Varian Fry’s List : It’s not too late for U.S. to honor American who saved many Jews

No films have praised the courage and selflessness of Varian Fry, no statues have been raised to celebrate his humanitarian achievements, no apology has ever been issued for the craven and shabby way this American citizen was treated by his own government. But in Jerusalem this week grateful recognition finally went to the man who, defying the State Department and disregarding risks to his own safety, 55 years ago rescued thousands of European Jews from Nazi persecution. At the Yad Vashem Holocaust Memorial the people of Israel honored Fry as one of the Righteous Among the Nations, Gentiles who have been recognized for their help in saving Jews. Surely the time has come for the U.S. government also to officially honor Fry’s quiet heroism.

In August 1940, Fry, then 33, arrived in Marseilles with 200 visas pried out of a reluctant State Department only after President Franklin D. Roosevelt personally interceded. The department in that era was notoriously unsympathetic to the plight of Europe’s Jews, despite the looming shadow of the Holocaust. Fry’s mission, intended to last just a few weeks, was to aid the escape of Jewish artists and intellectuals, among them the painters Marc Chagall and Max Ernst, the philosopher Hannah Arendt, the sculptor Jacques Lipshitz and the writer Leon Feuchtwanger. When Fry was finally compelled to leave France 14 months later he had in fact helped save nearly 4,000 Jews, often using Czech, Chinese or forged documents he had somehow procured.

A State Department furious at this show of independence revoked Fry’s passport and encouraged the collaborationist Vichy French regime to expel him. Fry’s subsequent denunciations of U.S. government callousness in the face of impending catastrophe made him suspect to the FBI. Fry died in 1967, at 59, a virtually unremembered high school teacher. At the Jerusalem ceremony honoring him, Secretary of State Warren Christopher acknowledged that Fry never received the support he deserved from his government. That government should act now to salute his noble and courageous achievements.