jew, and therefore was at extreme danger of being arrested by Vichy officials.
“Gussie left the Emergency Rescue Committee sometime in June 1941 and attempted to cross into Spain with the hope of reaching England. He was caught by the French Security Guards and thrown into prison in Pau, but eventually he was let go because of his youth. He established contact with a Resistance group in Grenoble; he was arrested in a general roundup of foreigners and placed in a transient concentration camp whose inmates were to be deported. A few hours before the transport was to leave, Gussie feigned severe abdominal pains diagnosed by the camp physician as peritonitis. Taken off to a nearby hospital for an emergency operation, he escaped on a bicycle placed in the courtyard by his underground colleagues forty-eight hours after surgery. Upon recovery, his first assignment was to assume the identity of a French boy and hang around wherever German soldiers gathered, eavesdrop on their conversations, and report them to intelligence center. His information, combined with that coming from other sources, gave the Resistance and hence their allies some idea of German troop movements.” [Gold, 1980, pp. 393-394]
During the war, Rosenberg served with a small guerrilla unit near Valence.
He eventually became a volunteer with the US 36th Infantry Division as a liaison officer scout. He participated in the Battle of the Bulge and was wounded several times. He was cited for gallantry in action.
[Varian Fry Papers, Butler Library, Columbia University, New York. “Liste des Collaborateurs Ayant Fait Partie du Staff du ‘Centre Americain de Secours’ Dupuis sa Fondation,” 2/9/41, Varian Fry Papers. Gold, 1980, pp. 393-394. Marino, 1999, pp. 204-205, 329, 345; USHMM Archives, Washington, DC]
Mme. R. Rosenthal
[Varian Fry Papers, Butler Library, Columbia University, New York. “Liste des Collaborateurs Ayant Fait Partie du Staff du ‘Centre Americain de Secours’ Dupuis sa Fondation,” 2/9/41, Varian Fry Papers.]
Hans Sahl
“Another friend, Hans Sahl, the German poet, who has been my adviser on German writers, artists and musicians from the very beginning, is hoping to get his exit visa and his Spanish transit visa next week: if he does, he’ll leave too.” Dated “Villa Air-Bel, Sunday, February 9 [1941], Morning.” (Varian Fry, unpublished manuscript for Surrender on Demand, p. 421, Box 14, Folder 1, Varian Fry Papers, Butler Library, Columbia University, New York)
[Fry, 1945, p. 187. Varian Fry Papers, Butler Library, Columbia University, New York. “Liste des Collaborateurs Ayant Fait Partie du Staff du ‘Centre Americain de Secours’ Dupuis sa Fondation,” 2/9/41, Varian Fry Papers.]
Paul Schmierer
Paul and Vala Schmierer were hired by Varian Fry to work in the ERC. [Varian Fry Papers, Butler Library, Columbia University, New York. “Liste des Collaborateurs Ayant Fait Partie du Staff du ‘Centre Americain de Secours’ Dupuis sa Fondation,” 2/9/41, Varian Fry Papers. Marino, 1999, p. 267]
Vala Schmierer
Paul and Vala Schmierer were hired by Varian Fry to work in the ERC. [Varian Fry Papers, Butler Library, Columbia University, New York. “Liste des Collaborateurs Ayant Fait Partie du Staff du ‘Centre Americain de Secours’ Dupuis sa Fondation,” 2/9/41, Varian Fry Papers. Marino, 1999, p. 267]
Mlle. M. Soïfer
[Varian Fry Papers, Butler Library, Columbia University, New York. “Liste des Collaborateurs Ayant Fait Partie du Staff du ‘Centre Americain de Secours’ Dupuis sa Fondation,” 2/9/41, Varian Fry Papers.]
K. Sternberg
[Varian Fry Papers, Butler Library, Columbia University, New York. “Liste des Collaborateurs Ayant Fait Partie du Staff du ‘Centre Americain de Secours’ Dupuis sa Fondation,” 2/9/41, Varian Fry Papers.]
Captain Treacy, worked in conjunction with the Emergency Rescue Committee, Marseilles, France, 1940-1941
Captain Treacy, with the French underground, helped rescue British soldiers and refugees.
“The next day I introduced Jean [Gemahling] to Treacy, and he continued to work with the British as long as we had anything to do for them. His enthusiasm never lagged, but he took his duties so seriously that whenever he thought he had made a mistake he went into a depression, and I had difficulty restoring his self-confidence. He was my first introduction to the type of young French patriot of whom the underground and the maquis were later formed. In the course of his work for the British he also had a good deal to do with helping refugees escape, and he always performed his work with a conscientiousness that was almost excessive.” [Fry, 1945, p. 152]
[Fry, Varian. Surrender on Demand. (New York: Random House, 1945), pp. 133, 152, 164. Varian Fry Papers, Butler Library, Columbia University, New York. Marino, Andy. A Quiet American: The Secret War of Varian Fry. (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1999), p. 259.]
E. Urbach
[Varian Fry Papers, Butler Library, Columbia University, New York. “Liste des Collaborateurs Ayant Fait Partie du Staff du ‘Centre Americain de Secours’ Dupuis sa Fondation,” 2/9/41, Varian Fry Papers.]
Dr. Marcel “Monsieur Maurice” Verzeanu, Volunteer, Emergency Rescue Committee, Marseilles, France, 1940-1941
“A few days before he want, I decided to divide his work between Jean Gemahling and Dr. Marcel Verzeanu (‘Maurice’). One night after dinner at the Villa Air-Bel I called Jean up to my room and told him what I had been doing for the British. Jean had always seemed more or less listless and indifferent about his work at the office, but I knew that he was strongly pro-British and utterly disgusted with the goings-on at Vichy. But I wasn’t prepared for the strength of the reaction I got to my revelation. Jean’s face lighted up as though I had just told him he had inherited a million dollars, and he looked at me as though I were a combination of General de Gaulle and his best girl friend. When I asked him whether he was willing to run the risk of working with me for the British, he blushed furiously and gave a kind of gasp.
“‘Willing!’ he said, in his slightly French version of an English public schoolboy’s accent. ‘There’s nothing in the world I’d rather do!’
“He told me then that ever since the armistice he had been looking for a way to get to England and join de Gaulle. But if he could help the British in France, he said, he would stay. I told him how great the risks were—the maximum penalty was death—but it didn’t faze him at all.
“’I might as well be hanged for a sheep as a lamb,’ he said.” [Fry, 1945, pp. 151-152]
“Maurice, our Rumanian doctor, had already had something to do with the illegal departure of refugees even before Beamish left, but afterward he took charge of it. He established relations with [Fittko] at the frontier, and later with this successor, S____. He organized a whole network of underground workers—the ‘invisible staff’ as we called it—managed the secret funds, found new hiding places, directed the movement of refugees from one lace to another, and provided them with false passports and visas. When everything else failed, he worked closely with Emilio Lussu in building up an underground railroad all the way to Lisbon. He fancied himself as quite a dog with the ladies, and, superficially, he often seemed to take his work rather lightly. But I soon discovered that the impression was a false one.” [Fry, 1945, p. 152]
[Fry, Varian. Surrender on Demand. (New York: Random House, 1945), pp. 103, 151-152, 154, 156, 193-205, 221, 225, 228, 230, 234, 239. Varian Fry Papers, Butler Library, Columbia University, New York. “Liste des Collaborateurs Ayant Fait Partie du Staff du ‘Centre Americain de Secours’ Dupuis sa Fondation,” 2/9/41, Varian Fry Papers. Gold, Mary Jayne. Crossroads Marseilles, 1940. (New York: Doubleday, 1980), pp. 230-231, 234, 243, 245, 265, 278, 293, 296, 305, 325-326, 337-338, 354, 357, 359, 371, 383, 393. Marino, Andy. A Quiet American: The Secret War of Varian Fry. (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1999), pp. 205, 213, 242, 271-275, 308-309, 345, 351.]
Mlle. E. Weil
[Varian Fry Papers, Butler Library, Columbia University, New York. “Liste des Collaborateurs Ayant Fait Partie du Staff du ‘Centre Americain de Secours’ Dupuis sa Fondation,” 2/9/41, Varian Fry Papers.]
Jacques Weisslitz, worked with the Emergency Rescue Committee in Marseilles, France
Fry learned the Jacques Weisslitz and his wife had been deported to Germany. Fry had tried to get visas for them in 1942, but was unable. The US State Department refused to give the Weisslitz’s the piece of paper that would save their lives.
“Still another of our collaborators, a Frenchman by the name of Jacques Weisslitz, was sent to Poland, like Freier. His wife was sent with him. The State Department had refused them visas.” [Fry, 1945, p. 238]
[Fry, Varian. Surrender on Demand. (New York: Random House, 1945), p. 238. Varian Fry Papers, Butler Library, Columbia University, New York. “Liste des Collaborateurs Ayant Fait Partie du Staff du ‘Centre Americain de Secours’ Dupuis sa Fondation,” 2/9/41, Varian Fry Papers. Marino, Andy. A Quiet American: The Secret War of Varian Fry. (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1999), pp. 267, 329.]
Charles Wolff
Wolff was a journalist from Paris and a friend of Konrad Heiden. Wolff worked with Jacques Weisslitz and helped take care of many of the refugees who had fled from the Strasbourg region.
Mary Jayne Gold writes of Wolff:
“Charles directed the Refuge for Alsatian Intellectuals, who were lodged in our Villa Air-Bel during the last phase of the Emergency Rescue Committee. As a journalist, his official duty was to handle the Committee’s relations with the press. When the Committee was forced to close down in June of 1942, he carefully hid its files and documents and joined the underground.
“There he became engaged in an ‘information service’ (espionage), relaying information back and forth between the French and Spanish Resistance, the latter consisting of an anarcho-syndicalist group. In the spring of 1944 he was denounced by a comrade who had been questioned under torture. Thus, delivered to his executioners, he died of a burst lung under the blows of his countrymen, the Milice, known as the French Gestapette. It was August 15, 1944, the day of the Allied landing in Provence.
“Danny wrote to Varian, a few months after the Liberation: ‘…He is one of our comrades who will not have seen the day of our victory.’” [Gold, 1980, pp. 395-396]
“Since the police reproach us with helping only Jews and foreigners (it isn’t quite true, of course, but it wouldn’t help us much to single out the non-Jewish French we do help), we have decided to enlarge our activity by aiding some of the refugees from Alsace and Lorraine. Charles Wolff has joined the staff and will be in charge of this branch of the work. We haven’t enough money to do anything on a very large scale, so we are going to limit what we do to ‘intellectuals’—doctors, lawyers, journalists, etc. The staff seems to think that even this will raise our credit with the authorities.” (Varian Fry, unpublished manuscript for Surrender on Demand, Varian Fry Papers, Butler Library, Columbia University, New York)
[Fry, 1945, pp. 185, 219, 221, 238. Varian Fry Papers, Butler Library, Columbia University, New York. “Liste des Collaborateurs Ayant Fait Partie du Staff du ‘Centre Americain de Secours’ Dupuis sa Fondation,” 2/9/41, Varian Fry Papers. Gold, 1980, pp. 74-76, 376, 383, 395-396; Marino, 1999, p. 267]
Sponsors of the Emergency Rescue Committee (Comité de Patronage)
M. le Pasteur Marc Boegner, 10 Rue Claude Broussou Nieves
M Léon Brunschwicg, II Rue Irma Moreau, Aix-en-Provence (B du R)
M. Pablo Casals, 103, Route Nationale, Prades (P.O.)
M. Blaise Cendrars
M. Victor Combarnous, Président du Syndicat de la Presse Quotidienne Marseillaise, 22 Rue Haxo, Marseille
Mme. Marie Cuttoli, c/o Mrs. Steward Walker 823, Lexington Avenue N.Y.C.
M. André Demaison, c/o Editions Arthaud, Grenoble [also listed as: 24 Route des Gardes, Bellevue (S & O)]
Georges Duhamel, c/o “Le Figaro”, Vichy
M. L. O. Frossard, c/o “Le Mot d’Ordre”, 54 Rue Grignan, Marseille
M. André Gide, Hôtel Adriatic, Nice [also listed as: “La Messagière”, Cabris (A.M.)
M. Jean Giraudoux
Mme. Wanda Landowska, c/o E.R.C. 122 East 42 Street, N.Y.C. [also listed as: 1 Bld. Lassus, Banyuls-sur-Mer (P.O.)]
M. André Lhote, Gordes (Vaucluse)
M. Aristide Maillol, Sculpteur, Banyuls sur Mer (P.O.)
M. Henri Matisse, “La Regina” [Hôtel Regina], Cimiez, Nice (A.M.)
M. Emmanuel Mounier, Boite Postale 62, Lyon Terreaux (Rhône)
Comte Wladimir d’Ormesson, Ambassadeur de France, 7 Rue Alphonse Fauchier, Lyon (Rhône)
M. Paul Paray, Hôtel Beauvau, Rue Beuvau, Marseille
Comtesse Pastré, Château Pastré, Montredon, près Marseille
M. Georges Pernot, Conseiller National, c/o “Le Mot d’Ordre”, 54 Rue Grignan, Marseille
M. Emile Ripert, Professeur à la Faculté d’Aix, Marseille
Mme. Françoise Rosay, “La Rustica”, Clarens (Suisse)
M. Jean Schlumberger, Hôtel du Caire, Rue Beauvau, Marseille [also listed as: La Messagière, Cabris (A.M.)
M. Dunoyer de Segonzac
M. Edmond Vermeil, 6, Boulevard Pasteur, Montpellier (Hérault)
M. Charles Vildrac, La Maison Blanche, St. Tropez (Var)
This list was generated from the papers of Varian Fry. It was drawn from a list of patrons (sponsors), friends and associates of Fry. It was also drawn from the letter of the Centre Américain e Secours, dated October 1941.
(Varian Fry Papers, Rare Book and Manuscript Library, Columbia University, New York)
Friends of the Emergency Rescue Committee (Comités Amis)
M. Howard Kershner, Directeur, American Friends Service Committee, 29 Bd. d’Athènes, Marseille
M. Wood, Délégué des Quakers Américains, 3 Rue Porte du Moustier, Montauban (T. et G.)
Miss Bleuland van Oordt, Délégué des Quakers Américains, 26 Bd. Bonrepos, Toulouse
M. Donald Lowrie, Directeur Y.M.C.A., 1 Rue Pythéas, Marseille
Monsieur le Pasteur Toureille, Aumônier Général des Réfugiés Protestants, Cournon-Terral (Hérault)
M. Carré de Malberg, Présdt. Gal. du G.E.R.A.L., Préfecture de Clermont-Ferrand (P. de D.)
M. Henri Chavet, Présdt. du Groupement des Expulsés de la Moselle, 8 Rue Malesherbes, Lyon
M. E. Bardou, Présdt. du G.E.R.A.L. du Gers, Maison de l’Agriculture, Auch
M. le Député Elsaesser, Délégué du G.E.R.A.L. de Nice 16, Ave. Villemont, Nice
M. Klein, Présdt. de la Section Locale du G.E.R.A.L. St. Junie, 7 Ave. du Mal Petain
M. le Présdt. du G.E.R.A.L. de l’Hérault, 16 Place de la Comédie, Montpellier
M. Grell, Sec. gal. du G.E.R.A.L. de la Dordogne, 2 Rue Antoine Godaud, Périgueux
M. Chalte, Secrétaire du G.E.R.A.L., 22 Bd. Soustre, Digne (A.M.)
M. Joseph Fega, Conseiller National, Présdt. Départemental du G.E.R.A.L., 23 Allées Lèon Gambetta, Marseille
M. J. Crépieux, Vice-Président Départemental du G.E.R.A.L., 23? Allées Leon Gambetta, Marseille
M. Marcel Schmidt, Présdt. Departemental du G.E.R.A.L., Toulouse (Hte. Garonne)
M. Dammert, Présdt. du G.E.R.A.L. du Gard, 19 Rue Briconnet Nîmes
M. le Sénateur Francois, Directeur du Comité de Sécours Belge, 62 Rue St. Ferreol, Marseille
M. Schah, Directeur de la H.I.C.E.M., 425 Rue Paradis, Marseille
M. le Directeur du Comité d’Assistance aux Réfugiés (C.A.R.), 58 Rue de la Joliette, Marseille
M. le Directeur du Comité d’Assistance aux Réfugiés (C.A.R.), 1 Rue des Chaussetiers, Clermont-Ferrand (P. de D.)
M. le Directeur du C.A.R. de Limoges, Comité de l’Accueil Francais, 32 Rue du Clocher, Limoges
M. le Président du C.A.R. de Lyon, Comité de Secours aux Réfugiés, 12 Rue Ste. Catherine, Lyon
M. le Président du C.A.R. de Montauban, c/o Quakers Américains, 3 Rue Porte du Moustier, Montauban
M. le Président du C.A.R. de Montpellier, Comité des Réfugiés, 14, Rue Marceau, Montpellier
M. le Président du C.A.R. de Nice, 2 Bd. Victor Hugo, Nice
M. le Président du C.A.R. de Pau c/o Rabbin Bauer, 36 bis Ave Gaston Phoebus, Pau
M. le Président du C.A.R. de Toulouse, Union des Sociétés de Bienfaisance, 39 Rue des Couteliers, Toulouse
M. le Président de l’O.R.T., 21 Place Alexandre Labadié, Marseille
M. le Président de l’Union O.S.E., 12 bis Rue Jules Ferry, Montpellier
M. le Président du Cartel Suisse de Secours aux Enfants, 77 Rue du Taur, Toulouse
M. l’Abbé Scolardi, Office des Emigrés Slaves et Orientaux, 43 de Breteuil, Marseille
M. le Président de le Croix-Rouge Polonaise, 79 Rue Paradis, Marseille
M. le Directeur du Foyer “La Paix”, 3 Rue de Turenne, Marseille
Monsieur le Directeur du Secours National, 143 Rue Paradis, Marseille
M. Charles Joy, European Director, Unitarian Service Committee, 15 Rue Fortia, Marseille
Mme. Long-Landry, Directrice Internationale du Service Social d’Aide aux Emigrants, 4 Rue Stanislas Torrendts, Marseille
Miss Phelan, Directrice, Service Social d’Aide aux Emigrants, 4 Rue Stanislas Torrendts, Marseille
M. le Directeur de l’Armée du Salut, 190 Rue Félix Pyat, Marseille
Mrs. Lowrie, Directrice de la Croix-Rouge Américaine, 1 Rue Beauvau, Marseille
Madame la Présidente de la Croix-Rouge Française, 11 Rue Lafon, Marseille
Le T.R.P. Prieur des Dominicains, Couvent de St. Lazare, 35 Rue Edmond Rostand, Marseille
M. le Directeur de l’Office Central des Oeuvres, 67 Rue Paradis, Marseille
M. le Directeur de la Rockefeller Foundation, Bureau de Marseille, 18 Rue Colbert, Marseille
M. le Président de l’Union Suisse des Comités de Secours, Lavaterstrasse 37, Zurich, Suisse
Mlle. Nina Gourfinkel, Comité d’Assistance à la Population Juive frappée par la guerre, 34 Rue Alfredde Musset, Lyon
M. le Directeur de l’Agence des Prisonniers de Guerre, 11 Rue Lafon, Marseille
M. Isaï Nahum, 11 bis Avenue de la Malsence, Pau (B.P.)
M. l’Abbé Glasberg, 9 Rue André Chevrier, Lyon
Msr. Delay, Evèque de Marseille
M. le Président de l’Association des Volontaires Etrangers, 306 Rue d’Endomme, Marseille
M. et Mme. Modigliani, Hôtel Luxembourg, Nîmes (Gard)
M. René Gounin, Directeur du “Mot d’Ordre”, 54 Rue Grignan, Marseille
This list was generated from the papers of Varian Fry. It was drawn from a list of patrons (sponsors), friends and associates of Fry. It was also drawn from the letter of the Centre Américain e Secours, dated October 1941.
(Varian Fry Papers, Rare Book and Manuscript Library, Columbia University, New York)
Advisory Committee for the Emergency Rescue Committee
“That task was assigned to an advisory committee consisting of Max Ancoli, for the Italians; Jacques Maritain, for the French; Thomas Mann, for the Germans; J. Alvarez del Vayo, for the Spanish; Jan Masaryk for the Czechs and still others for the nationalities of the other refugees trapped in France. From museums, universities, publishers and émigré groups, the advisory committee received lists of persons known to have been in France at the time of the French defeat. By some arcane alchemy of its own devising, it reduced these lists to one master list of not many more than 200 names. It then became the dedicated purpose of the Emergency Rescue Committee to evacuate from France all the persons on this master list and all the members of their immediate families.”
Max Ancoli, Italy
Jacques Maritain, France
Thomas Mann, Germany
J. Alvarez del Vayo, Spain
Jan Masaryk, Czechoslovakia
And others
[Fry, Varian, Operation Emergency Rescue [manuscript], p. 5, Varian Fry Papers, Butler Library, Columbia University, New York.]
Diplomats Who Aided the Emergency Rescue Committee
The best way for a Jewish refugee to avoid arrest and deportation by the Nazi’s was to emigrate from Nazi controlled areas. Leaving Europe and Nazi occupied territories was possible between 1933 and the latter part of 1941.
In fact, Nazi policy was devised to force Jews to emigrate. This was done by denying them their civil rights, removing their ability to earn a living, and appropriating their property and funds.
After 1938, thousands of Jewish community leaders were sent to German concentration camps in an effort to get them to leave Germany and Austria.
Between 1938 and 1940 thousands of Jews and other refugees were able to be released from the Nazi concentration camps on the strength of holding a transit visa or destination visa.
Vice Consul Hiram Bingham, IV, and Vice Consul Myles Standish, at the American consulate in Marseille, were able to have Jews released from French concentration camps on the strength of their visas or affidavits in lieu of passport.
A refugee could either leave by legal means or by extralegal methods. Leaving Nazi areas by “legal” emigration was an extraordinarily complex and difficult procedure. The refugee was required to run a gauntlet of endless bureaucratic procedures. The process ultimately required the refugee to obtain at least four documents. First and foremost, the refugee needed a passport. (When a passport was unavailable, an affidavit in lieu of passport might be obtained.) Further, a refugee needed an entry visa for the country to which the refugee was fleeing; an exit visa from the country where the refugee was trapped; and transit visas for crossing through countries and across international borders through Europe.
Unfortunately, many refugees were forced to flee their home countries without proper documentation and were thus considered “stateless.” This was particularly true of German, Austrian, Romanian or Hungarian Jewish refugees who had fled to France. In addition, many refugees possessed documents that were marked with a large red letter J, which signaled border patrolmen that the holder of the passport was Jewish.
Even for refugees with valid passports, obtaining the life-saving visas took enormous amounts of energy and time. Conflicting foreign ministry regulations and changing rules further confused the frustrating process. Many frustrated refugees committed suicide in desperation during this process.
Some sympathetic diplomats and foreign service officials would issue these stateless refugees passports, affidavits in lieu of passport, visas, identification papers and safe conduct passes, often against the policies and regulations of their foreign ministries.
There were other barriers to “legal” emigration as well. In Germany and Austria, refugees were required to register with the Gestapo and turn over most of their money and assets. Most were left destitute. Their financial state made it virtually impossible for the refugee to obtain an entry visa to the desired country.
In addition, a refugee was required to have a large amount of cash, usually in dollars. Many refugees had fled carrying almost no possessions. Jewish refugee and relief agencies could sometimes provide cash to refugees.
The Nazi police and SS also required proof of holding a ticket for a ship or train with a departure date.
More than a million Jewish refugees left Nazi occupied Europe between 1933 and the end of 1941, when the Nazis made emigration illegal.
Fry describes, in an unpublished draft of his manuscript, Surrender on Demand, the process of obtaining visas and other documents for refugees:
“We took a tally of our work today. It is quite impressive. In less than eight months, over 15,000 people have come to us or written to us, and we have had to consider every one of their cases and take a decision on it. We have decided that some 1,800 of the cases fell within the scope of our activities: in other words, that they were genuine cases of intellectual or political refugees with a good chance of emigrating soon. In these 1,800 cases, which represent, in all, some 4,000 human beings, we have had to make all kinds of efforts. We have had to help some people be liberated from the camps, others transferred from the camps where they were to the embarkation camp at Les Milles. We have had to get ‘certificats d’hébergement’ and doctors’ certificates. We have had to write letters to prefects and mayors asking for saufs conduits and permis de séjour. We have had to get some people out of prison, intervene for others when they were on the point of being expelled from Marseille, the Bouches du Rhône, even France itself (with no place to go except a concentration camp). We have had to keep up relations with the police and local officials. We have had to help our clients obtain all kinds of immigration and visitors’ visas, United States, Mexican, Brazilian, Venezuelan, Colombian, Cuban, Santo Domingan, etc. We have had to know the immigration laws and regulations of each of these countries and to maintain constant and friendly relations with their consulates and legations. We have had to arrange for the transatlantic passages of hundreds and hundreds of people. We have had to help get Portuguese and Spanish transit visas and French exit visas. We have had to maintain relations with the Spanish and Portuguese consulates and legations and keep a man stationed permanently at Vichy to take up difficult exit visa cases with the proper authorities there.” (Dated “Later May 7 [1941].” Varian Fry, unpublished manuscript for Surrender on Demand, p. 548, Varian Fry Papers, Butler Library, Columbia University, New York)
Danny Bénédite described working with members of the diplomatic corps in his report of November 6, 1941:
“At first, aid in obtaining visas was limited to exchanges of cables and letters between ourselves and the Emergency Rescue Committee in New York. Later our connections with the Museum of Modern Art, the New School for Social Research, the International Relief Association and the New World Resettlement Fund became direct sources of valuable aid.
“Firm and satisfactory relationships with the American Consul in Marseille and with the consuls in Lyon and Nice provided us with information concerning the issuance of visas and correct procedures. We also kept in touch with clients in other parts of France and in concentration camps, and set up systematic plans for providing them with funds, clothes and parcels of food. We established relations with the embassies, legations and consulates of South American countries, in order to obtain visas for certain people who, because of their political past or their special abilities, had better prospects of emigration to those countries than to the United Sates. Thus we were in direct contact with the Brazilian Embassy, the Mexican Legation and Consulates, and the diplomatic representatives of Cuba, Chile, San Domingo, Venezuela, Panama and Columbia.” (Danny Bénédite, Marseille, November 6, 1941, Administrative Report: The Stages of the Committee’s Development [draft], Emergency Rescue Committee, p. 3)
“Credit must be given to the intelligent and understanding cooperation of the American consular officials in Marseille, notably Hiram Bingham and Myles Standish. Without their aid we could not have been so successful at this time. They minimized formalities instead of creating barriers to the departure of refugees, and did everything in their power to help those ready to go in general showed a sympathetic attitude toward candidates for immigration. […]
“The United States Consul continued to cooperate with us in minimizing delays in issuing visas and in arranging necessary interviews well in advance, so that prospective passengers could leave by the first available vessel.” (Danny Bénédite, Marseille, November 6, 1941, Administrative Report: The Stages of the Committee’s Development [draft], Emergency Rescue Committee, p. 7)
Visas often had to be supplied at the last minute, and under difficult circumstances. Danny Bénédite describes the American consular offices issuing visas on extremely short notice:
“These tasks had to be carried out very quickly, since, in the interests of safety, the shipping companies revealed the dates of sailings only four or five days in advance and part of the work had to be done within those days. Many of our protégés who lacked American visas, exit visas, tickets and funds on days when sailings were announced, were nevertheless able to go. Some received their American visas an hour before sailing time and were given their tickets on the dock.” (Danny Bénédite, Marseille, November 6, 1941, Administrative Report: The Stages of the Committee’s Development [draft], Emergency Rescue Committee, p. 8)
In addition to obtaining travel documents, Fry talks about maintaining the refugees:
“We have had to pay some 560 people weekly living allowances. We have had to find doctors and dentists who would treat our protégés free of charge, or for ‘nominal’ fees. We have had to extend numerous loans and grants for travel expenses. And we have had to coordinate all our efforts with the efforts of the other relief organizations in France and keep in constant touch with all of them to avoid duplication and waste of effort and money.
“An impressive list. And if you add to it all the illegal things we have had to do to save people’s lives…” (Dated “Later May 7 [1941].” Varian Fry, unpublished manuscript for Surrender on Demand, pp. 548-549, Varian Fry Papers, Butler Library, Columbia University, New York)
Diplomats, in alphabetical order:
Hiram Bingham IV, † US Vice Consul in Marseilles, France, 1940-1941
Hiram Bingham was the American Vice Consul in charge of visas, stationed in Marseilles, France, in 1940-1941. Shortly after the fall of France, Bingham, against the orders and policy of his superiors, issued visas, safe passes, and letters of transit to Jewish refugees. Many visas were falsified in order to protect the refugees from internment. Bingham helped set up the contacts and issued visas for the Emergency Rescue Committee, headed by Varian Fry. Bingham also worked with other rescue operations in Marseilles, including the American Friends’ Service Committee (Quakers), the American Red Cross, the Unitarian Service Committee, the Mennonite Committee, and Jewish relief organizations. Bingham also worked with the Nîmes (Camps) Committee. He was, in part, responsible for saving several hundred Jews and other refugees. Among them were many anti-Nazi activists, labor leaders, and Communists. He also rescued Jewish artists, intellectuals, writers and scientists, such as Marc Chagall, Max Ernst, André Breton, Heinrich Mann, and Jewish Nobel Prize winners. Bingham visited the concentration camps and facilitated issuing visas to Jews trapped in the Les Milles French concentration camp. In May 1941, Bingham helped the Quakers, the Nîmes Committee and the OSE rescue several hundred Jewish children by issuing US visas. These children left France in June 1941. In 1942, Bingham was transferred to the US embassy in Buenos Aires, Argentina. At the end of the war, he reported on the immigration of Nazi war criminals to Buenos Aires. He wrote numerous reports and encouraged his supervisors to report these activities to the State Department. His superiors did nothing and he resigned from the Foreign Service in protest. In 2000, Bingham was presented the American Foreign Service Association Constructive Dissent award by the US Secretary of State. In 2005, Hiram Bingham was given a letter of commendation from Israel’s Holocaust Museum. In 2006, a US commemorative postage stamp was issued in his honor.
Varian Fry called the American Vice-Consul, Harry Bingham, at the U.S. Consulate in Marseilles his “partner in the crime of saving lives.” Fry extensively mentioned Bingham helping him obtain visas and affidavits in lieu of passport for refugees. Bingham also hid refugees in his home.
Fry worked closely with Dr. Frank Bohn of the American Federation of Labor, who was operating a rescue network in Marseilles. During an initial meeting, Fry inquired about the cooperation of the American consulate in Marseilles:
“‘How do you find the [American] Consulate?’ I asked. ‘Have they co-operated?’
“‘Splendidly!’ Bohn Said. ‘Splendidly! Don’t you worry. If anything should happen to us, the Consulate and the Embassy would back us up to the hilt.’” (Varian Fry, Surrender on Demand, p. 10)
“…Harry Bingham was out. He’s the Vice-Consul in charge of visas, and the son of the late Senator from Connecticut. I believe his brother’s the editor of Common Sense. Anyway, he has a heart of gold. He does everything he can to help us, within American law.” (Varian Fry, Surrender on Demand, p. 10)
“‘By the way, have you any idea what’s become of [Lion] Feuchtwanger…?’
“[Heine said,] ‘…I haven’t heard what’s become of Feuchtwanger. Some say he’s in Switzerland. He was interned in the camp of St. Nicolas last spring, but after the armistice he escaped, and nobody’s heard of him since.’
“‘Huh-hmm,’ Bohn said, clearing his throat. ‘Perhaps you and I had better talk privately about this, old man.’
“He got up and led me into the bathroom.
“‘I’ve promised Harry Bingham not to breathe a word of this to anybody,’ he said, after he had closed the door, ‘but I’m sure he wouldn’t mind my telling you. It was Harry who got Feuchtwanger out of that camp. He arranged it all with Mrs. Feuchtwanger in advance, and she got word of their plans to her husband. Luckily she wasn’t interned, you see.’” (Varian Fry, Surrender on Demand, p. 11)
Bingham issued numerous affidavits in lieu of passport:
“Luckily, when an American visa had been authorized for an apatride, or man without a country, the American Consulate usually gave him a paper called an ‘affidavit in lieu of passport.’ For a while this worked, provided the man was willing to take the chance of going through Spain under his own name. In fact, many minor French and Spanish officials obviously took the bearers of such documents for American citizens, and treated them with the special deference European under-officials somehow almost always reserve for Americans—or used to. I was not inclined to correct the false impression.” (Varian Fry, Surrender on Demand, pp. 17-18)
“The Consul-General kept telling me I’d be expelled any day if I were lucky enough not to be arrested and held on charges. But there were four friends of Paul Hagen’s in the camp at Vernet he had asked me particularly to help, and I didn’t want to go until I had gotten them out of France.
“The first step, obviously, was to get them out of Vernet. We had sent letters to the commandant in the name of the committee, and Bingham had sent him letters and telegrams in the name of the Consulate—all to no avail.” (Varian Fry, Surrender on Demand, pp. 86-87)
“The four men came to Marseille, went to the American Consulate, and got their American visas the same day, thanks to Harry Bingham.” (Varian Fry, Surrender on Demand, pp. 87-88)
“Just before the Bouline left, Harry Bingham invited me to dinner at his villa, to meet Captain Dubois. Captain Dubois was a member of the Marseille staff of the Sûreté Nationale. Though a Vichy policeman, he was friendly to England and America, and Harry thought it would be useful for me to know him.
“It was. Dubois was the first French official I had met who was familiar with my case and willing to talk about it. When I asked him what the police had against me, he said, with a sly smile I couldn’t quite fathom, ‘Smuggling people out of the country.’
“‘Anything else?’ I asked.
“‘Yes, trading in foreign exchange.’” (Varian Fry, Surrender on Demand, pp. 89-90)
“A cabin boy came in and announced that Monsieur le Consul des Etats-Unis was waiting below. Much impressed, the captain instructed the boy to bring the Consul up at once.
“When Harry Bingham walked through the door and shook hands with us, whatever doubts the captain may previously have had about us were immediately dissipated. His manner became perceptibly more cordial. He took out a key ring from his trousers’ pocket and unlocked a cupboard revealing a large collection of half-filled bottles. He selected a bottle of cognac and took down four small glasses.
“’Voilà, messieurs, dame,’ he said, pouring us glasses of the brandy. ‘A votre santè.’
“As we drank, Harry told us that he had called up the Prefecture several times to find out why we were being held and for how long. But all the high officials were out with the Marshal, or busy protecting him, and he hadn’t been able to get any information. He hoped to do better tomorrow, when the Marshal would be on his way back to Vichy and thins would be returning to normal in Marseille. A great many people had been arrested in honor of the Marshal’s visit, he said, at least seven thousand, and most of them would probably be released in a few days. Whether we would be released or not he couldn’t say, but he would do his best to see that we were.” (Varian Fry, Surrender on Demand, p. 147)
“In the course of time we learned that some of the refugees on my list had already escaped from France without our help. But the great majority were stuck, and wouldn’t have been able to get out at all if it hadn’t been for us. With the help of the American affidavits and the Czech passports, we were able to get quite a lot of them out of France in those first weeks. Besides Paul’s underground-worker friends, they included among many others, Hans Natonek, a Czech humorist; Hertha Pauli, an Austrian journalist; Professor E.S. Gumbel, a German refugee scholar on the faculty of the University of Lyon; Leonard Frank, a German novelist and poet; Heinrich Ehrmann, a young German economist; Friedrich Stampfer, a German trade union leader and the former editor of the Berlin Vorwaerts; Dr. Otto Meyerhoff, a Czech physicist and Nobel Prize winner; Alfred Polgar, German novelist; and Conrad Heiden, the biographer of Hitler.” (Varian Fry, Surrender on Demand, p. 32)
“Paul’s friends were Franz Boegler, Hans Tittel, Fritz Lamm and Siegfried Pfeffer. There were visas for all of them at the Consulate. Harry Bingham sent letters and telegrams to the army officer in charge of the camp asking him to let them come to Marseille to get their visas, but it didn’t work. He just didn’t get an answer.” (Varian Fry, unpublished manuscript, p. 115, Box 14, Folder 1, Varian Fry Papers, Butler Library, Columbia University, New York)
“They [Mr. and Mrs. Victor] watched the autobus which meets the Barcelona train at Figueras go out without them. Then they crossed back into France, and Berger drove them back to Perpignan. From Perpignan they returned to Marseille, and at Marseille they came straight to me and told me their story. Since their Luxembourg refugee passports weren’t recognized in Spain, the only thing to do was to get them American affidavits in lieu of passports. Many American consuls would have refused to give an affidavit in lieu of passport to a refugee who already had a passport, on the grounds that the man had a passport and it was no business of the American Consulate whether the passport was valid in Spain or not. But Harry Bingham wasn’t a run-of-the-mill Consul. He mad out the affidavits without any hesitation at all and transferred the visas to them. Then, since the Victors had spent all their money by this time, I advanced them some and they set out for the frontier again. This time they didn’t come back.” (Varian Fry, unpublished manuscript, pp. 117-118, Box 14, Folder 1, Varian Fry Papers, Butler Library, Columbia University, New York)
“The Museum of Modern Art asked the State Department to grant him [Marc Chagall] an ‘emergency’ visa last November. Not knowing this, I took him to the Marseille Consulate in January and got him an immigration visa with no affidavits at all. In fact, all he had in his dossier was a letter from me guaranteeing him politically. It was not until February 10 that the Consulate received the Department’s authorization to grant Chagall a visa. Meanwhile, he had already had his visa a full month.
“In other words, it took the Department three months to grant him an “emergency” visa, whereas the Consulate only required a day or so to give him an ordinary immigration visa.” (Varian Fry, unpublished manuscript, p. 462, Box 14, Folder 1, Varian Fry Papers, Butler Library, Columbia University, New York)
“In fact, so far as I know, the Marseille consulate is the only on in France where the German-Austrian and Polish quotas are open. But we are lucky to have at that American consulate here one or two thoroughly decent and hardworking consuls who do their utmost within the laws of the United States to help rather than hinder the refugees.
“The truth is that some of our consuls have been away from Washington so long that they have forgotten they are public servants and have assumed the attitude of rich private citizens living abroad who do not care to be disturbed.
“I am going to disturb them. I am going to write them letters and find out why those quotas are still closed.” (Varian Fry, unpublished manuscript, Box 14, Folder 2, Varian Fry Papers, Butler Library, Columbia University, New York)
“Johannes Schnek’s dossier has at last arrived from Paris, but the affidavits are too old to be any good. Nevertheless Harry Bingham has agreed to give him a visa if I can get the man who originally gave the affidavits to cable the Consulate that they are still valid. I am cabling New York via Switzerland.
“The Consulate got some more German quota numbers today.” (Varian Fry, unpublished manuscript, p. 553, Box 14, Folder 3, Varian Fry Papers, Butler Library, Columbia University, New York)
“Stephen Hessel is also leaving soon. He has his American visa, and he thinks his commanding officer in the Deuxième Bureau will give him a passport and exit visa.” Dated “Villa Air-Bel, Sunday, February 9 [1941], Morning.” (Varian Fry, unpublished manuscript for Surrender on Demand, p. 421, Box 14, Folder 1, Varian Fry Papers, Butler Library, Columbia University, New York)
“Another friend, Hans Sahl, the German poet, who has been my adviser on German writers, artists and musicians from the very beginning, is hoping to get his exit visa and his Spanish transit visa next week: if he does, he’ll leave too.” Dated “Villa Air-Bel, Sunday, February 9 [1941], Morning.” (Varian Fry, unpublished manuscript for Surrender on Demand, p. 421, Box 14, Folder 1, Varian Fry Papers, Butler Library, Columbia University, New York)
“The entire Consular corps of Marseille, headed by Hugh Fullerton, the American Consul-General, went to the prefecture today to protest against Vochoc’s arrest. Getting no satisfaction there, Fullerton sent Hiram Bingham to Vichy to ask Admiral Leahy to intervene. Apparently the American authorities can be militant enough when the rights and safety of consuls are concerned, even when the consuls are ‘aliens.’ Too bad they can’t be equally militant in defense of a simple American citizen like me, or the poor devils of refugees who have spent the last eight years fighting Hitler, and now seem likely to pay with their lives for it.” (Dated “Wednesday, March 19 [1941].” Varian Fry, unpublished manuscript for Surrender on Demand, p. 483, Varian Fry Papers, Butler Library, Columbia University, New York)
“Credit must be given to the intelligent and understanding cooperation of the American consular officials in Marseille, notably Hiram Bingham and Myles Standish. Without their aid we could not have been so successful at this time. They minimized formalities instead of creating barriers to the departure of refugees, and did everything in their power to help those ready to go in general showed a sympathetic attitude toward candidates for immigration. […]
“The United States Consul continued to cooperate with us in minimizing delays in issuing visas and in arranging necessary interviews well in advance, so that prospective passengers could leave by the first available vessel.” (Danny Bénédite, Marseille, November 6, 1941, Administrative Report: The Stages of the Committee’s Development [draft], Emergency Rescue Committee, p. 7)
“These tasks had to be carried out very quickly, since, in the interests of safety, the shipping companies revealed the dates of sailings only four or five days in advance and part of the work had to be done within those days. Many of our protégés who lacked American visas, exit visas, tickets and funds on days when sailings were announced, were nevertheless able to go. Some received their American visas an hour before sailing time and were given their tickets on the dock.” (Danny Bénédite, Marseille, November 6, 1941, Administrative Report: The Stages of the Committee’s Development [draft], Emergency Rescue Committee, p. 8)
[Fry, Varian. Assignment Rescue. (New York: Scholastic, 1997). Fry, Varian. Surrender on Demand. (New York: Random House, 1945), pp. 10-12, 14, 17-18, 32-33, 49, 56-57, 69-70, 83, 87-90, 147, 172, 215. Marino, Andy. A Quiet American: The Secret War of Varian Fry. (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1999), pp. 99-100, 196, 107-108, 117, 120, 187, 209, 231, 268, 285, 287. Isenberg, Sheila. A Hero of Our Own: The Story of Varian Fry. (New York: Random House), pp. 75-76, 83, 86, 89, 125, 142, 150, 152-153, 193, 193n. Ryan, Donna F. The Holocaust and the Jews of Marseille: The Enforcement of Anti-Semitic Policies in Vichy France. (Urbana, IL: The University of Illinois Press, 1996), pp. 130, 142, 144. Hockley, Ralph M. Freedom is not Free. (2000). US Holocaust Memorial Museum. Assignment Rescue: The Story of Varian Fry and the Emergency Rescue Committee. [Exhibit catalog.] (Washington, DC: US Holocaust Memorial Museum, 1997), p. 7. Wyman, David S. Paper Walls: America and the Refugee Crisis, 1939-1941. (New York: Pantheon Books, 1985), pp. 167-168. Varian Fry Papers, Columbia University. HICEM records, France, YIVO Archives. Bauer, Yehuda. American Jewry and the Holocaust. (Detroit: Wayne State University Press, 1981), p. 171. American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee Archives, New York City. Bauer, Yehuda. American Jewry and the Holocaust. (Detroit: Wayne State University Press, 1981), p. 171. Varian Fry Papers, Butler Library, Columbia University, New York.]
Gilberto Bosques, Mexican Consul General in Paris and Marseilles, 1939-42
Gilberto Bosques was a member of the revolutionary movement in Mexico in 1910. He served in numerous occupations, including that of journalist, educator and politician. He was appointed Ambassador at Large to France by Mexican President Cardenas. Bosques served as the Mexican Consul General in Paris and Marseilles in 1939-1942. Bosques negotiated with Mexican President Lázaro Cárdenas and with Vichy officials to allow the Mexican government to transport Spanish Republican soldiers out of France to Mexico. Later, Bosques recommended that the Mexican government break diplomatic relations with Germany and France. During this time, Bosques issued hundreds of visas to refugees, including anti-Franco fighters from the Spanish Civil War. He also issued visas to thousands of Jews. Among those he helped save were artists, politicians and other refugees from Germany, Austria, France and Spain. Bosques supplied visas to Varian Fry and his Emergency Rescue Committee as well as numerous other rescue agencies. Bosques maintained two estates outside of Marseilles (formerly castles) in which he housed and fed thousands of refugees. In November 1942, Bosques and other members of the Mexican legation were arrested by French Vichy officials and Nazis. Bosques and his staff were later released and returned to Mexico. When Consul General Bosques returned to Mexico City, he was greeted by cheering throngs and a parade was held in his honor. After the war, Bosques served many years as a career diplomat in the Mexican foreign service.
In his oral history autobiography, Bosques recounts:
“In this humanitarian crisis, assistance and help for the persecuted Jews took on a dimension of an obligation to the human character. Mexico had not taken a firm position on the matter. However, the drama was taking place and we had to help these people. Our assistance took on the form of hiding certain people and documenting others, giving them opportunities to leave France, which was very difficult. Many people left with Mexican documentation. Some of these relied upon the prior admission on the part of the government, while others were documented, protected and assisted in leaving France for safety. Certain cases had numerous stumbling blocks, difficulties and barriers to overcome. Not withstanding this fact, the maximum possible assistance was provided to these people.” (Bosques oral history)
In 1940, Bosques and the Mexican ambassador to France, Luis I. Rodriquez, personally intervened on behalf of refugees with French Prime Minister Pierre Laval. They convinced Laval to permit thousands of Jews and Spanish refugees to leave France. This despite the objections of the Nazi occupying forces in France. Bosques recalled:
“For the task of protection, it was necessary to conduct a very important negotiation with the French authorities.”
It dealt with the issue of resolving the legal status that the Spanish refugees were going to have in France, on the way to Mexico. The minister in France, Luis I. Rodriguez, directed to the French government a note that indicated that there needed to be a formal arrangement on this issue. This note was sent in accordance with the direct instructions of President Lázaro Cardenas. It contemplated the shelter and the sending of the Spanish to Mexico.”
This note led to an accord, whereby the French government accepted the process of documenting these individuals' departure to Mexico. This accord opened the possibility that a large number of refugees could leave and that they could be cared for and helped within the French territory. Later, the accord was extended to cover members of the international brigades, which had fought for the Republic in Spanish territory. These brigades left from Spain but, with the French government's approval, the accord was extended to assist Spanish refugees, as they were in the same field of battle and the same position as the other refugees.” [Bosques oral history]
It is estimated that Bosques issued as many as 40,000 visas to refugees. Not all refugees, however, went to Mexico. Many of the refugees used the visa as a means of escape from southern France to Lisbon, Milan or Trieste, where they could make arrangements for transportation to leave Europe. Bosques understood that a visa, for many of the Jews and other refugees, was a means of escape from France, and not necessarily to go to Mexico.
“Mexico increased its protective assistance to all of the anti-Nazi and antifascist refugees in France, such that they received documentation and assistance in leaving France. They had to be assisted to escape from France and to organize the groundwork for the wars of liberation in Austria, Italy and Yugoslavia. We documented these individuals in order that they would have visas to serve as protection against the French police. They could say, ‘I am going to Mexico,’ and nobody would bother them anymore, since they would no longer be a problem for the police. This was how their exit was facilitated, and the liberation of their respective countries. For example, very important people were sent to Italy, like Luigi Longo of the Communist Party, and many others.
“…Certain groups of Spaniards traveled to Cuba and others to Santo Domingo, due to many circumstances. Some Spaniards of high intellectual ranking went to Buenos Aires, where they received professorships and they gave conferences. For this reason, they decided to stay there, feeling confident in the reception by fellow professors and in a country with which they were already familiar. Others traveled to Santo Domingo, looking for work.
“Many others went to Cuba. The bulk of the refugees came to Mexico. Even the republican government was established in Mexico. Additionally, others came too, including the intellectuals, the workers, the poets and the artists. It was a complete representation of the people of a country.” [Bosques oral history]
“France had just made an agreement with Mexico to let the Spanish republican refugees out, and Mexico was going to give them asylum and provide the boats to transport them.” (Varian Fry, Surrender on Demand, p. 59)
“When I arrived in New York, I learned that the State Department had devised a new and cruelly difficult form of visa application, which made it almost impossible for refugees to enter this country. Fortunately, Mexico and Cuba were more humane, and our office in Marseille (which still continued to function) sent out nearly three hundred more people between the time I left and the time it was raided and closed by the police, on June 2, 1942.” (Varian Fry, Surrender on Demand, p. 236)
“Fortunately, other nations were more humane. In particular, Mexico and Cuba continued to grant visas to hard-pressed refugees after the United States had all but ceased to do so. Thus it was still possible to get a few people out of France. […]
“Between October and December, 1941, more than one hundred of our protégés had their American visas reconfirmed or received Mexican visas, and most of the former went to Lisbon, to embark for New York there. (Among the refugees they sent over the Atlantic were the pianist, Heinz Jolles; the Catholic writer, Edgar Alexander-Emmerich; the sculptor, Bernard Reder; and Wanda Landowska, the harpsichordist, the psychiatrist, Dr. Bruno Strauss; the German art critic, Paul Westheim; the Sicilian novelist, Giuseppe Garetto, the surrealist poet, Benjamin Péret. […]
“On the other hand, Mexican and Cuban visas flowed more freely, and so quite a number of our protégés were able to go to Casablanca and embark there. At the end of January two ships sailed from Casa, the first taking twelve of our people, including Otto Klepper, a former liberal Prime Minister of Prussia, and one of the most endangered men in France, and the second taking thirty more.
“In March two more ships sailed from Casa, the first carrying Charles Stirling, formerly director of the Ingres Museum at Montauban, and now an assistant curator at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City, the producer, Marc Sorkin, assistant to G. W. Pabst; and ten other protégés of ours; and the second bringing to Cuba and Mexico more than seventy clients of the office, including the family of the Spanish novelist, Vicente Blasco Ibañez; the Belgian surgeon, Le Boulanger; and the Czech writer, Victor Zsajka.
“In April still another ship, chartered by the Mexican government, brought to safety in the New World forty of our Spanish friends who had not been able to leave France earlier.
“In May another ship took nearly twenty protégés of the Centre, among them Dr. Erich Drucker, a prominent heart specialist; and Fritz Lamm, one of the two victims of the Bouline adventure who were still in Vernet when I was refoulé.” (Fry, Varian, unpublished manuscript, pp. 432-434, Box 14, Folder 1, Varian Fry Papers, Butler Library, Columbia University, New York.)
“Paul Westheim came trotting up a little later, wearing his old uniform, and showed us a paper: a visa for Mexico. For him, the well-known critic, the polemicist against the “Kunstpolitik” of the Nazis, it had surely been easy to procure an entry permit. Another person rescued!” (Lisa Fittko, Escape through the Pyrenees, p. 176)
In 1944, Bosques wrote modestly regarding his rescue efforts:
“I followed the policy of my country, helping, giving material and moral support to the heroic advocates of the Spanish Republic, of the brave heroes of the struggle against Hitler, Mussolini, Franco, Pétain and Laval.”
“Vichy has issued a decree forbidding all Spanish males between 18 and 48 to leave the country. This evidently abrogates the accord Vichy France signed with Mexico last August, in which Mexico agreed to take the Spanish refugees and Vichy France agreed to let them go. It also betrays the Spanish refugees to Franco. But what is a little betrayal to the men who run France today?
“Thanks to the new regulations, even Julio Just, the former Counselor of the Bank of Spain, can no longer leave France, though he has Mexican, Colombian, Bolivian, Cuban, Nicaraguan and Dominican immigration visas.” (Dated “Wednesday, March 26 [1941].” Varian Fry, unpublished manuscript for Surrender on Demand, p. 491, Varian Fry Papers, Butler Library, Columbia University, New York)
“The Mexicans have succeeded in getting some of the Spaniards whose visas are ready released from the Massilia. Everybody else is being sent to work camps in France and Africa.” (Dated “Wednesday, May 14 [1941].” Varian Fry, unpublished manuscript for Surrender on Demand, p. 553, Varian Fry Papers, Butler Library, Columbia University, New York)
[Bosques, Gilberto. The National Revolutionary Party of Mexico and the Six-Year Plan. (Mexico: Bureau of Foreign Information of the National Revolutionary Party, 1937). Fry, Varian. Surrender on Demand. (New York: Random House, 1945), p. 127. See Visas for Life nomination for Yad Vashem. See also news clippings. Eck, Nathan. “The Rescue of Jews With the Aid of Passports and Citizenship Papers of Latin American States.” Yad Vashem Studies on the European Jewish Catastrophe and Resistance, 1 (1957), pp. 125-152. Marrus, Michael, R., and Robert O. Paxton. Vichy France and the Jews. (New York: Basic Books, 1981). Fittko, Lisa, translated by David Koblick. Escape through the Pyrénées. (Evanston, IL: Northwestern University Press, 1991). Ryan, Donna F. The Holocaust and the Jews of Marseille: The Enforcement of Anti-Semitic Policies in Vichy France. (Urbana, IL: The University of Illinois Press, 1996). Cline, H. F. The United States and Mexico. (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1953). Schuler, Friedrich E. Mexico Between Hitler and Roosevelt: Mexican Foreign Relations in the Age of Lázaro Cárdens, 1934-1940. (Albequerque, NM: University of New Mexico Press, 1998). Bosques Saldívar, Gilberto. Gilberto Bosques Saldívar: H. Congreso del Estado de Puebla. LII Legislatura. (San Andrés Cholula, Puebla: Imagen Pública y Corporativa). Barros Horcasitas, Beatriz. “Gilberto Bosques Saldívar, adalid del asilo diplomático.” Sólo Historia, 12 (2001), pp. 74-87. Carrillo Vivas, Gonzalo, “A los 84 años del desembarco de los marines en el Puerto de Veracruz,” Bulevar, 4 (1993), Mexico. Carrillo Vivas, Gonzalo, “Poeta: Gilberto Bosques Saldívar,” Bulevar, 8 (1994), Mexico. Garay, Graciela de, coord., Gilberto Bosques, historia oral de la diplomacia mexicana. Mexico, Archivo Histórico Diplomático, 1988. Romero Flores, Jesús, Don Miguel Hidalgo y Costilla. Mexico, SEP, 1960. Salado, Minerva, Cuba, revolución en la memoria. Mexico, IPN, 1989. Serrano Migallón, Fernanco, El asilo politico en Mexico. Mexico, Porrúa, 1988. Rodriguez, Luis I. Misión de Luis I. Rodriguez en Francia: La protección de los refugiados españoles, Julio a diciembre de 1940. (Mexico: El Colegio de México, Secretaría de Relaciones Exteriores, Consejo Nacional de Ciencia y Tecnología, 2000). Salzman, Daniela Gleizer. México Frente a la Inmigración de Refugiados Judíos: 1934-1940. (Mexico: Instituto Nacional de Antropología e Historía, 2000). Kloyber, Christian (Ed.). Exilio y Cultura: El Exilio Cultural Austriaco en México. (Mexico: Secretaría de Relaciones Exteriores, 2002). Von Hanffstengel, Renata, Tercero, Cecilia (Eds.). México, El Exilio Bien Temperado. (Mexico City: Instituto de Investigaciones Interculturales Germano-Mexicanas,1995). Von Hanffstengel, Renata, Vasconcelos, Cecilia T., Nungesser, Michael, & Boullosa, Carmen. Encuentros Gráficos 1938-1948. (Mexico City: Instituto de Investigaciones Interculturales Germano-Mexicanas, 1999). Alexander, Brigitte. Die Ruckkehr: Erzählunen und Stücke aus dem Exile. (Berlin: Wolfgang Weist, 2005). Kloyber, Christian. Österreicher in Exil, Mexico 1938-1947: Eine Dokumentation. (Wien: Verlag Deutsche, 2002). Varian Fry Papers, Butler Library, Columbia University, New York.]
Luis Martins de Souza Dantas,* Brazilian Ambassador to France, 1940-43
Luis Martins de Souza Dantas was the Brazilian Ambassador to France between 1922 and 1943. Ambassador Dantas issued visas to hundreds of Jews in occupied France after the Nazi takeover in 1940. In March 1943, the Nazi representatives broke into Dantas’ embassy in Vichy and arrested him. He was deported to Germany and was incarcerated along with other diplomats. This was for his actions in helping Jews. Dantas was eventually freed in 1944, with the direct intervention of Portuguese Prime Minister Oliveira Salazar. Dantas issued the visas against the strict order of the pro-fascist Brazilian government headed by Getulio Vargas, and at great risk to his diplomatic career. The Brazilian government eventually reprimanded him for issuing these visas without authorization from Rio. Several of the Jews arrived in Brazil and were detained by the Brazilian government, but were later released. Dantas was designated Righteous Among the Nations in 2003.
[Milgram, Avraham, translated by Naftali Greenwood. “The Jews of Europe from the perspective of the Brazilian Foreign Service, 1933-1941.” Holocaust and Genocide Studies, 9 (1995), 94-120. Fry, Varian. Surrender on Demand. (New York: Random House, 1945), p. 128. Eck, Nathan. “The Rescue of Jews With the Aid of Passports and Citizenship Papers of Latin American States.” Yad Vashem Studies on the European Jewish Catastrophe and Resistance, 1 (1957), pp. 125-152. Varian Fry Papers, Butler Library, Columbia University, New York.]
Frederic Drach, Issued Altered Dutch and Danish Passports
Frederic Drach sold Dutch and Danish passports to Varian Fry and members of the Emergency Rescue Committee. He apparently obtained unissued passports and was able to alter them. He sold them to the Emergency Rescue Committee. Fry later recalled in his manuscript that Drach later sold them for a nominal fee.
“It was just a few days before the episode of the demobilization paper that Reiner brought Frederic Drach to see me.
“‘This is Monsieur Drach,’ Reiner said. ‘Monsieur Drach has an interesting suggestion to make, and I brought him around because I knew you would want to hear it.’
“‘I have heard a great deal about you, Mr. Fry,’ Drach said, ‘and I think yo have heard something about me. I admire the work you are doing and I’d like to help you. I am an old criminal myself.’”
[…] “Drach’s ‘interesting suggestion’ had to do with Dutch and Danish passports. His story was that he was selling them for a general of the Deuxième Bureau who wanted to make a couple of hundred thousand francs before retiring, and was going to tell his superiors he had lost the passports in the retreat. We weren’t taken in by the story, and I don’t think Drach expected us to be. But the passports looked real enough to fool anybody, and he claimed to have a suitcase full of them. Some were new and some were used and some, though new, had been made to look as though they were old. With the help of a set of rubber stamps Drach carried in the same suitcase, some grease, and a judicious rubbing with fine sandpaper, in half an hour he could make a brand-new passport look as though it had been issued in Paris, the Hague or Copenhagen before the war. He could add rubber stamps which ‘proved’ that the owner of the passport had traveled back and forth between France and Denmark, France and Holland and France and England again and again. His passports were so plausible that it was only natural the price should be high. He wanted 6,000 francs apiece for them—about $150 at the official rate of exchange.
“The high price, and the fact that Drach was an intelligence officer who might also be a Gestapo agent, as far as we knew, made it inadvisable for us to use his passports, and I pretended to have no more than an academic interest in them when Reiner brought him in. Later, when the pinch got tighter, Beamish bought a number of them for various of our clients, and they used them with complete success. We also put two or three rich refugees in search of passports in touch with Drach. They bought his passports and got to Lisbon on them without the slightest trouble.” (Varian Fry, 1945, Surrender on Demand, pp. 43-44)
“It was then that we turned to Drach and his Danish and Dutch passports. The urgency of the situation overcame our reluctance to deal with him, and we bought several of his handsome little cloth-bound booklets. On them we had the honorary Consul of Panama at Marseille place Panamanian visas—with the solemn understanding that they would never be used for the purpose of entering Panama.” (Varian Fry, 1945, Surrender on Demand, p. 82)
“Carlos never succeeded in getting exit visas for the Wolffs. Instead Maurice bought Danish passports for them from Drach, got them Cuban immigration visas, and moved them from place to place in Southern France….” (Varian Fry, Surrender on Demand, pp. 234-235)
[Fry, 1945, pp. 43, 44, 82-83, 235, 238. Varian Fry Papers, Butler Library, Columbia University, New York.]
Mssr. Figuière, Honorary Consul for Panama in Marseilles, 1940-41
The Panamanian Honorary Consul in Marseilles was a French shipping agent by the name of Figuière. He provided Panamanian visa stamps to refugees as a means of escaping Vichy France. Hans and Lisa Fittko, refugees, obtained Panamanian visas from the honorary consul. They stated in Lisa’s autobiography that he “sells” these visas for the price of a salami. It was clear that no one was going to Panama on these visas.
“It was then that we turned to Drach and his Danish and Dutch passports. The urgency of the situation overcame our reluctance to deal with him, and we bought several of his handsome little cloth-bound booklets. On them we had the honorary Consul of Panama at Marseille place Panamanian visas—with the solemn understanding that they would never be used for the purpose of entering Panama. We even agreed with the Panama Consul to instruct every refugee who got one of his visas to report to a certain person in Lisbon for help. By arrangement beforehand, we said, that person, instead of giving help, would take a rubber stamp and bang the word cancelado on the visa. Then he would hand the passport back to the bewildered refugee. The arrangement hugely amused the Panama consul, a French shipping agent by the name of Figuière. Actually, of course, we trusted our refugees and had no need of any such ruse to prevent them from using the visas to enter Panama. They would have been quite satisfied to get as far as Lisbon with them.” (Varian Fry, Surrender on Demand, pp. 82-83)
“Now, what was meant by ‘Panama visas’ in my brother’s telegram? And what’s this about ‘salami’—is that a key word?
“‘We have a connection with the honorary consul of Panama in Marseille,’ explained my brother. ‘He’s already sold visas to many people, to us too; you must check in with him right away. Of course he’s not authorized to issue visas, and the Panamanian government mustn’t find out about it. He takes salami in payment instead of money. I’ve found a shop in the Old Port that carries every kind of delicacy including salami…’
“‘But what do you do with a Panamanian visa when you can’t go to Panama?’
“‘You can try to get to Portugal with it. Some have already succeeded in doing so.’”
…“So we obtained the au lieu certificates and a medium-sized salami and, with them in hand, visited the honorary consul, a fat Frenchman. First off he made us swear an oath that we’d never set foot on Panamanian soil. We swore with a clear conscience.”
...“Some possessors of Panamanian visas had already obtained American transit visas; they cost four hundred francs each. That wasn’t much, but we had no money. I went to the Centre Américain de Secours and Varian Fry let me have the eight hundred francs. But he was angry that the Panama loophole had become common knowledge. ‘That’s my resource,’ he said. ‘We discovered it. It’s always the same—as soon as a new possibility appears, the news gets around and everybody pounces on it?’
“‘What else can you expect,’ I asked, ‘when everybody wants to save his own neck?’” (Lisa Fittko, Escape through the Pyrenees, pp. 165-166)
“‘Our assorted transit visas must be renewed,’ said Hans, ‘and we need travel IDs for the Cuban visas. Then we must see about boat tickets, but for them we have first to get an exchange permit, so you’ll have to—.’
“I interrupted him. ‘Where is Cuba, anyway?’
“‘I don’t know exactly, somewhere between North and Central America. Why do you have to know that now?’
“‘Because it doesn’t sound to me like a real country: Cuba. Just like those visas for China or Panama, pieces of paper—but no place one can go to. Do you know what kind of language they speak there?’
“‘It doesn’t matter—Spanish probably.” (Lisa Fittko, Escape through the Pyrenees, p. 177)
[Fry, Varian. Surrender on Demand. (New York: Random House, 1945), pp. 82-83. Fittko, Lisa, translated by David Koblick. Escape through the Pyrénées. (Evanston, IL: Northwestern University Press, 1991), pp. 165-166. Varian Fry Papers, Butler Library, Columbia University, New York.]
Luis I. Rodriguez, Mexican Ambassador to France, 1939-1940
Luis I. Rodriguez was appointed the Mexican ambassador to France by President Lazaro Cardenas. In 1940, Bosques and Rodriguez presented Laval and the Pétain government with a formal letter of complaint (demarche) regarding France’s treatment of Jews and other refugees and, in particular, the terrible conditions inside the French-administered internment camps. These camps housed thousands of former Spanish Republican soldiers and Jewish refugees who were considered by the French government to be enemy aliens. Later, Rodriguez and Bosques presented formal complaints to the Vichy government regarding the deportation and murder of Jews. Rodriguez left France at the end of 1940, leaving Bosques in charge.
In 1940, Bosques and the Mexican ambassador to France, Luis I. Rodriquez, personally intervened on behalf of refugees with French Prime Minister Pierre Laval. They convinced Laval to permit thousands of Jews and Spanish refugees to leave France. This despite the objections of the Nazi occupying forces in France. Bosques recalled:
“For the task of protection, it was necessary to conduct a very important negotiation with the French authorities.”
It dealt with the issue of resolving the legal status that the Spanish refugees were going to have in France, on the way to Mexico. The minister in France, Luis I. Rodriguez, directed to the French government a note that indicated that there needed to be a formal arrangement on this issue. This note was sent in accordance with the direct instructions of President Lázaro Cardenas. It contemplated the shelter and the sending of the Spanish to Mexico.”
This note led to an accord, whereby the French government accepted the process of documenting these individuals' departure to Mexico. This accord opened the possibility that a large number of refugees could leave and that they could be cared for and helped within the French territory. Later, the accord was extended to cover members of the international brigades, which had fought for the Republic in Spanish territory. These brigades left from Spain but, with the French government's approval, the accord was extended to assist Spanish refugees, as they were in the same field of battle and the same position as the other refugees.” [Bosques oral history]
Many of the refugees whom Bosques helped became important members of the anti-Nazi resistance and liberation movements in Europe.
“One afternoon, we gave documents along with the minister Rodriguez to fifty Italians who were leaving to serve the liberation in their home country. We documented certain individuals who later became prominent figures in the war of Yugoslavia, except for Tito who did not come through France. In some cases, we took advantage of the English intelligence channels and those of the patriots of the resistance. Certain Austrians and Germans preferred to stay and they did not accept the offer to come to Mexico. They took part in the war of the French liberation. The same happened with the refugees of other countries. ‘We are going to stay,’ they said, ‘our duty is to the fight here, the fight to the death, we are going to stay and fight and die in our countries to liberate ourselves from German domination.’” [Bosques oral history]
[Rodriguez, Luis I. Misión de Luis I. Rodriguez en Francia: La protección de los refugiados españoles, Julio a diciembre de 1940. (Mexico: El Colegio de México, Secretaría de Relaciones Exteriores, Consejo Nacional de Ciencia y Tecnología, 2000). Salzman, Daniela Gleizer. México Frente a la Inmigración de Refugiados Judíos: 1934-1940. (Mexico: Instituto Nacional de Antropología e Historía, 2000). Kloyber, Christian (Ed.). Exilio y Cultura: El Exilio Cultural Austriaco en México. (Mexico: Secretaría de Relaciones Exteriores, 2002). Varian Fry Papers, Butler Library, Columbia University, New York.]
Myles Standish, US Vice Consul in Charge of Visas, Marseilles, France, 1940
Myles Standish, like Hiram Bingham, issued visas to Jewish and other refugees seeking to escape France to Portugal. He was active in the rescue of Lion Feuchtwanger from a French internment camp in 1940.
Fry complimented Standish in unpublished portions of his Surrender on Demand manuscript.
After his assignment in Marseilles, Standish took a position with the War Refugee Board finding escape routes for refugees in Europe.
Fry worked closely with Dr. Frank Bohn of the American Federation of Labor, who was operating a rescue network in Marseilles. During an initial meeting, Fry inquired about the cooperation of the American consulate in Marseilles:
“‘How do you find the [American] Consulate?’ I asked. ‘Have they co-operated?’
“‘Splendidly!’ Bohn Said. ‘Splendidly! Don’t you worry. If anything should happen to us, the Consulate and the Embassy would back us up to the hilt.’” (Varian Fry, Surrender on Demand, p. 10)
Standish issued numerous affidavits in lieu of passport:
“Luckily, when an American visa had been authorized for an apatride, or man without a country, the American Consulate usually gave him a paper called an ‘affidavit in lieu of passport.’ For a while this worked, provided the man was willing to take the chance of going through Spain under his own name. In fact, many minor French and Spanish officials obviously took the bearers of such documents for American citizens, and treated them with the special deference European under-officials somehow almost always reserve for Americans—or used to. I was not inclined to correct the false impression.” (Varian Fry, Surrender on Demand, pp. 17-18)
“In the course of time we learned that some of the refugees on my list had already escaped from France without our help. But the great majority were stuck, and wouldn’t have been able to get out at all if it hadn’t been for us. With the help of the American affidavits and the Czech passports, we were able to get quite a lot of them out of France in those first weeks.” (Varian Fry, Surrender on Demand, p. 32)
“In fact, so far as I know, the Marseille consulate is the only on in France where the German-Austrian and Polish quotas are open. But we are lucky to have at that American consulate here one or two thoroughly decent and hardworking consuls who do their utmost within the laws of the United States to help rather than hinder the refugees.
“The truth is that some of our consuls have been away from Washington so long that they have forgotten they are public servants and have assumed the attitude of rich private citizens living abroad who do not care to be disturbed.
“I am going to disturb them. I am going to write them letters and find out why those quotas are still closed.”
- Varian Fry (unpublished manuscript, Box 14, Folder 2, Varian Fry Papers, Butler Library, Columbia University, New York)
“Stephen Hessel is also leaving soon. He has his American visa, and he thinks his commanding officer in the Deuxième Bureau will give him a passport and exit visa.” Dated “Villa Air-Bel, Sunday, February 9 [1941], Morning.” (Varian Fry, unpublished manuscript for Surrender on Demand, p. 421, Box 14, Folder 1, Varian Fry Papers, Butler Library, Columbia University, New York)
“Another friend, Hans Sahl, the German poet, who has been my adviser on German writers, artists and musicians from the very beginning, is hoping to get his exit visa and his Spanish transit visa next week: if he does, he’ll leave too.” Dated “Villa Air-Bel, Sunday, February 9 [1941], Morning.” (Varian Fry, unpublished manuscript for Surrender on Demand, p. 421, Box 14, Folder 1, Varian Fry Papers, Butler Library, Columbia University, New York)
“Credit must be given to the intelligent and understanding cooperation of the American consular officials in Marseille, notably Hiram Bingham and Myles Standish. Without their aid we could not have been so successful at this time. They minimized formalities instead of creating barriers to the departure of refugees, and did everything in their power to help those ready to go in general showed a sympathetic attitude toward candidates for immigration. […]
“The United States Consul continued to cooperate with us in minimizing delays in issuing visas and in arranging necessary interviews well in advance, so that prospective passengers could leave by the first available vessel.” (Danny Bénédite, Marseille, November 6, 1941, Administrative Report: The Stages of the Committee’s Development [draft], Emergency Rescue Committee, p. 7)
“These tasks had to be carried out very quickly, since, in the interests of safety, the shipping companies revealed the dates of sailings only four or five days in advance and part of the work had to be done within those days. Many of our protégés who lacked American visas, exit visas, tickets and funds on days when sailings were announced, were nevertheless able to go. Some received their American visas an hour before sailing time and were given their tickets on the dock.” (Danny Bénédite, Marseille, November 6, 1941, Administrative Report: The Stages of the Committee’s Development [draft], Emergency Rescue Committee, p. 8)
[Fry, Varian. Surrender on Demand. (New York: Random House). Marino, Andy. A Quiet American: The Secret War of Varian Fry. (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1999), pp. 99-100, 120. FDR Library War Refugee Board Archives, 1944-1945. JDC Archives, NYC. Feuchtwanger, Lion, The Devil in France: My Encounter with Him in the Summer of 1940, Viking, 1940. Varian Fry Papers, Butler Library, Columbia University.]
Vladimír Vochoc, Czech Consul in Marseilles, France, 1940
Czech Consul Vladimir Vochoc, stationed in Marseilles, distributed many Czech passports on his own authority to Jews and anti-Nazis who wanted to escape from Marseilles to Spain and Portugal. Vochoc worked closely with Varian Fry of the Emergency Rescue Committee (ERC), Dr. Frank Bohn of the American Federation of Labor (AFL) and Dr. Donald Lowrie of the Young Men’s Christian Association (YMCA) in supplying Czech visas. For his life-saving activities, Vochoc was arrested by Nazi and French authorities pending possible deportation. Two months later, he managed to escape to Lisbon.
“But if a refugee’s American visa hadn’t yet been authorized, of he wasn’t willing to travel under his own name even if it had been, there was usually only one solution—a false passport. It was the Czech Consul at Marseille who solved that problem, and it was Donald Lowrie who put me in touch with him. Lowrie was one of the representatives of the Y.M.C.A. in France, and also the delegate of the American Friends of Czechoslovakia. He had been in Prague when the Germans came in, and he had helped a good many German and Czech anti-Nazis escape. When he got to Marseille he was already known to the Czech Consul as a good friend of the Czechs. I met him very soon after my arrival, and he took me down to the Czech Consulate and introduced me to the Consul.
“Vladimir Vochoc was a diplomat of the old school He had been chief of the European personnel division of the Czech Foreign Office before the fall of Prague, and a professor at the University of Prague. I don’t think he liked the idea of handing out false passports, but he was wise enough to realize that his country had been invaded by the Nazis, and that it wouldn’t be liberated by legal means alone. He was willing to help any anti-Nazi save his life if there was any chance at all that, once saved, the man would be useful in overthrowing the Nazis and so restoring the independence of Czechoslovakia. Vochoc’s own job consisted in smuggling the Czech volunteers out of France so they could fight again with the British.
“At Lowrie’s suggestion, I made a deal with Vochoc. He agreed to grant Czech passports to any anti-Nazis I recommended to him. In return I gave him enough money to have new passports printed when his limited supply had run out. He couldn’t get any more from Prague, obviously, but as a Consul he had the right to have them printed in France. The work was actually done at Bordeaux, in the occupied zone, under the noses of the Germans. It was a very nice job. The covers were pink, whereas the old Prague passports had been green, but otherwise you couldn’t tell one from the other.
“After that there was nothing left to do but work out a safe way to receive the passports. Lowrie was living at the Hotel Terminus, and I used to go over to his room and have breakfast with him twice a week. Each time I went I would take him an envelope of photographs and descriptions of my candidates for Czech passports, and he would give me an envelope of the passports Vochoc had already prepared for the previous lot. Then I’d go back to my room at the Splendide and hand the passports to the refugees as they came in to get them.” (Varian Fry, Surrender on Demand, pp. 18-19)
“Of them all, probably none was in greater danger than [Konrad] Heiden. What he had written about Adolph Hitler the Fuehrer would never forgive or forget. Heiden had been interned at the outbreak of the war, released a few weeks later, reinterned in May. […]
“Heiden made his way to Montauban, and from there he came to Marseille. At the Marseille consulate he got an American visa and an affidavit in lieu of a passport, under his own name. He wanted to go to Lisbon with this, but I felt I couldn’t take the responsibility of letting him go through Spain under his own name. I got him a Czech passport under the name of David Silbermann, and after a good deal of hesitation, he used the Czech passport as far as Lisbon, changing back to his rightful personality there.
“Most of the others had no choice. If they had American visas, they used them for travel documents. If they didn’t have them, I got them Czech passports, often under their own names, and sent them through that way. In those first days not one of them was arrested, either in France or in Spain.”
- Varian Fry (unpublished manuscript, pp. 113-114, Box 14, Folder 1, Varian Fry Papers, Butler Library, Columbia University, New York)
“The Prefecture had also called in the American Consul and told him it was inquiet—uneasy—about the ‘activities of Dr. Bohn and Mr. Fry.’ It had also complained about Lowrie’s activities in behalf of the Czech soldiers, and had warned Vochoc not to use any more false passports. Lowrie had given up his illegal activities, and Vochoc had decided to issue no more passports.” (Varian Fry, Surrender on Demand, p. 80)
“Later, in flagrant violation of his exequatur, they arrested the Czech Consul, Vladimir Vochoc, and placed him in residence force at Lubersac, near the demarcation line. We were convinced that he was being held for extradition, but two months later he managed to escape and get to Lisbon.” (Varian Fry, Surrender on Demand, p. 208)
“Then about 7 o’clock tonight a boy from the Czech Consulate came running up to the office to tell us that Vochoc, the Consul, had just been arrested. They think he will be extradited. He has shown great courage, and by his generosity with passports he has saved many lives, including some stalwart anti-Nazi lives. I suppose the Gestapo knows that, and that he is now to pay for what he has done. But will France calmly hand him over?
“Why not? Didn’t she hand his country over two years ago?” (Dated March 17 [1941]. Varian Fry, unpublished manuscript for Surrender on Demand, 1941, Varian Fry Papers, Butler Library, Columbia University, New York)
“The order for Vochoc’s arrest was signed by the new police chief, de Rodellec du Porzic, a Breton naval officer and great friend of Darlan, who appointed him. It was based on a telegram from the Ministry of the Interior.
“After spending the night in an armchair at the prefecture, Vochoc was taken this afternoon to the little village of Lubersac, Corrèze, near Perigneux—and the demarcation line. The prefecture says he is to be put in résidence forcée there, but the Czechs think it is only a step on the way to Germany, as Arles was a step for Breitscheid and Hilferding.
“The entire Consular corps of Marseille, headed by Hugh Fullerton, the American Consul-General, went to the prefecture today to protest against Vochoc’s arrest. Getting no satisfaction there, Fullerton sent Hiram Bingham to Vichy to ask Admiral Leahy to intervene. Apparently the American authorities can be militant enough when the rights and safety of consuls are concerned, even when the consuls are ‘aliens.’ Too bad they can’t be equally militant in defense of a simple American citizen like me, or the poor devils of refugees who have spent the last eight years fighting Hitler, and now seem likely to pay with their lives for it.
“I knew Vochoc so well, and worked with him so long, that his arrest has shaken me even more than the extraditions of Breitscheid and Hilferding. He is a member of the Legion of Honor and always wears the rosette in his buttonhole. Surely France will not hand over the Germany a man who has received a decoration for his services to France!
“Surely?” (Dated “Wednesday, March 19 [1941].” Varian Fry, unpublished manuscript for Surrender on Demand, p. 483, Varian Fry Papers, Butler Library, Columbia University, New York)
[Lowry, 1963, p. 48. Fry, Varian. Surrender on Demand. (New York: Random House, 1945), pp. 18-19, 32, 40-41, 49, 57, 80-82, 208. Marino, Andy. A Quiet American: The Secret War of Varian Fry. (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1999), pp. 107-108, 119, 137, 141, 192-193. Isenberg, Sheila. A Hero of Our Own: The Story of Varian Fry. (New York: Random House), pp. 38, 87, 111, 188. Klein, Anne. “Conscience, conflict and politics: The rescue of political refugees from southern France to the United States, 1940-1942.” Leo Baeck Institute Year Book, 43 (1998), 298-299. Archiv der socialen Demokratie, NL Vladimir Vochoc (transl. By Vera Pikow). Ryan, Donna F. The Holocaust and the Jews of Marseille: The Enforcement of Anti-Semitic Policies in Vichy France. (Urbana, IL: The University of Illinois Press, 1996), pp. 143-144, 148. Ebel, Miriam Davenport. An Unsentimental Education: A Memoir by Miriam Davenport Ebel. (1999). Moore, 2010, pp. 23, 24-26. Vochoc, Vladimír, Compte Rendu (London, 1941), 18. Coll Archiv Joseph Fisera USHMM RG-43.028 A 0069. Varian Fry Papers, Butler Library, Columbia University, New York.]
Li Yu-Ying, Chinese Consul, Marseilles, France, 1940
Li Yu-Ying was the acting Chinese Consul in Marseilles in 1940. He was also the President of the National Academy there. Many refugees in Marseilles received a visa stamp from Li Yu-Ying. In Chinese characters that virtually no one could read, the stamp read, “Under no circumstances is this person to be allowed entrance to China.” Anxious refugees used the visa stamp as an exit visa. Frank Bohn, of the American Federation of Labor (AFL), Varian Fry of the Emergency Rescue Committee (ERC), and other rescue and relief agencies utilized many of these Chinese visas to help refugees leave France for Spain, Portugal and other parts of Europe.
“Refugees who hadn’t yet received United States visas were taking Chinese or Siamese visas and getting Portuguese transit visas on them, with the intention of waiting for their United States visas in Lisbon rather than in France.”
“The Chinese visas were all in Chinese, except for two words: ‘100 francs.’ The Chinese and those who could read Chinese said that the ‘visa’ really read: ‘This person shall not, under any circumstances, be allowed to enter China.’ I don’t know whether this was true or not, but it didn’t matter so long as the Portuguese were accepting the visa as a valid one.” (Varian Fry, Surrender on Demand, p. 15)
“Those who hadn’t yet received their visas were more of a problem. Some of them could afford to wait for American visas, because there wasn’t any particular reason why they should be wanted by the Gestapo. When that was the case, I cabled their names to New York and asked the committee there to get them emergency visas as quickly as possible. Others couldn’t wait; they had to get out of France right away. When they had passports, I helped them get Chinese, Siamese or sometimes Belgian Congo visas and advised them to go as far as Lisbon, where they could wait, in comparative safety, for their American visas to be authorized.” (Varian Fry, Surrender on Demand, p. 15)
“There were rumors about honorary consuls who sold ‘final-destination’ visas. Indeed, at this time it wasn’t important whether or not they were valid; one could at least get to Portugal with them. In the rue St. Feréol there was a Chinese Bureau that issued Chinese visas for a hundred francs. Most of the emigrés could afford that amount, and lines stood in front of the bureau. We, too, got a Chinese stamp in our Czech passports. Much later, a Chinese friend translated the ‘visa’ for us. It read something like this: ‘It is strictly forbidden for the bearer of this document, under any circumstances and at any time, to set foot on Chinese soil.’ That made no difference, for the Portuguese in Marseille couldn’t understand Chinese—or perhaps they didn’t want to understand it?” (Lisa Fittko, Escape through the Pyrenees, p. 95)
“‘Our assorted transit visas must be renewed,’ said Hans, ‘and we need travel IDs for the Cuban visas. Then we must see about boat tickets, but for them we have first to get an exchange permit, so you’ll have to—.’
“I interrupted him. ‘Where is Cuba, anyway?’
“‘I don’t know exactly, somewhere between North and Central America. Why do you have to know that now?’
“‘Because it doesn’t sound to me like a real country: Cuba. Just like those visas for China or Panama, pieces of paper—but no place one can go to. Do you know what kind of language they speak there?’
“‘It doesn’t matter—Spanish probably.” (Lisa Fittko, Escape through the Pyrenees, p. 177)
[Fry, Varian. Surrender on Demand. (New York: Random House, 1945), pp. 15-17. Marino, Andy. A Quiet American: The Secret War of Varian Fry. (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1999), pp. 108, 119. Varian Fry Papers, Butler Library, Columbia University, New York.]
Cuban Consul in Vichy France, Marseilles, 1940-41?
The Cuban consulate in Vichy provided exit visas to Jewish refugees and to Varian Fry and the Emergency Rescue Committee and other rescue and relief operations active in Marseilles.
“‘Our assorted transit visas must be renewed,’ said Hans, ‘and we need travel IDs for the Cuban visas. Then we must see about boat tickets, but for them we have first to get an exchange permit, so you’ll have to—.’
“I interrupted him. ‘Where is Cuba, anyway?’
“‘I don’t know exactly, somewhere between North and Central America. Why do you have to know that now?’
“‘Because it doesn’t sound to me like a real country: Cuba. Just like those visas for China or Panama, pieces of paper—but no place one can go to. Do you know what kind of language they speak there?’
“‘It doesn’t matter—Spanish probably.” (Lisa Fittko, Escape through the Pyrenees, p. 177)
“Carlos never succeeded in getting exit visas for the Wolffs. Instead Maurice bought Danish passports for them from Drach, got them Cuban immigration visas, and moved them from place to place in Southern France, until, with the help of the Abbé Glasberg, assistant to Cardinal Gerlier of Lyon, they were able to get exit visas at the Lyon Prefecture and board a Spanish ship at Cadiz. When they reached Cuba, one of our hardest problems was solved.” (Varian Fry, Surrender on Demand, pp. 234-235)
“When I arrived in New York, I learned that the State Department had devised a new and cruelly difficult form of visa application, which made it almost impossible for refugees to enter this country. Fortunately, Mexico and Cuba were more humane, and our office in Marseille (which still continued to function) sent out nearly three hundred more people between the time I left and the time it was raided and closed by the police, on June 2, 1942.” (Varian Fry, Surrender on Demand, p. 236)
“His friends in America got him a Cuban visa. The Cuban consul helped him. Since he had no French travel document, the consul gave him a Cuban one. On that he was able to get a not quite regular exit visa. Socialist friends enabled him to avoid the police, get on the boat without having to submit to the usual examination, taking up of food ration cards, etc. Thanks to their help he was able to reach Havana on April 25, 1942.” (Fry, note dated December 1941 et seq., from unpublished manuscript, Varian Fry Papers, Butler Library, Columbia University, New York)
“Fortunately, other nations were more humane. In particular, Mexico and Cuba continued to grant visas to hard-pressed refugees after the United States had all but ceased to do so. Thus it was still possible to get a few people out of France. […]
“Between October and December, 1941, more than one hundred of our protégés had their American visas reconfirmed or received Mexican visas, and most of the former went to Lisbon, to embark for New York there. (Among the refugees they sent over the Atlantic were the pianist, Heinz Jolles; the Catholic writer, Edgar Alexander-Emmerich; the sculptor, Bernard Reder; and Wanda Landowska, the harpsichordist, the psychiatrist, Dr. Bruno Strauss; the German art critic, Paul Westheim; the Sicilian novelist, Giuseppe Garetto, the surrealist poet, Benjamin Péret. […]
“On the other hand, Mexican and Cuban visas flowed more freely, and so quite a number of our protégés were able to go to Casablanca and embark there. At the end of January two ships sailed from Casa, the first taking twelve of our people, including Otto Klepper, a former liberal Prime Minister of Prussia, and one of the most endangered men in France, and the second taking thirty more.
“In March two more ships sailed from Casa, the first carrying Charles Stirling, formerly director of the Ingres Museum at Montauban, and now an assistant curator at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City, the producer, Marc Sorkin, assistant to G. W. Pabst; and ten other protégés of ours; and the second bringing to Cuba and Mexico more than seventy clients of the office, including the family of the Spanish novelist, Vicente Blasco Ibañez; the Belgian surgeon, Le Boulanger; and the Czech writer, Victor Zsajka.
“In April still another ship, chartered by the Mexican government, brought to safety in the New World forty of our Spanish friends who had not been able to leave France earlier.
“In May another ship took nearly twenty protégés of the Centre, among them Dr. Erich Drucker, a prominent heart specialist; and Fritz Lamm, one of the two victims of the Bouline adventure who were still in Vernet when I was refoulé.” (Fry, Varian, unpublished manuscript, pp. 432-434, Box 14, Folder 1, Varian Fry Papers, Butler Library, Columbia University, New York.)
[Fry, Varian. Surrender on Demand. (New York: Random House, 1945), pp. 127-128. Varian Fry Papers, Butler Library, Columbia University, New York.]
Lithuanian Honorary Consul in Aix-en-Provence, France, 1940?
The Lithuanian honorary consul in Marseilles, France, provided Lithuanian passports to Varian Fry and Albert Hirschmann of the Emergency Rescue Committee. These documents were necessary in order to get refugees safe passage through Spain to Lisbon. The honorary consul of Lithuania at Aix-en-Provence was eventually arrested by the French police.
“It was these three problems that Beamish was working on. He solved them all. He got Polish passports from the Polish Consul in Marseille, and Lithuanian passports from the Lithuanian Consul at Aix-en-Provence. He also found a way of sending men to Casablanca who wouldn’t go through Spain under any circumstances.” (Varian Fry, Surrender on Demand, p. 41)
“As I have already said, Beamish had discovered that the honorary Lithuanian Consul at Aix-en-Provence, a Frenchman, would sell Lithuanian passports, had, in fact, been selling quite a number of them to Frenchmen who wanted to join de Gaulle. For a few days we thought these would replace the Czech passports. They were very good papers to have, because Lithuania was a neutral country, and so there would be no difficulty with them in Spain, even for men of military age. We bought a number of them for our clients.” (Varian Fry, Surrender on Demand, p. 82)
“Maurice, our Rumanian doctor, had already had something to do with the illegal departure of refugees even before Beamish left, but afterward he took charge of it. He established relations with [Fittko] at the frontier, and later with this successor, S____. He organized a whole network of underground workers—the ‘invisible staff’ as we called it—managed the secret funds, found new hiding places, directed the movement of refugees from one place to another, and provided them with false passports and visas. When everything else failed, he worked closely with Emilio Lussu in building up an underground railroad all the way to Lisbon. He fancied himself as quite a dog with the ladies, and, superficially, he often seemed to take his work rather lightly. But I soon discovered that the impression was a false one.” (Varian Fry, Surrender on Demand, p. 152)
“Lithuanian consul. Arrested and imprisoned at the end of 1940. Immediately afterword the police came around looking for Beamish, who had been away on a trip to the frontier. When he came back I told him they were looking for him and he left France.” (Fry, note dated December 1940, from unpublished manuscript, Varian Fry Papers, Butler Library, Columbia University, New York)
“Lithuanian passports. Charlie says they blew up ‘the last of October or the first of Nov.’ ‘The Germans (?) raided the Lithuanian consulate and got names and addresses of everyone who had phony passports. Wasn’t someone in the office affected by this? I remember there was a lot of wailing about town that morning.” Charlie, letter of Aug. 6.” (Fry, note from unpublished manuscript, Varian Fry Papers, Butler Library, Columbia University, New York.)
[Fry, Varian. Surrender on Demand. (New York: Random House, 1945), pp. 40-41, 131. Marino, Andy. A Quiet American: The Secret War of Varian Fry. (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1999), pp. 141, 242. Ebel, Miriam Davenport. An Unsentimental Education: A Memoir by Miriam Davenport Ebel. (1999). Varian Fry Papers, Butler Library, Columbia University, New York.]
Polish Consul in Marseilles, France, 1940?
The Polish consul in Marseilles, France, provided Polish passports to Varian Fry and Albert Hirschmann of the Emergency Rescue Committee. These documents were necessary in order to get refugees safe passage through Spain to Lisbon.
“It was these three problems that Beamish was working on. He solved them all. He got Polish passports from the Polish Consul in Marseille, and Lithuanian passports from the Lithuanian Consul at Aix-en-Provence. He also found a way of sending men to Casablanca who wouldn’t go through Spain under any circumstances.” (Varian Fry, Surrender on Demand, p. 41)
“Beamish also discovered an Austrian refugee named Reiner who sold everything—demobilization orders, French identity cards, passports and forged exit visas. He seemed to be on good terms with the Czech and Polish Consulates. In fact, he could get Czech and Polish passports à volonté—and also French identity cards…” (Varian Fry, Surrender on Demand, p. 42)
[Fry, Varian. Surrender on Demand. (New York: Random House, 1945), pp. 40-41. Marino, Andy. A Quiet American: The Secret War of Varian Fry. (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1999), p. 141. Ebel, Miriam Davenport. An Unsentimental Education: A Memoir by Miriam Davenport Ebel. (1999). Varian Fry Papers, Butler Library, Columbia University, New York.]
Siamese (Thai) Consul, Marseilles, France, 1940
Varian Fry of the Emergency Rescue Committee (ERC) and other rescue and relief agencies used Siamese (Thai) visas as exit visas to leave Marseilles and Vichy France. Although there was no possible way of reaching Siam during the war, Portuguese and Spanish officials honored these visas. Once the refugees had the Portuguese and Spanish transit visas, they were able to go to Lisbon with ease. Eventually, the consulate of Siam was raided and the consul was arrested by the French authorities. After the raid, the Emergency Rescue Committee was no longer able to use these visas.
“Refugees who hadn’t yet received United States visas were taking Chinese or Siamese visas and getting Portuguese transit visas on them, with the intention of waiting for their United States visas in Lisbon rather than in France.” (Varian Fry, Surrender on Demand, p. 15)
“The Siamese visas were real enough, only there was absolutely no way of going from Portugal to Siam without getting numerous unobtainable transit visas. Yet, at the time, the Portuguese Consuls gave the holders of these Siamese visas Portuguese transit visas exactly as though there were ships from Lisbon to Bangkok. Once they had the Portuguese and Spanish transit visas, most of the refugees were able to go to Lisbon with little or no difficulty.” (Varian Fry, Surrender on Demand, p. 15)
“Those who hadn’t yet received their visas were more of a problem. Some of them could afford to wait for American visas, because there wasn’t any particular reason why they should be wanted by the Gestapo. When that was the case, I cabled their names to New York and asked the committee there to get them emergency visas as quickly as possible. Others couldn’t wait; they had to get out of France right away. When they had passports, I helped them get Chinese, Siamese or sometimes Belgian Congo visas and advised them to go as far as Lisbon, where they could wait, in comparative safety, for their American visas to be authorized.” (Varian Fry, Surrender on Demand, p. 17)
“But to make sure I wasn’t letting Klaus and his friend walk into a trip, I persuaded them to forget their prestataire career and desert... They took rooms at a Marseille hotel, changed into civilian clothes, and began to look around for ways to get out of France. Neither had any kind of overseas visa, so we got Klaus a Czech passport and a Siamese visa, and we sent this friend to Casablanca on a false demobilization order. When the Siamese visas and the Czech passports were no longer of any use, we had someone take Klaus’s name to Lisbon and cable it to New York from there, and we advised him to wait in Marseille until his American visa was ready.” (Varian Fry, Surrender on Demand, p. 99)
[Fry, Varian. Surrender on Demand. (New York: Random House, 1945), pp. 15-17, 132. Marino, Andy. A Quiet American: The Secret War of Varian Fry. (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1999), p. 119. Varian Fry Papers, Butler Library, Columbia University, New York.]