by Ronald Weber
Acknowledgments
I owe special thanks to these libraries and archival centers: Hesburgh Library, University of Notre Dame; Christopher Library, Valparaiso University; Franklin D. Roosevelt Presidential Library; Library of Congress; National Archives of the United States; National Archives of the United Kingdom; Arts Library of the Calouste Gulbenkian Museum; United States Holocaust Memorial Museum.
My thanks also to these individuals who responded generously to my inquiries: Douglas L. Wheeler, Ellen W. Sapega, Nigel West, James Fry, Pierre Sauvage, Isabel Soares, Filipe Ribeiro de Meneses, José António Barreiros, Rui Araújo, Jenny Wriggins, Gregory Pfitzer.
As always, Pat Weber read every page of every draft. And once again Ivan Dee was a superb reader and editor.
The book’s dedication is to the four adventurers who first joined me in taking the Lisbon route.
Notes
References to the text are indicated by the last words of a passage or by key words within a passage. Some references to newspapers and magazines are incorporated into the text and consequently not included below.
Preface
ix “wait and wait”: Howard Koch, Casablanca: Script and Legend (Woodstock, N.Y., 1973), 31. Koch was one of three writers credited with the screenplay.
x “collapse of France”: Demaree Bess, “American Strategy Pains Portugal,” Saturday Evening Post, August 30, 1941, 19.
x “resident population”: Hugh Muir, European Junction (London, 1942), 30.
Chapter 1: Hub of the Western Universe
3 referred to Service: Mário Soares, Portugal’s Struggle for Liberty, trans. Mary Gawsworth (London, 1975), 23–24.
3 “the whole truth”: Howard L. Brooks, Prisoners of Hope: Report on a Mission (New York, 1942), 52.
5 “place in the world”: Irish Times, October 23, 1941, 4.
5 “international limelight”: The Times (London), December 3, 1940, 5.
5 its port city: New York Times, December 25, 1940, 19.
5 “Nazi scourge”: The Times (London), October 15, 1940, 5.
5 swamped with work: New York Times, July 28, 1940, 4.
5 “becoming a prison”: Lilian Mowrer, “Fiesta in Lisbon,” The New Yorker, July 20, 1940, 36.
6 six to eight million: Michael R. Marrus, The Unwanted: European Refugees in the Twentieth Century (New York, 1985), 201.
6 four million: Hanna Diamond, Fleeing Hitler: France 1940 (New York, 2007), 2.
6 splitting the nation: For further detail on the division of France and a map showing the demarcation line, see ibid., 108, 121.
7 “circle of madness”: Erich Maria Remarque, The Night in Lisbon, trans. Ralph Manheim (New York, 1964), 186.
7 lifeline of freedom: Denis de Rougemont, Journal d’une époque, 1926–1946 (Paris, 1968), 437.
7 its own truck: Carlton J. H. Hayes, Wartime Mission in Spain, 1942–1945 (New York, 1946), 49.
7 “on the move”: Mowrer, “Fiesta in Lisbon,” 41.
7 on many fronts: Spain’s lingering intent to join the conflict is discussed in Stanley G. Payne, Franco and Hitler: Spain, Germany, and World War II (New Haven, Conn., 2008), 269–270.
8 “leaving no trace”: Quoted in Marrus, The Unwanted, 260.
8 aimed mainly: Marrus, The Unwanted, 261.
8 considered a feature: On this point, see Payne, Franco and Hitler, 217.
8 the new regulation: A full account of Sousa Mendes’s work for refugees is given in José-Alain Fralon, A Good Man in Evil Times, trans. Peter Graham (New York, 2001). I largely follow this work for my account below. See also Douglas Wheeler, “And Who Is My Neighbor? A World War II Hero or Conscience for Portugal,” Luso-Brazilian Review, 26:1 (1989), 111–139; Harry Ezratty, “The Portuguese Consul and the 10,000 Jews,” Jewish Life, September-October 1964, 17–20; and the section on Sousa Mendes in Mordecai Paldiel, The Righteous Among the Nations (New York, 2007), 263–268.
9 “ones they had”: Quoted in Fralon, A Good Man in Evil Times, 53–54.
9 Chaim Kruger: The rabbi is identified in some accounts as H. Kruger and Haim Kruger.
9 “conscience tells me”: Quoted in Wheeler, “And Who Is My Neighbor?,” 123. A slightly different version of the nephew’s recollection is given in Fralon, A Good Man in Evil Times, 60.
10 “maintain order”: Quoted in Ezratty, “The Portuguese Consul and the 10,000 Jews,” 19.
10 “seen him do before”: Quoted in Fralon, A Good Man in Evil Times, 61–62.
10 “let them through?”: Ibid., 95.
11 crippling retirement: Filipe Ribeiro de Meneses, Salazar: A Political Biography (New York, 2009), 239. In 1967 Israel’s Holocaust memorial at Yad Vashem declared Sousa Mendes a Righteous Among the Nations. The Portuguese government remained silent until 1988, when he was posthumously reconnected with the foreign service and compensation paid to his family. In the same year he was made an honorary citizen of Israel. For more on the belated recognition that came to the consul, see Fralon, A Good Man in Evil Times, 145–160, and Wheeler, “And Who Is My Neighbor?,” 130–131.
11 booked weeks ahead: New York Times, June 21, 1940, 14.
11 journey to Lisbon: New York Times, June 26, 1941, 15.
12 comfortable quarters: The Times (London), July 1, 1940, 3.
13 “left by air”: New York Times, August 19, 1941, 4. Emphasis added.
13 overseas transportation: New Horizons, May 1942, 18.
13 about 100,000: David S. Wyman, Paper Walls: America and the Refugee Crisis, 1938–1941 (Amherst, Mass., 1968), 150. The same number is given by Marrus, The Unwanted, 265.
13 nearly a million: Wheeler, “And Who Is My Neighbor?,” 122, 134 n19.
13 “many refugees”: Tom Gallagher, Portugal: A Twentieth-Century Interpretation (Manchester, UK, 1983), 105.
13 “the European continent”: Marrus, The Unwanted, 263.
13 “Continent’s surface”: Arthur Koestler, Scum of the Earth (New York, 1941), 275.
13 “poisoned stomach”: Ibid., 279.
16 “In his autobiography”: Eric Sevareid, Not So Wild a Dream (New York, 1947), 181. In a biography of Sevareid, Raymond A. Schroth notes that when Sevareid returned home from Portugal he tried to get Adam an American visa but failed because Adam was a Communist. The American Journey of Eric Sevareid (South Royalton, Vt., 1995), 121, 179.
17 from the government: New York Times, March 14, 1941, 3.
18 as the PVDE: For the many functions of the PVDE, see Douglas L. Wheeler, “In the Service of Order: The Portuguese Political Police and the British, German and Spanish Intelligence, 1932–1945,” Journal of Contemporary History, 18:1 (1983), 3–5.
19 the financial pie: T. J. Hamiton, “Turbulent Gateway of a Europe on Fire,” New York Times Magazine, March 23, 1941, 13ff.
19 and Long Island: “Rich Refugees,” Fortune, February 1941, 81ff.
20 official sources: Samuel Lubell, “War by Refugee,” Saturday Evening Post, March 29, 1941, 12ff.
23 “United States itself”: The text of the speech was printed in the Washington Post, May 28, 1941, 1–2.
23 “of the moon”: The Times (London), May 31, 1941, 3.
23 “fight for them”: Bess, “American Strategy Pains Portugal,” 18ff.
23 still pending: W. E. Lucas, “Hitler Eyes Portugal,” The Nation, April 26, 1941, 495–496.
25 “the rain began”: Mark Schorer, “The Little Door,” The New Yorker, September 20, 1941, 31–33. The story is collected in Mark Schorer, The State of Mind (Boston, 1947).
Chapter 2: Tramping Forward
27 emergency relief: New York Times, February 17, 1941, 1; The Times (London), February 18, 1941, 3.
27 “audacious pageant”: Time, June 17, 1940, 36.
28 “at its height”: The Times (London), June 3, 1940, 5.
28 “What we will celebrate”: Quoted in Ellen W. Sapega, Consensus and Debate in Salazar’s Portugal: Visual and Literary Negotiations of the National Text, 1933–1948 (University P
ark, Pa., 2008), 24. The ideological ambition of the exposition is explored in this work and in David Corkill, “The Double Centenary Commemorations of 1940 in the Context of Anglo-Portuguese Relations,” in The Portuguese Discoveries in the English-Speaking World, 1870–1972, ed. Teresa Pinto Coelho (Lisbon, 2005), 143–166.
28 “plainclothes dictator”: A. J. Liebling, “Letter from Lisbon,” The New Yorker, July 6, 1940, 32. The letter is reprinted in Liebling’s World War II Writings (New York, 2008), 111–112.
28 nationalist dictatorship: The designation is John Lukacs’s in Blood, Toil, Tears, and Sweat (New York, 2008), 10. The “prime incarnation” of the form, Lukacs notes, was National Socialist Germany.
28 New State: For the theory and practice of the New State, see especially a recent study by Filipe Ribeiro de Meneses, Salazar, 83ff. For earlier works, see Hugh Kay, Salazar and Modern Portugal (New York, 1970), 48ff., and Gallagher, Portugal, 62ff.
29 “country at heart”: Anglo-Portuguese News, May 11, 1940, 1.
29 “modern times”: The Times (London), June 3, 1940, 5.
29 “guiding light”: The Times (London), June 4, 1940, 7.
29 for two days: “Portuguese Primitives,” Time, September 2, 1940. 48–49.
30 two hundred people: Diamond, Fleeing Hitler, 43.
30 “always fiesta”: Mowrer, “Fiesta in Lisbon,” 42.
31 “voracious appetite”: Antoine de Saint-Exupéry, Wartime Writings, 1939–1944, trans. Norah Purcell (San Diego, Calif., 1986), 103–104.
31 Atlantic for home: Ben Robertson, I Saw England (New York, 1941), 5–6.
31 “laid down for her”: The Times (London), December 2, 1940, 5.
32 new master: Rougemont, Journal d’une époque, 437, 446. The translation above is Colin W. Nettelbeck’s in Forever French: Exile in the United States, 1939–1945 (New York, 1991), 14, 19.
33 Gallagher’s story: Wes Gallagher [“See You in Lisbon”], Free Men Are Fighting: The Story of World War II, ed. Oliver Gramling (New York, 1942), 239–242; Reporting World War II, Part One (New York, 1995), 190–192.
34 “Artist from Prague”: We Escaped: Twelve Personal Narratives of the Flight to America, ed. William Allan Neilson (New York, 1941), 58–75. I follow this work for the account below.
35 “Catholic Writer”: We Escaped, 152–186. I follow this work for the account below.
37 Louis B. Harl: New York Times, May 23, 1942, 5.
37 opposite decision: Eric Hawkins and Robert N. Sturdevant, Hawkins of the Paris Herald (New York, 1963), 219–227. I follow this work for the account below. A portion of the story of Hawkins’s flight from Paris appears in Ronald Weber, News of Paris: American Journalists in the City of Light Between the Wars (Chicago, 2006), 281, 286–287.
39 living in Paris: Koestler’s Scum of the Earth is the main source for his European escape, and I largely follow it for the account below. Daphne Hardy is called G by Koestler. His recollections are amplified, and in some instances corrected, in David Cesarani, Arthur Koestler: The Homeless Mind (New York, 1998), and most recently in Michael Scammell, Koestler: The Literary and Political Odyssey of a Twentieth-Century Skeptic (New York, 2009).
41 water was chilly: Edgar Ansel Mowrer, Triumph and Turmoil: A Personal History of Our Time (New York, 1968), 310–314.
42 discharged in Casablanca: Scammell, Koestler, 189.
42 “right to exist”: Arthur Koestler, The Invisible Writing (New York, 1954), 423.
42 at the same time: Rupert Downing, If I Laugh: The Chronicle of My Strange Adventures in the Great Paris Exodus—June 1940 (London, 1941), 61. I follow this work for the account below.
44 different stripe: Otto Strasser and Michael Stern, Flight from Terror (New York, 1981; orig. pub. 1943). I follow this work for the account below.
47 chose Canada: Strasser’s period in Portugal and his later long sojourn in Canada are related in Douglas Reed, The Prisoner of Ottawa: Otto Strasser (London, 1953).
47 German intellectuals: Franz Schoenberner, The Inside Story of an Outsider (New York, 1949). I follow this work for the account below.
48 had fainted: Lisa Fittko, Escape Through the Pyrenees, trans. David Koblick (Evanston, Ill., 1991), 24.
50 “I know Simplicissimus”: Schoenberner recounts his work on the publication in Confessions of a European Intellectual (New York, 1946).
Chapter 3: Whatever We Can
53 Varian Fry: The basic source of information about Fry’s rescue work is his memoir, Surrender on Demand (Boulder, Colo., 1997; orig. pub. 1945), and I largely follow it for the account below. The work is supplemented by two biographies, Andy Marino, A Quiet American: The Secret War of Varian Fry (New York, 1999) and Sheila Isenberg, A Hero of Our Own: The Story of Varian Fry (New York, 2001).
54 “get them out”: Quoted in Marino, A Quiet American, 44.
54 figures needing rescue: For many of the names on Fry’s list, see ibid., 53–55.
54 selected exiles: For an account of the emergency visa program, including sharp dispute within the State Department, see Wyman, Paper Walls, 142–151.
55 “Dr. Sedgwick”: For Hansfstaengl’s intelligence work, see Joseph E. Persico, Roosevelt’s Secret War: FDR and World War II Espionage (New York, 2001), 191ff.
55 “Hissed Film”: New York Times, July 26, 1935, 8.
55 “this continent”: Quoted in Rosemary Sullivan, Villa Air-Bel: World War II, Escape, and a House in Marseille (New York, 2006), 191.
55 Germany “Eloise”: Marino, A Quiet American, 58.
56 “One just doesn’t”: Quoted in ibid., 89–90.
56 “take everything”: Ibid., 105.
56 “only marry geniuses”: Ibid., 62.
57 Hiram (Harry) Bingham: For a recent magazine account of Bingham’s work in Marseille on behalf of refugees, see Peter Eisner, “Bingham’s List,” Smithsonian, March 2009, 50–57.
57 “played his part”: Lion Feuchtwanger, The Devil in France, trans. Phyllis Blewitt (London, 1942), 182–183. Standish is named by Marino in A Quiet American, page 99, but not by Feuchtwanger. In a version of the escape story told by Mary Jayne Gold, Harry Bingham is the driver of the car. Crossroads Marseilles, 1940 (Garden City, N.Y., 1980), 188–190.
59 “it isn’t cleaner”: Hans Sahl, The Few and the Many, trans. Richard and Clara Winston (New York, 1962), 305–307. Sahl’s meeting with Fry is reprinted in “On Varian Fry,” Hitler’s Exiles: Personal Stories of the Flight from Nazi Germany to America, ed. Mark M. Anderson (New York, 1998), 154–156.
60 “Au revoir”: Hertha Pauli, Break of Time (New York, 1972), 197–199.
60 “turn others down”: Quoted in Sullivan, Villa Air-Bel, 205.
61 bawdy conversations: Miriam Davenport, An Unsentimental Education, unpublished memoir, http://varianfry.org/ebel_memoir_en.htm.
61 Leon Ball: Fry calls him Dick Ball in Surrender on Demand. Others with the CAS remembered him as Leon Ball.
62 under a pen name: Marino, A Quiet American, 160.
62 station in town: Ibid., 170–171.
63 “exceeding sadness”: Quoted in Nigel Hamilton, The Brothers Mann (New Haven, Conn., 1979), 314.
64 “an American consul”: New York Times, October 6, 1940, 38.
64 “work in France”: “Exiles,” Time, May 11, 1940, 80.
65 before returning to France: Benjamin’s attempted escape and suicide is recounted in Marino, A Quiet American, 198–200, and Sullivan, Villa Air-Bel, 1–8. Both follow the account of Benjamin’s guide on the escape attempt, Lisa Fittko, in Escape Through the Pyrenees. Additional details of the death are given by a refugee who, also turned back at the Spanish border, spent the night in the same Spanish hotel as Benjamin. See Carina Burman, “Escape over the Pyrenees,” Quadrant, 49:10 (October 2005), 38–43.
65 Koestler accepted: Cesarani, Arthur Koestler, 167.
65 speak with them: Fittko, Escape Through the Pyrenees, 117ff.
67 They had succeeded: Fry, Surrender on Demand, 124. Fry does not rel
ate his first meeting with the Fittkos. In a brief account of the escape route from Banyuls, pages 122–124, he calls Hans Fittko “Johannes F” and Lisa simply his wife.
67 as his word: Fittko, Escape Through the Pyrenees, 177.
69 expatriate playgirl: Gold, Crossroads Marseilles, 159.
69 paid the rent: For more on Villa Air-Bel and life therein, see ibid, 237ff. See also many pages devoted to the villa in Sullivan, Villa Air-Bel.
69 steer clear of it: Peggy Guggenheim, Out of This Century (New York, 1979), 228.
69 “shipwrecked continent!”: Victor Serge, Memoirs of a Revolutionary, trans. Peter Sedgwick (New York, 1963), 364.
70 “around Manhattan”: Benjamin Harshav, Marc Chagall and His Times (Stanford, Calif., 2004). 499–500.
70 “whatever we can”: Quoted in Isenberg, A Hero of Our Own, 221.
71 “go to America!”: Ibid., 222–223.
71 “oceanic muck”: Walter Mehring, No Road Back, trans. S. A. DeWitt (New York, 1944), 147.
72 prize of war: This is Fry’s explanation in Surrender on Demand, page 215, for the end of the Martinique route. In Displaced Doctor (see note below), Richard Berczeller names the ship the Wyoming and says the navicert granted by the British to allow passage through the blockade was withdrawn when Vichy refused to allow the ship to be searched at sea. Yet another version has the Winnipeg captured by a Dutch gunboat, diverted to Trinidad, and there delivered to the British, after which all passengers were quarantined and questioned one by one. See Joan Mellen, Kay Boyle: Author of Herself (New York, 1994), 252.
72 to New York: Richard Berczeller, Displaced Doctor (NewYork, 1964) 100–121. I follow this work for the account below.
74 “25c a package”: Quoted in Marino, A Quiet American, 313.
75 “hard geometry”: Quoted in Isenberg, A Hero of Our Own, 218–219.
75 “very stupid policy”: New York Times, November 3, 1941, 11.
75 “past two months”: Ibid. Douglas L. Wheeler suggests that Berthold Jacob may have been turned over to the Gestapo by an agent of the Portuguese secret police in German employ. “In the Service of Order,” 11–12. Isenberg in A Hero of Our Own says, pages 195–196, that Portuguese police picked up Jacob and passed him along to Spanish police. The Nazis then moved him to Berlin, where he was tortured, starved, and eventually died in a hospital.