Helping Thousands of Refugees to Flee

 

On June 25, 1940, Varian Fry, a 32-year-old journalist from Virginia, cofounded the Emergency Rescue Committee at a fundraiser amid concerns of the threat posed by the Nazis. Fry had been monitoring the growth of the Nazi Party in Germany and Europe and formed the committee to rally political support for refugee resettlement when many Americans favored isolationism.
Fry and other founding members of the committee met with First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt, a supporter of the organization. She secured emergency visas for several artists and scholars endangered by the Nazis and wrote a letter of introduction that helped Fry establish operations in Marseille, for which he departed on August 4, 1940. He had $3,000 taped to his leg, a list of 200 endangered artists and intellectuals, and instructions to help them evacuate. Shortly after arriving, he recognized the need to help as many people as possible escape Europe and expanded his work well beyond the initial list. 
Mary Jayne Gold, a Chicago-born heiress living in Paris, played an instrumental role in expanding the list of artists and intellectuals, personally funding the evacuations of refugees. The list included such notables as Max Ernst, André Betron, and Marc Chagall. She also funded the rental of a residence where committee members and others lived. Gold joined Fry’s team officially as an interviewer and courier. 
Of particular concern was the Vichy government’s agreement to surrender on demand all Germans living in French territories to the Nazis. Moreover, this law required anti-Nazi activists, artists, and free thinkers, regardless of nationality, to be deported. 
Another committee member, Albert Hirschman, was a Jewish-German humanitarian and anti-Nazi activist. Hirschman met Fry in Marseille and worked as Fry’s right-hand man to support the evacuation of refugees. He also enlisted others to help smuggle refugees over the Pyrenees into Spain. In June 1940, he, too, fled across the Pyrenees and on to Lisbon, arriving by ship in New York City.
Fry’s team of humanitarians hailed from various backgrounds and nations, risking their lives to help refugees escape the growing Nazi influence in France. From the time he arrived in Marseille, Vichy authorities watched Fry and his associates, who faced constant harassment and occasional arrest. Nevertheless, the committee worked tirelessly to secure exit permits for refugees to leave the country and even skirted the law to help some escape over the Spanish border without paperwork.
Some U.S. State Department officials viewed Fry’s efforts as counterproductive to relations between the United States and the French state. This led the American consul in Marseille to pressure Fry’s return stateside. On August 30, 1941, Vichy police arrested Fry and deported him the next day. Fry continued to support refugees with his personal funds and by raising awareness of conditions in Europe through his writings. He was posthumously named “Righteous Among the Nations” by the Yad Vashem Holocaust Memorial in 1994. At the ceremony, U.S. Secretary of State Warren Christopher apologized for his department's treatment of Fry during the war. 
Upon her return to the states, Mary Jayne Gold worked for the newly formed International Rescue Committee, the successor to the committee, and pursued a degree in psychology with a specialization in criminal psychology.
Once in the United States, Hirschman received a Rockefeller Foundation fellowship and served two years with the U.S. Army’s intelligence section until the end of the war. He became a well-known scholar and faculty member at Princeton University.