by Ronald Weber
We knew that [Portugal], too, lived under a dictatorship, but, perhaps because Salazar was at least a professor and not a general, the evil of oppression and injustice seemed here less obvious and less ubiquitous. Life on the surface seemed quite civilized and almost normal. You were tempted to accept the omen that this city, which had become the last emergency exit from Europe, had called its most magnificent avenue the Avenue of Liberty.
There was a ten-day wait before their departure on an overburdened Portuguese ship. Finally leaving the haunted house of Europe was a momentous event, and Franz Schoenberner had planned to fix it in his memory with a final look back at the Continent. But onboard tasks delayed him. When at last he came on deck the ship was beyond sight of land; ahead all was ocean and sky. Too excited to sleep, he and his wife spent their first night at sea in deck chairs, celebrating their escape with a bottle of Portuguese brandy, bought with foresight in a seamen’s bar on the Lisbon waterfront.
3
Whatever We Can
What can we do for you? We are ready to do whatever we can.
—Letter of Varian Fry to Jacques Lipchitz, 1940
Before leaving Marseille for Lisbon, Franz and Ellie Schoenberner paid a call on Varian Fry to thank him for help he had given them. It was a fitting response, as it would have been for numerous other exiles, though at the time few were in the position to know the full extent of Fry’s aid effort. The public manner of the calm, courteous, bespectacled, properly attired young American gave off no suggestion of his unstinting labor over many months to get Nazi-hunted refugees from the Vichy-controlled city to freedom in the United States and elsewhere, using all means at his disposal, legal or illegal. Nor was it likely the Schoenberners sensed how precarious Fry’s own situation in Marseille was becoming—or suspected that in a short while he would be forced by Vichy, with the full blessing of American officials, to take the Lisbon route himself.
In early August 1940 Varian Fry had been sent to Marseille by the Emergency Rescue Committee (ERC), a group formed in New York in the summer of the year to get figures with backgrounds similar to the Schoenberners out of Europe. With the German invasion of France, exiles already in the United States believed the Nazis had lists of former enemies—primarily writers, artists, and intellectuals, many of whom had been stripped of their German citizenship—and would be searching for them throughout the country. When later it was learned that in the armistice the Vichy government had agreed to surrender on demand all Germans in France or French possessions (with “Germans” also meaning Austrians, Czechs, Poles, and any other national group the Gestapo wanted to grab), it was clear that evacuation was the best hope of saving them.
With Fry, Paul Hagen (the new name of Karl Frank, an Austrian psychoanalyst who had arrived in the United Sates in the mid-1930s), and others working behind the scenes, a money-raising luncheon was staged in New York’s Commodore Hotel on June 25, 1940. Some $3,500 was raised, but Erika Mann, the exiled daughter of Thomas Mann, pointed out in a talk that “money alone is not going to rescue those people. Most of them are trapped without visas, without passports that they dare use. They can’t just get on a boat and leave. Somebody has to be there who can get them out.” With that, the ERC was formed—and need established for an agent operating from a base in Marseille to be its man on the ground to organize and operate the rescue effort.
Frank Kingdon, president of Newark University, was named to chair the committee, and a glittering advisory group was put together that included other university presidents and such well-known journalists and commentators as Elmer Davis, Raymond Gram Swing, and Dorothy Thompson. Exiles of the stature of Jacques Maritain, Jules Romains, and Thomas Mann produced a master list of figures needing rescue. In Washington, First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt sympathized with the work of the committee and lobbied the president, in the face of political resistance and restrictive American quotas on immigration, to authorize special emergency visitor visas for selected exiles.
The ERC’s next task was finding the agent to work in France. An American seemed the best choice since U.S. neutrality offered a screen of legality, and when no one else came forward the job fell to the thirty-two-year-old Fry. He was a Harvard graduate with a concentration in classics who had established himself as a foreign affairs journalist by working as an editor for The Living Age magazine and later as editor-in-chief of publications on international matters for the Foreign Policy Association. He spoke French and some German and was a political activist and fervent anti-Nazi.
Traveling in Europe in the summer of 1935, Fry had witnessed a vicious mob attack on Jews and Jewish property on Berlin’s fashionable Kurfuerstendamm. Although badly shaken by the experience, he put through a call to the Associated Press, and the next day his report of the rioting made the front page of the New York Times. That day he also asked for and was granted a meeting with Ernst Franz Sedgwick Hanfstaengl, a fellow Harvard man who had returned to Germany, was an early supporter of Hitler, and was working as the foreign press chief in Joseph Goebbel’s Ministry of Propaganda. Fry suspected he had been allowed the meeting because of the Harvard tie, and Hanfstaengl was indeed in a nostalgic and expansive mood. (Hanfstaengl had another Harvard connection in President Roosevelt, and after falling out of Nazi favor in 1937 and leaving Germany for Britain and then a prisoner-of-war camp in Canada, he ended up in the United States doing special intelligence work for the president under the code name “Dr. Sedgwick.”)
When he returned to America, Fry told the Times about Hanfstaengl confiding to him that rather than Jews hissing during the showing of a film—the supposed trigger for the 1935 attacks—the disturbance in the theater was the work of brown-shirted Storm Troopers, three days earlier. Fry also reported the Nazi official’s observation that there were two views in Germany about solving the Jewish problem, with moderates wishing to segregate them in special areas while radicals favored “bloodshed.” The Times gave the story prominent play beneath headlines reading “Editor Holds Riots Inspired by Nazis” and “Varian Fry Says Hanfstaengl Admitted Storm Troopers, Not Jews, Hissed Film.”
*
Fry’s charge from the ERC, set out in a letter, was notably vague. His main task was “to attempt to locate, and to aid with counsel and money as directed, certain individuals whom this Committee will specify, so that they may reach Lisbon or Casablanca and thereby be in a better position to be transported to this continent.” His base of operation would be Marseille, teeming with refugees drawn to it as a port city and with a direct rail line to the Spanish frontier, five hours distant. The thin cover for his secret work was an affiliation with the international YMCA, which had a representative in Marseille, and a letter of introduction to the European director of the Red Cross. As for the American consulate in Marseille, it was left to Fry’s discretion how much he should share about the nature of his mission.
On August 4, 1940, Fry left on a Clipper flight from New York to Lisbon, carrying with him a list of some two hundred names the ERC wanted rescued, three thousand dollars in cash taped to one leg, and a sleeping bag and air mattress in case he needed to go backpacking in search of his refugees. In his pocket was a small notebook with an amateurish code agreed upon by the ERC for communicating without drawing the attention of Vichy censors: money was “milk,” England “Ursula,” Germany “Eloise.” Thinking his work could be quickly accomplished, Fry also carried a Clipper return ticket that expired within a month.
In Lisbon he was struck by the city’s near-African summer heat, its lively commotion and leisurely pace, and the spectacle of rich Europeans pampering themselves while waiting to move on elsewhere. “All very exhausting,” he wrote back to his wife, “but none of it boring.”
The hotels are jammed, and business is booming. Everybody from the Archduke Otto down has passed through Lisbon in the past few months… . There are all sorts of street cries, gotten off mostly by peasant women who carry their wares in baskets perched precariously on their heads… . But it isn’t
merely the street calls: it is also the bustle of an eastern bazaar—the life is terrific. Yet pleasant. It takes three quarters of an hour to change a travelers check. And yet one doesn’t mind. I don’t know why. One just doesn’t… .
While settling for a week in the Hotel Métropole and enjoying what seemed almost like a vacation in a place far removed from war, Fry got a piece of information about the whereabouts of one of the prominent names on his rescue list. A sister of Franz Werfel told him the writer and his wife were already lodged in a hotel in Marseille.
The city when Fry reached it presented stark contrasts with Lisbon. On the surface it was another hot and bustling port while underneath was an ancient trading center—grimy, hard-used, burdened with a history of crime and corruption, and now riding the wave of a booming black-market economy in visas, passports, food, and nearly all else. Yet like Lisbon, Marseille gave Fry little sense of life in wartime, let alone life in fallen France. He wrote his wife: “There is no disorder, there are no children starving in the streets, and there are very few signs of war of any kind. The people of Marseille seem to have resigned themselves to defeat, and even to take it rather lightly—as they take everything.” In short order he would become aware of several thousands of refugees who spent their nights in crowded hotels and boardinghouses, their days in the waiting rooms of consulates—and would realize that despite being under Vichy authority, Nazi officials came and went in the city as they pleased.
His first evening in Marseille Fry met with Franz Werfel and his wife Alma, who were booked into the Hôtel du Louvre as Mr. and Mrs. Gustav Mahler, a disguise that if anything drew more attention to them. Anna Werfel had been married to the famed composer, as she had been to the famed architect Walter Gropius. “I only marry geniuses,” she is said to have remarked. Her present genius, Franz Werfel, was now the first figure on his list Fry had found, and he listened as husband and wife said they had visas for America, had picked them up at the consulate, but had no idea what to do next. “You must save us, Mr. Fry,” they cried. “Oh, ja, you must save us!” Fry was in Marseille to do precisely that, but—as he later wrote—“the truth was that I was at a complete loss about how to begin, and where. My job was to save certain refugees. But how was I to do it? How was I to get in touch with them? What could I do for them when I found them?”
Other important writers on his list had also reached Marseille. Heinrich Mann was living in the Hôtel Normandie. The poet Walter Mehring was tucked away in a suburb of the city. Lion Feuchtwanger was in hiding at a villa occupied by Hiram (Harry) Bingham, the American vice consul in Marseille, who had sent his pregnant wife and four children back to America upon the German invasion of France. Bingham, whose father was a United States senator, would prove helpful to Fry in many ways while his boss, Consul Hugh Fullerton, remained stiffly opposed to an American citizen undertaking undercover work in Vichy France at a time when government policy called for friendly relations with the Pétain regime.
Feuchtwanger’s removal from the concentration camp at St. Nicolas had come about at the hands of Harry Bingham’s assistant in the consulate, the improbably named Myles Standish. He had visited the writer and his wife when they were living in Sanary in the south of France before the war; now, learning Feuchtwanger was held in the camp, Standish made plans to free him. In Bingham’s undiplomatic-looking red Chevrolet, he drove to the lightly policed facility with the wife of a doctor from Nîmes who regularly brought food and medicine to the camp and consequently was known to the guards. Called “Madame L” in an account Feuchtwanger later wrote of his rescue, she carried a message to him written by his wife that said in French, “Do what you’re told. Don’t waste time wondering, it’s all absolutely sound and serious.”
At the camp Standish and the doctor’s wife waited until late afternoon before they located Feuchtwanger on his way back from a walk to a nearby town for a meal with other inmates. As he was about to leave the road for a path to the camp, Madame L came up to him, handed him the note, and said, “I’ve been waiting for you. I have news for you from your wife. Read it. Do read it straightaway.” Feuchtwanger read the note, read it again, then noticed the red car pulled up by the side of the road. A youngish man he recognized, dressed in a white suit and wearing string gloves, emerged and said in English, “Please don’t ask questions. But get in. Don’t hesitate—I’ll tell you everything as we go along.”
Feuchtwanger played his part and, along with Madame L, entered the car, where he found waiting for him a woman’s coat with an English badge on it, a shawl for his head, and dark glasses. When the car was stopped on the way back to Marseille, the driver identified himself as an American from the consulate and the two passengers as his wife and mother-in-law.
*
Werfels, Mann, Mehring, Feuchtwanger—all were important figures with recognizable faces, and as such they lived in daily dread of being spotted by the police or by fellow exiles who might call out their names in public. All had longed to reach Marseille because of its large, diverse, and generally accepting population along with a port that offered hope of sailing to freedom on a ship. But now they were blocked in the city, uncertain about where to go next, terrified of moving at all. Fry got his first ideas on how to proceed with these and lesser-known exiles from Frank Bohn, the European representative of a coalition of American labor groups. After the fall of France the coalition had persuaded the State Department to give emergency visitor visas to a list of European labor leaders, union officials, and democratic politicians in danger of arrest by the Nazis, and Bohn had been sent to France to get them out. He had arrived in Marseille only shortly before Fry but had already developed considerable knowledge about the local refugee situation.
Among other things, Bohn was a font of information about the maze of documents needed to travel legally in France and beyond. Since visas had time limits and were constantly expiring, possessing a full set of up-to-date documents was difficult at best. And there were some refugees, largely German and Austrian Jews, who were stateless and carried only “affidavits in lieu of passports” that might or might not be acceptable. But Bohn was hopeful about present conditions, believing a window of opportunity still existed before the Gestapo and French authorities in Vichy were fully organized and tightened the noose on refugees they wanted.
Fry found Bohn’s unguarded way of talking about his work troubling, and he was skeptical about a particular plan to move some of his refugees from Marseille illegally by boat. But he decided to scrap his earlier thought of traveling around southern France and hunting for his refugees and to operate in Bohn’s open manner by taking a room in the same hotel, the Splendide, writing to all the refugees for whom he had addresses about his arrival in Marseille, and waiting for them to come to him. He also made the rounds of the many relief agencies operating in Marseille to see what support they might give him. Donald Lowrie of the International YMCA, an experienced relief worker, would become a valued resource.
Within a week of his arrival Fry was running what appeared to be a thriving business from unlikely quarters. Waiting refugees lined a corridor outside his hotel room and trailed down a stairway. From the numbers it was clear the refugee problem was far greater than New York knew, and clear as well that lists provided him favored already successful cultural figures as against those soon to be. A young German writer named Hannah Arendt was among the latter, as was Arthur Koestler. Nonetheless the lists were meant to be followed. Fry could only appeal to New York to add new names, then begin the drawn-out process of appealing for one of the emergency visas.
*
To refugees who climbed to the fourth floor of the Hôtel Splendide, the presence in Marseille of the concerned American with a mission to save them and the money to do so seemed a scarcely believable gift. Hans Sahl, a German writer on the ERC list, recalled (in the form of an autobiographical novel) the strong emotion of their first meeting in Fry’s room.
Imagine the situation: the borders closed; you’re caught in a
trap, might be arrested again at any moment; life is as good as over—and suddenly a young American in shirt sleeves is stuffing your pocket full of money, putting his arm around your shoulders and whispering in a poor imitation of a conspirator’s manner: “Oh, there are ways to get you out of here,” while damn it all, the tears were streaming down my face, actual tears, big, round, and wet; and that pleasant fellow, a Harvard man incidentally, takes a silk handkerchief from his jacket and says: “Here, have this. Sorry it isn’t cleaner.”
Hertha Pauli’s first meeting with Fry, on the other hand, was brief and businesslike. From other exiles huddled in Marseille the young Austrian writer had heard of the American rescuer who had come to town, and from a former colleague, a journalist from Vienna, she learned he was staying at the Splendide. “I’ve been turned away already; I’m not on his list,” the colleague said. “But perhaps you are, and he’ll see you.”
In the hotel room she found a young man sitting at a table and examining a sheet of paper. When she told him her name he raised his head and looked at her through his glasses. “Well, Miss Pauli,” he said in an expressionless voice, “I’ve got you on my list.” He put a few questions to her—switching to French when he realized her English was poor—as if she were having a job interview. He then asked about other names on his list, and one of them, the German poet Walter Mehring, she knew was hiding in nearby Bar Mistral. “Bring Mehring with you tomorrow,” Fry said to her. “Au revoir.”
Fry soon took on two assistants to help in his work: Albert Hirschman, a German who was using the name Albert Hermant but was called “Beamish” by Fry because of his broad smile, and Franz von Hildebrand, an Austrian Catholic whom he called “Franzi.” (The nicknames helped as well to disguise real names that might be overheard in conversations.) Together the three developed a work routine. At eight in the morning refugees were ushered into the hotel room one at a time. Fry talked with them first to see if they were “his” cases; if so, they were turned over to Beamish or Franzi for interviews and their information recorded on file cards. Work went on well into the night.