During the weeksfollowing theGerman conquest ofFrance in June 1940,thousands of refugees,many of them Jews, fledto southern France toavoid capture by theNazis. Among therefugees were manyprominent politicaldissidents, intellectuals,

Varian Fry, Marc Chagall, Bella Chagall and Hiram Bingham IV,at the Chagalls’ home in Gordes, in March 1941, the weekend they

planned the Chagalls’ escape from Vichy France.

TheRescue

ofMarc

Chagall

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Lisbonne, June 10, 1941

Dear Mr. Bingham,

This is to inform you that we are embarking todayfor Monsanto. This is completely unexpected. Thepaintings have just arrived and we have just beenoffered a cabin. I immediately accepted it.

We would have liked to see you before our departure.We tried to phone you a number of times and we verymuch regret having been unable to reach you by phone.

We hope to see you again sometime in the future.

We are very happy to have met you, and becomeacquainted with you and we will long rememberour meetings with you.

We both send you our affectionate thoughts.

Very sincerely yours,Your friend,

Marc Chagall

Our temporary address is c/o Mr. Starr, Museum ofModern Art, New York

writers, and artists. On June 22,Marshal Petain’s Vichy regimesigned an agreement with theNazis, agreeing to “surrenderon demand” anyone whom theGermans were pursuing.

Three days later, in New YorkCity, American friends andcolleagues of the refugees metto establish the EmergencyRescue Committee. They hopedto bring the most prominentcultural figures among therefugees to the United States—atall order, given the prevailinganti-immigration mood amongthe American public, Congress,and the Roosevelt administration.

Not only did the administrationoppose liberalizing America’stight immigration quotas, butthe State Department set upbureaucratic obstacles to avoidgranting most of the immigra-tion visas that the law stillpermitted. Assistant Secretaryof State Breckinridge Longinstructed American consularofficials to “postpone andpostpone and postpone” ap-proving visa applications fromJewish refugees.

As a result, during the Hitleryears, 1933-1945, only 35.8percent of the German-Austrianquota was filled. Nearly 200,000quota places from Axis-ruled

countries were unfilled—nearly200,000 lives that could havebeen saved.

With help from First LadyEleanor Roosevelt, the Emer-gency Rescue Committeesecured the administration’sreluctant agreement to provideemergency visas to two hun-dred prominent artists andintellectuals and their families.Varian Fry, a Harvard-trainedclassics scholar and foreignaffairs journalist, volunteeredto travel to Vichy France toorganize the exodus.

An unlikely hero, Fry was asophisticated New Englandprep school graduate whoenjoyed classical Greek, birdwatching, and fine wines.“Certainly my manner andappearance did not suggest thedaredevil,” he later acknowl-edged. But beneath his sharply-tailored suit beat a heart filledwith courage and determina-tion.

While stationed in Germany ona journalistic assignment in1935, Fry had witnessed Nazimob violence against Berlin’sJews. That experience led him tobecome involved with theEmergency Rescue Committee.In August 1940, he arrived inVichy France, with $3,000 taped

Bingham, reassigned toPortugal and then Argentina,soon ignited a new contro-versy by repeatedly protest-ing against the Argentineangovernment’s policy ofsheltering fugitive Nazi warcriminals. Bingham believedthat Nazi gold, loot, andpersonnel were being trans-ferred to Argentina andChile via submarine at theend of the war, in collusionwith Nazi elements in LatinAmerica. When the StateDepartment shut down hisefforts to investigate thematter, he resigned inprotest, thereby losing hispension and sacrificing hiscareer.

Fry, too, suffered for his

activism. His postwar effortsto obtain government emp-loyment were repeatedlyrejected on the grounds thathe was suspected of beingsympathetic to commu-nism—even though hehimself had publicly splitfrom The New Republicbecause he felt it was insuffi-ciently critical of the Soviets.

Varian Fry and HiramBingham IV were trueheroes. At great risk to theirpersonal welfare and to theircareers, they saved humanlives—and saved, for theworld, the writers, musi-cians, and artists whocreated some of the greatcultural works of thetwentieth century.

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Varian Fry1907-1967

Hiram Bingham IV1903-1988

Feuchtwanger, in Bingham’scar, made it through Germancheckpoints to the vice-consul’scountry house, where he hiduntil Bingham could help gethim out of the country.

Working eighteen-hour daysfor more than a year, Fry andhis staff smuggled the refu-gees from France across thePyrenees mountains intoneighboring Spain, and acrossthe Mediterranean by boat tonumerous other destinationsin Africa, the Caribbean, andelsewhere. Many traveledacross Spain to Portugal,where they were safe from theGestapo, and the refugeescould make arrangements totravel to America or else-

where. Altogether, Fry,Bingham, and the other mem-bers of their rescue networkhelped save an estimated 2,000people, including such famousartists as Marc Chagall, MarcelDuchamp, Max Ernst, andJacques Lipschitz, as well asNobel Prize-winning scientistsEnrico Fermi and OttoMeyerhof, writers FranzWerfel and Arthur Koestler,architect Walter Gropius,philosopher Hannah Arendt,and Andre Breton, founder ofSurrealism.

Fry also helped rescue Britishpilots who had been shotdown by the Germans overFrance, and he providedimportant assistance to theFree French underground, forwhich he was later awardedthe Cross of the Legion ofHonor.

Fry was in constant danger ofbeing arrested by the Vichyauthorities, who regarded hiswork as subversive. On oneoccasion, Fry and a group ofhis associates were arrested bythe Vichy French police andjailed on a prison ship.Bingham’s intervention, in thename of the American Consulate,helped secure their freedom.

On December 29, 1940, Fryand Bingham met withChagall in Bingham’s villa tobegin planning his escape.Shortly afterwards, Fryescorted Chagall to the U.S.Consulate in Marseille,where Bingham quicklygranted him an immigrationvisa, even though the artistdid not possess the requiredaffidavits.

Unbeknownst to Fry, theMuseum of Modern Art, inNew York City, had askedthe State Department togrant Chagall a visa back inNovember 1940—but it tookuntil February 1941 before itwas processed. “In otherwords,” Fry noted in hisdiary, “it took the Depart-ment three months to granthim an ‘emergency’ visa,whereas [Bingham in] theConsulate only required aday or so to give him anordinary immigration visa.”

On March 8, Fry andBingham traveled to thehome of Marc and BellaChagall in the village ofGordes to help plan theirescape from France. “Gordesis a charming, tumbleddown old town on the edgeof a vast and peaceful valley,”

Fry wrote in his diary. “Ican see why they didn’twant to leave; it is anenchanted place. Chagall isa nice child, vain and

simple. He likes to talkabout his pictures and theworld, and he slops aroundin folded old pants anddark blue shirt. His ‘studio’contains a big kitchentable, a few wicker chairs,a cheap screen, a coalstove, two easels and hispictures. No chic at all, aschez Matisse ... He isalready beginning to pack.He says that when theyhave gone I can have hishouse to hide people in.A good, remote place.”

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Chagall with his famous painting“Three Candles,” which he was

working on at the time of hisrescue from Vichy France

to his leg to hide it from theGestapo and a list of 200 en-dangered individuals.

Fry immediately made contactwith a group of Jewish, Ger-man, and other anti-Naziactivists, including a number ofAmericans involved in helpingrefugees escape. One wasHiram (Harry) Bingham IV, theU.S. vice-consul in Marseille,who was hiding refugees at hisrented villa on the outskirts ofthe city. Fry later dubbedBingham his “partner in crime”—the “crime” of rescuing refu-gees from the Nazis and theirFrench collaborators.

Bingham was the son of a U.S.Senator and explorer uponwhom Steven Spielberg report-edly based his famous moviecharacter, Indiana Jones. Defyinghis bosses at the State Depart-ment, Bingham provided Frywith documents needed toprotect refugees, such as affida-vits in lieu of passports andtravel documents.

With the assistance of Binghamand others, Fry set up his rescueoperation under the front of alegitimate refugee aid operationat the Hotel Splendide inMarseille. Word of Fry’s workspread quickly and refugees

were soon lining up each dayoutside his hotel room, plead-ing for help. Fry and hisassistants held their “staffmeetings” in the bathroomwith the faucets turned on fullso the noise would preventtheir discussions from beingoverheard by any eavesdrop-ping German police.

In one instance, Binghamarranged for the famousGerman Jewish novelist, LionFeuchtwanger, to be smuggledout of a Vichy internmentcamp disguised in women’sclothing. Posing as Bingham’smother-in-law from Germany,

In April, the Chagalls movedto a hotel in Marseille inpreparation for their depar-ture from France, but whenthe Vichy police sweptthrough the city’s hotels,arresting all Jews, Chagallfound himself in prison.Hearing the news, Frythreatened a senior policeofficial that he would set offan international scandal bycalling the New York Timesand telling them of the arrestunless Chagall were releasedwithin half an hour. Fry’sthreat, together with theintervention of Bingham,worked. Chagall was set free.

On May 7, Marc and Bellacrossed into Spain by train,then continued on to Lisbon,arriving on May 11. Therethey waited while theirdaughter and son in law, Idaand Michel Rappoport,prepared to bring Chagall’spaintings, which had beenshipped to Spain. But onceagain, disaster threatened.The Spanish customs au-thorities were holding up thetransfer of Chagall’s artwork, reportedly because ofGestapo pressure. Ida wentto Madrid to try to rescuethe art, but Michel wasarrested while trying to cross

the Franco-Spanish border andhad to be smuggled out ofprison. Ida, Michel, and thecrates of artwork eventuallymade it across the Atlantic in ahazardous, typhoid-riddenjourney on a barely-seaworthycargo ship that avoided Ger-man torpedoes on the way toAmerica but was hit and sunkon the way back.

The rescue of Marc Chagall wasone of Fry and Bingham’sgreatest, and final, successes.Furious German and Vichyofficials complained to theState Department about Fry’srefugee-smuggling work.Anxious to avoid irritatingAmerican-German relations —the U.S. was not yet at warwith Hitler— the State Depart-ment transferred Bingham outof France and revoked Fry’spassport, forcing him to returnto the United States afterthirteen months of refugeework.

Back in New York, Fry becameone of the editors of a leadingmagazine, The New Republic.He used its columns to alert theAmerican public about theplight of the Jews in Europeand to press for U.S. govern-ment action to aid the refugees.