Varian Fry in Vichy

Varian Fry
This is the story of a man who was so moved by what he heard about what was being done to the Jews in Europe that he did something about it.

Varian Fry was an American journalist who, in Germany in 1935, saw what Nazism meant. So after France was invaded he asked permission of the U.S. State Department to rescue Jews from the one part of wartime Europe that he could go to, namely Vichy France (see related article on Vichy here.

In August 1940 he went to Vichy France and set up a ‘front’ in Marseille as a concerned citizen who wanted to alleviate the circumstance of refugees by donations of food, clothing, and the like. Behind this front he set up a clandestine operation to help Jews get out of France. He helped thousands make the journey overland to Spain and from there to Portugal, and he helped others escape by sea. The U.S. State Department pressured him to get out but he stayed until he was kicked out by the Vichy French Authorities, after two years of operations.

Fry grew up in Ridgewood, New Jersey and there is a permanent exhibition in his honor at the public library, and a street named after him. Varian Fry was not Jewish.

Further reading: Assignment: Rescue
an autobiograpy by Varian Fry
Published 1945 in conjunction with the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum ISBN 0-590-46970-3