My interest in Varian Fry was
sparked when I first heard about him in And
The Show Went On: Cultural Life in Nazi-Occupied Paris by Alan Riding. Such
an important hero and yet I had never heard of him. That led me to A Hero of Our Own by Sheila Isenberg, an
informative but not very well written biography of Fry. Then I read Fry's own
(but abridged) Assignment: Rescue (an
abbreviated version for school children of his original Surrender on Demand which is impossible to find for a reasonable
price); followed by A Quiet American: The
Secret War of Varian Fry, by Andy Marino, a well written biography and the
most complete of the books I had read so far.
The people Fry rescued were
not all Jewish but they were all hunted for various reasons by the Nazis. They
included Marc Chagall, Wanda Landowska, Hannah Arendt, and Andre Breton, among
many others. He wasn't trained as and never had worked as a spy or secret
agent, but when he arrived in France he found that legal means for getting
these people out of France were few, and so he quickly learned what he needed
to do.
The best book about Fry is Villa Air Bel by Rosemary Sullivan. This
is not a biography, but a history of his work, those who worked with him, and
many whom he saved. It is more detailed than any of the others, it is well
written, and gives the most complete picture of the rescue work that Fry set up
and led. Netflix made a film based on this book, but I didn’t watch it. When I
read that they had turned Fry’s character into a gay man, I suppose to add some
spice. I decided I didn’t need to. Why add spice to a true story that was so
interesting, engaging, and important?
Fry was called back to the
U.S. because the State Department did not want him to do his work, and they
prevented him from finding any work with the government once he returned. It
was very strange instance of the blacklisting of an American hero.
Shortly before Fry’s death,
the French government awarded him the “Croix de Chavalier de la Legion
d’Honneur,” France’s highest decoration of merit. It was the only official
recognition he received in his lifetime.
In 1991, the United States
Holocaust Memorial Council awarded the Eisenhower Liberation Medal to Fry.
Three years later, Fry became the first American to be honored by Yad Vashem as
a “Righteous Among the Nations.”
