[Congressional Record Volume 144, Number 10 (Wednesday, February 11, 1998)]
[Extensions of Remarks]
[Pages E144-E146]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




             HOMAGE TO VARIAN FRY, A REAL AND UNLIKELY HERO

                                 ______
                                 

                            HON. TOM LANTOS

                             of california

                    in the house of representatives

                      Wednesday, February 11, 1998

  Mr. LANTOS. Mr. Speaker, Varian Fry was one of the greatest, albeit 
one of the most unrecognized, American heroes of the twentieth century. 
As a young relief worker in Vichy France during the early years of 
World War II, he responded to the onslaught of Nazi persecution with a 
degree of bravery which stands out even when compared to the courage of 
other noble men and women who resisted German oppression. Fry led a 
small group of American liberals in creating the Emergency Rescue 
Committee (ERC), an organization dedicated to using every means at its 
disposal to help political and intellectual refugees escape from Nazi-
dominated France. The ERC operated for two years, from the fall of 
France in 1940 until its offices were forcibly shut down in 1942, and 
its work saved the lives of at least 2,000 talented scholars, artists 
and leaders, including such cultural luminaries as Marc Chagall, Hannah 
Arendt and Max Ernst. Fry's actions led to the founding of the 
International Rescue Committee after the war.
  Varian Fry's lifesaving efforts are all the more remarkable in light 
of fierce opposition not only from the pro-Fascist Vichy government, 
but also from resentful American consular officials. As a result of 
this antagonism, Fry's heroism went unrecognized in his lifetime. He 
died in obscurity over thirty years ago.
  Varian Fry's contributions have been recognized by Yad Vashem, 
Israel's memorial to the Holocaust, where he stands as the only 
American honored as a ``Righteous Gentile.'' Mr. Speaker, it is long 
past due for the American government and the American people to pay 
tribute to this heroic champion of human rights. I would like to enter 
into the record a touching and inspiring review of Fry's autobiography, 
Surrender on Demand, written for ``The New Republic'' by Alfred Kazin. 
I would also like to invite my colleagues to attend Assignment: Rescue, 
The Story of Varian Fry and the Emergency Rescue Committee, a moving 
exhibit which will be featured at The Jewish Museum in New York through 
March 29, as well as The Varian Fry Celebration, which will be on 
display at the San Francisco Main Library after March 8.

                 [From the New Republic, Feb. 9, 1998]

             A Real and Unlikely Hero--Homage to Varian Fry

                           (By Alfred Kazin)

       The Armistice with Nazi Germany that France had to sign in 
     June 1940 contained a clause, Article XIX, obliging the 
     French Government to ``surrender upon demand all Germans 
     named by the German government in France, as well as in 
     French possessions, colonies, Protectorate Territories, and 
     Mandates.'' ``Germans'' originally meant all inhabitants of 
     the greater German Reich--Germans, Austrians, Czechs, and 
     many Poles--but by 1940 it meant every political opponent 
     whom the Nazis wanted to get their hands on. There were 
     American relief organizations in France sponsored by the 
     YMCA, the Unitarians, and the Quakers. But a group of 
     American liberals, outraged by the Nazis' open violation of 
     the right of asylum, formed the Emergency Rescue Committee to 
     bring political and intellectual refugees out of France 
     before the Gestapo and the Italian and Spanish Fascist police 
     caught them in what their rescuer Varian Fry was to call 
     ``the most gigantic man-trap in history.''
       The volunteer (there were not many) whom the Committee 
     chose to direct this effort from Marseille was Varian Fry, a 
     32-year-old Harvard-trained classicist perfectly at home in 
     Europe. Indeed, on the surface, with his elegant name and his 
     precise manner, he may have seemed just a little too refined. 
     With his classmate Lincoln Kirstein, he had founded the 
     pioneer journal of modernism The Hound and Horn. When I met 
     him at The New Republic after the war, he liked, on our many 
     walks, a little affectedly, to show off the little dogtricks 
     that he had taught his French poodle Clovis, whom he had 
     named after the ancient king of the Franks. But Varian was at 
     heart so pure and intense a democratic conscience that he 
     could not bear the lingering Popular Front sentimentality 
     about Stalin on The New Republic; and he resigned from the 
     magazine in 1945, just before Henry Wallace took it over.
       In fact, for thirteen months in France, Varian was our own 
     Scarlet Pimpernel. He was endlessly bold and resourceful in 
     the always correct manner that was natural to him. And he was 
     forced to leave France because his labors on behalf of Jews 
     and political refugees had enraged both Vichy's pro-Fascist 
     bureaucrats and reactionary American consular officials. 
     Varian was one of the great civilian heroes of the war. In 
     the face of the most maddening bureaucratic slights, delays, 
     and hostilities presented by Vichy France, Franco's Spain, 
     and the American consul in Marseille (he finally got the 
     French to expel Varian), my friend organized from a room in 
     the Hotel Splendide the ramshackle yet somehow effective 
     organization that helped to get virtually 2,000 people to 
     safety. Varian is the only American honored as a ``Righteous 
     Gentile'' at Yad Vashem, Israel's memorial to the Holocaust.
       Surrender on Demand, Varian's wonderful account of his 
     noble adventure in France, his ``story of an experiment in 
     democratic solidarity . . . of illegal work under the nose of 
     the Gestapo,'' was first published without much effect in 
     1945, and it has now been brought back into print in 
     conjunction with the splendid exhibition ``Assignment: 
     Rescue, The Story of Varian Fry and the Emergency Rescue 
     Committee'' at the Jewish Museum in New York. The museum has 
     also enclosed in its press kit Varian's essay ``The Massacre 
     of the Jews,'' which appeared in

[[Page E145]]

     The New Republic's issue of December 21, 1942. Unlikely as 
     this seems now, the anguish that Varian brought to the 
     subject did not altogether interest people at the magazine (I 
     had just joined the staff), who were languishing for the New 
     Deal that Roosevelt had discarded in wartime. ``That such 
     things could be done by contemporary western Europeans, heirs 
     of the humanist tradition, seems hardly possible'': only 
     Varian, hardly innocent but obstinately virtuous, would have 
     written that sentence. He ended his article by demanding ``a 
     little thing, but at the same time a big thing''--that the 
     United States ``offer asylum now, without delay or red tape, 
     to those few fortunate enough to escape from the Aryan 
     paradise.''
       In Berlin on July 15, 1935, Varian had seen Hitler's 
     troppers attack Jews in ``the first pogoam.'' On November 9, 
     1938, Nazi leaders had openly encouraged the burning of 
     synagogues, the pillage of Jewish homes, and the murder of 
     their inhabitants. ``Injecting air-bubbles into the 
     bloodstream,'' Varian observed in his New Republic article in 
     1942, ``is cheap, clean, and efficient, producing clots, 
     embolisms, and death within a few hours . . .''
       ``Even though Hitler may lose this war, he may win it 
     anyway, at least, as far as Europe is concerned. . . . The 
     Christian churches might also help . . . the Pope by 
     threatening with excommunication all Catholics who in any way 
     participate in these frightful crimes. . . . There is a 
     report, which I have not been able to verify, that the Office 
     of War Information has banned mention of the massacres in its 
     shortwave broadcasts. . . . The fact that the Nazis do not 
     commit their massacres in Western Europe, but transport their 
     victims to the East before destroying them, is certain proof 
     that they fear the effect on the local populations of the 
     news of their crimes.
       Despite the fact that the urgency of the situation has 
     never been greater, immigration into the United States in the 
     year 1942 will have been less than ten percent of what it has 
     been in `normal' years before Hitler, when some of the 
     largest quotas were not filled. There have been bureaucratic 
     delays in visa procedure which have literally condemned to 
     death many stalwart democrats.''
       This was the man who had gone to Marseille two years before 
     with just $3,000 from patrons of the Emergency Rescue 
     Committee, only to find himself initially frustrated by the 
     delusions of some VIPs whom he had come to rescue. Rudolph 
     Breitscheid, the leader of the Social Democratic bloc in the 
     Reichstag, openly frequented a sidewalk cafe with Rudolph 
     Hilferding, formerly German Minister to France. He boasted 
     that Hitler would ``never dare'' to arrest him. He was wrong. 
     He was nabbed and never heard from again. Giuseppe 
     Modigliani, the head of the Italian Socialist Party and a Jew 
     (and the brother of the painter), was easy to spot. He 
     insisted on wearing in all weather a fur coat, a gift from 
     the Garment Workers Union in New York, and he adamantly 
     refused to shave his beard, ``I've always worn it.''
       Franz Werfel and his wife Alma were at the Hotel du Louvre 
     et de la Paix, in hiding under the name of Mrs. Werfel's 
     former husband Gustav Mahler, who had died in 1911. Werfel 
     looked ``exactly like his photographs: large, dumpy, and 
     pallid, like a half-filled sack of flour. His hair was thin 
     on top and too long on the sides. He was wearing a silk 
     dressing gown and soft slippers and was sitting all over a 
     small gilt chair.'' The Werfels had fled from Paris to 
     Lourdes, where they had sought the protection of the Church. 
     Werfel, a jew, had begun The Song of Bernadette. When they 
     realized that they would never be able to leave France from 
     Lourdes, they came to Marseille to get the American visas 
     waiting for them at the Consulate. But there was now a 
     general ban on exit visas.
       The Werfels insisted on ordering up champagne as they went 
     over their problem with Varian. He had just arrived and he 
     hadn't yet found out what the possibilities were. The Werfels 
     had heard of refugees going down to the Spanish frontier and 
     getting over safely, but they didn't know if those lucky 
     souls had reached Lisbon for passage to America. Most of them 
     had probably been arrested in Spain and handed over to the 
     Gestapo. There was also the risk of being arrested for 
     travelling without permission. It was all very confusing. 
     What were they to do? They finally got away, at first 
     encumbering their saviors with twelve suitcase. But Alma made 
     it into Spain on foot, Mahler, manuscripts in her pack.
       The American Federation of Labor had succeeded in 
     persuading the State Department to grant emergency visas to a 
     long list of European labor leaders, and it had dispatched 
     Frank Bohn to help them with the escape. Bohn, a hearty 
     extrovert who talked like ``an itinerant revivalist,'' was 
     one of the two or three Americans in France prepared to help 
     Varian. Through Bohn he met a young German social democrat 
     named Albert Hirschman, a political refugee who was ``very 
     intelligent and eternally good-natured and cheerful,'' who 
     joined his staff. ``I began to call him Beamish,'' Varian 
     wrote, ``because of his impish eyes and perennial pout, which 
     would turn into a broad grin in an instant.'' Staff 
     conferences were held in the bathroom, where Varian turned on 
     the faucets to create a deafening rush of water.
       Another invaluable aide was ``vivacious and ebullient'' 
     Lena Fishman, who had worked in the Paris office of the joint 
     Distribution Committee, was competent in English, French, 
     German, Russian, Polish, and Spanish, and was especially 
     useful in calming the excited. ``Il ne faut pas exagerer,'' 
     she used to say. (Lena had her own way of talking. When I 
     first met her, she asked me who my publisher was. I told her, 
     but the name obviously meant nothing to her. ``Je n'ai jamais 
     couche avec,'' she said.)
       Most of the refugees whose names had been given to Varian 
     in New York were still missing. Nobody knew where they were 
     or what had become of them. But refugees started coming to 
     Varian's room at the Splendide as soon as word went out.
       ``Many of them had been through hell; their nerves were 
     shattered and their courage was gone. Many had been herded 
     into concentration camps at the outbreak of the war, then 
     released, then interned again when the Germans began their 
     great offensive in May. In the concentration camps they had 
     waited fearfully while the Wehrmacht drew nearer and nearer. 
     It was often literally at the last moment that they had had a 
     chance to save themselves. Then they had joined the great 
     exodus to the south, sometimes walking hundreds of miles to 
     get away from the Nazis. . . .
       Nor was it only the refugees from Germany and Austria who 
     were worried. Luis Companys, the Catalan trade-union leader, 
     had been picked up by the Nazis in Belgium or the occupied 
     part of France and sent down to Spain, where he was promptly 
     garroted. And the French police were treating foreigners with 
     a combination of muddle and brutality which left very few of 
     them with any desire to stay in France longer than they had 
     to.''
       In big cities such as Marseille, the large and constantly 
     changing refugee population kept the police nervous, and 
     occasionally stirred them to mass arrests called rafles. 
     Fortunately for Varian, the first to come to the Splendide 
     were young and vigorous German and Austrian Socialists who 
     were not afraid, once Varian gave them American money, to go 
     down to the Spanish frontier and cross over on foot. One of 
     them gave Varian a map of the frontier, showing that they 
     planned to cross along a cemetery wall at Cerbere. They knew 
     where to avoid the French border control. You were not to go 
     farther into Spain until you got the Spanish entrada stamp on 
     your passport. The Spaniards were interested only in Spanish 
     transit visas and, above all, in money.
       Refugees who hadn't yet received American visas were taking 
     Chinese or Siamese visas and getting Portuguese transit visas 
     on almost any identification they possessed which seemed to 
     promise that the holder would go on from Portugal. The first 
     difficulty was getting into Marseille, that is, past the 
     police control for passengers arriving by train. You could 
     avoid the police only by going into the station restaurant 
     through a service corridor to the Hotel Terminus. There were 
     risks. Foreigners weren't supposed to travel in France 
     without safe conducts issued by the military authorities. Any 
     foreigner caught traveling without such a safe conduct was 
     likely to be sent to a concentration camp, where his future 
     was uncertain, and where the Gestapo could get him if he was 
     wanted.
       The Nazis were dreaded, the French were corrupt and brutal, 
     the American consular officials were difficult and nasty. So 
     difficult and nasty, indeed, that they became Varian's 
     particular antagonists. In a short preface to Surrender on 
     Demand, ex-Secretary of State Warren Christopher writes of 
     Varian that ``regretfully, during his lifetime, his heroic 
     actions never received the support they deserved from the 
     United States government, particularly the State 
     Department.'' That is putting it mildly. Varian's book is too 
     taken up with the many people he saved (and the many more he 
     couldn't save) to relate how Assistant Secretary of State 
     Breckenridge Long managed to keep immigration quotas unfilled 
     when thousands of refugees were desperate to get into 
     America.
       When a member of Varian's staff named Danny was arrested, 
     and Vichy's Ministry of Finance intimated that Danny would be 
     let off with a fine if the American Embassy intervened, 
     Varian had no hope that this would happen. He was aware of 
     the Embassy's hostility to ``aliens.'' To his surprise, he 
     was able ``to touch something very deep in the American 
     consul at Marseille, who helped get Danny off.'' This was 
     astounding. Harry Bingham, son of Hiram Bingham, the former 
     governor of Connecticut and United States senator, had been a 
     humane, helpful figure as head of the visa section at the 
     Marseille Consulate. But he was recalled, and his successor, 
     Varian wrote, ``seemed to delight in making autocratic 
     decisions and refusing as many visas as he could.''
       Varian sought a visa for Largo Caballero, the Socialist 
     prime minister of Republican Spain when Franco launched the 
     Civil War. The Consul had never heard of him, and when he was 
     finally informed who Caballero was, he said: ``Oh, one of 
     those Reds.'' Varian explained that Caballero had resigned 
     the premiership rather than continue to cooperate with the 
     Communists. ``Well,'' the Vice-Consul said, ``it doesn't 
     make any difference to me what his politics are. If he has 
     any political views at all, we don't want him. We don't 
     want any agitators in the United States. We've got too 
     many already.'' The court at Aix had refused to grant 
     Caballero's extradition to Spain. If he could get him an 
     American visa, Varian thought, he might be able to smuggle 
     him to Casablanca and there put him on a boat for America. 
     Caballero remained a prisoner of the Nazis until the end 
     of the war.
       Both the Vichy French and the American Embassy now sought 
     to get Varian out of

[[Page E146]]

     France. The Gestapo was bringing pressure on the French 
     police to arrest him immediately. A high police official 
     informed him that ``you have caused my good friend the 
     Consul-General of the United States much annoyance. . . . 
     Unless you leave France of your own free will, I shall be 
     obliged to arrest you and place you in residence forcee in 
     some small town far from Marseille, where you can do no 
     harm.'' As Varian got up to go, he asked the official, ``Tell 
     me frankly, why are you so much opposed to me?'' ``Because 
     you have protected Jews and anti-Nazis.''
       Varian played for time. He had no assurance of a 
     replacement, and his staff was afraid that their ``relief'' 
     organization would collapse if he was forced out of France. 
     And finally he was. The Embassy had refused to reissue his 
     passport unless he agreed to leave at once. The organization 
     sent out nearly 300 people between the time he left in August 
     1941 and the time it was raided and closed by the police, on 
     June 2, 1942.
       Varian returned to the States, wrote his book, and quit The 
     New Republic in protest against the pro-Soviet sentiments of 
     its editors. His last years were unhappy. His first wife 
     died, and he was separated from his second. He moved to 
     Connecticut, taught Latin at a local school, and died in 
     1967. During his thirteen months in France, Varian's 
     organization offered assistance to 4,000 people, and between 
     1,200 to 1,800 of those people made it to safety. Varian's 
     organization saved British soldiers and pilots, Marc Chagall, 
     Jacques Lipchitz, Andre Breton, Max Ernst, Andre Masson, Hans 
     Namuth, Hannah Arendt, Wanda Landowska, Marcel Duchamp, 
     Randolfo Pacciardi (leader of Italian exiles fighting in the 
     Spanish Civil War), the German poet Hans Sahl, Victor Serge, 
     Max Ascoli, the pianist Heinz Jolles, the Catholic writer 
     Edgar Alexander-Emmerich, the psychiatrist Dr. Bruno Strauss, 
     the German art critic Paul Westheim, the Sicilian novelist 
     Giuseppe Garetto, the Surrealist poet Benjamin Peret, the 
     former liberal Prime Minister of Prussia Otto Klepper, the 
     museum director Charles Stirling, the novelist Jean 
     Malaquais. There were many, many more. Chagall would not 
     leave until he was assured there were cows in America.
       Varian rescued also many people who were not famous, not 
     distinguished, not artistic. And how it burned him that there 
     were many, many more he was unable to rescue. This man really 
     cared.

     

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