Highlights
for September 13
Varian Fry found dead
In many ways, Varian Fry was an American Oscar Schindler. Like Schindler, he had a list of individuals he wanted to
save from the horror of Nazi concentration camps. Upon his
arrival in Vichy controlled Marseilles, Fry set out to help
free some 200 endangered writer's, artists and intellectuals.
Those who wished to flee from the Nazi's control were many
and French forces cooperated with the Nazi's to make leaving difficult. To get people out would take a person who was
willing to take risks. Fry was up to the job and the list
of people whom he saved included Hannah Arendt, Marc Chagall,
Max Ernst, Arthur Koestler and Max Ophuls.
Born the son of a stockbroker, Fry was constantly in trouble
in boarding school and later at Harvard. He loved modernist
authors such as Joyce and Elliot and upon graduation, Fry
visited Germany. This visit would have a profound influence
on his life, for it was here he would speak to former Harvard
classmate Ernst Hanfstanegl. Fry listened to Hanfstanegl as
he explained how the leaders of the party, Hitler and Goebbels, were determined to exterminate the Jews and decided to
help. "I volunteered myself. I knew what would happen to the
refugees if the Nazi's got hold of them."
Fry discovered layers of courage that he never knew he possessed. Fry's work help save so many but there was another
side to him. He liked to have a good time and drank and often
told jokes while life and death decisions hung in the balance. It was as if Fry seemed to be hosting a giant party.
But it was exciting for Fry and others to live outside the
law and to take these risks. Fry saved not only artists and
women but also plenty of regular people from the horrors of
Nazi Germany. He was most sensitive to those who had been
singled out by the Nazi's and put them top of his list. At the same time, those that he or his network believed
to be communists were rejected, which is important to remember because many of the intellectuals of that time were
communists.
Fry was forced to leave in late 1941, and like so many
others who find their moment in time at an early age, he
went into decline. Back in the states, he drifted from job
to job, for nothing he did seemed as exciting as his days
in France. "The experiences of 10, 15 and even 20 years
have been passed into one," Fry once said. Fry tried being
a writer, a film producer and a teacher and at the end of
his life he had no income. On Sept. 13, 1967, he was found
dead in his bed as a forgotten man. But Fry had done his bit
and showed that in times of crises some of the least likely
people become heroes.
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