Varian Fry (1907-1967) 1994 Copy of 1941 Press Photograph

Authors

Object ID

2022.1.31

Object Name

Photograph, Reproduction

Date

1994

Files

Content Warning

The Bulmash Family Holocaust Collection consists of images, documents, and artifacts related to the Holocaust. The collection contains materials that depict a number of topics that may be difficult for viewers to engage with, including: antisemitic descriptions, caricatures, and representation of Jewish people; Nazi imagery and ideology; descriptions and images of German ghettos; graphic images of the violence of the Holocaust; and the creation of the State of Israel. For more information, see our policy page.

Description

Profile of male wearing glasses looking down, typed text along left side of image.

Information Provided by Michael D. Bulmash:

Varian Fry was a Harvard-trained classics scholar and journalist who helped Jews and other refugees escape France after the German occupation. He helped establish the Emergency Rescue Committee in New York to assist both Jewish and non-Jewish intellectuals, artists, musicians, and writers who were known anti-Nazis and whose lives would be in danger in Petainist Vichy France. Travelling first to Lisbon, Portugal, Fry met with Waitstill Sharp, the American Unitarian minister who helped him with contacts in Marseilles. Fry wasted no time setting up office space and gathering the requisite staff. He worked with Hiram Bingham IV, at this time the American vice-consul in Marseilles, and began helping refugees to safety in neutral Portugal, some crossing the so-called “Freedom Trail” across the Pyrenees to avoid Spanish border guards, before arriving safely in Lisbon. Fry and his staff worked to provide homes for refugees: Bingham, for example, hid the novelist Lion Feuchtwanger in his own home, until such time as Waitstill Sharp could ensure his safe passage to America. Fry and his network would help more than 4000 people and as many as 1000 refugees smuggled out of France, many to find sanctuary in the United States. The list included Hanna Arendt, the writers Franz Werfel and Heinrich Mann, the artist Marc Chagall and many others. The work of Fry and his staff would eventually anger both French and American authorities. United States Secretary of State Cordell Hull was concerned that Fry’s covert activities would jeopardize American neutrality, his (Hull’s) “sympathy” for the “unfortunate refugees” notwithstanding. Hull demanded that Fry return stateside immediately. When Fry refused, Hull had his passport revoked. Fry was arrested by French police on suspicion of being a terrorist, taken to the Spanish border, and returned to the US in 1941.

Fry received the French Croix de Chevalier and was the first American honored by Yad Vashem as Righteous Among the Nations.

Dimensions

11 x 8 1/2"

Keywords

Varian Fry, Waitstill Sharp, Martha Sharp, Hiram Bingham IV, Cordell Hull

Subcollection

Diplomats

Recommended Citation

"Varian Fry (1907-1967) 1994 Copy of 1941 Press Photograph" (1994). Bulmash Family Holocaust Collection. 2022.1.31.
https://digital.kenyon.edu/bulmash/1878

Creative Commons License

This work is licensed under the Creative Commons Public Domain Mark.