Eleanor Roosevelt & Her Involvement with the Emergency Rescue CommissionĪnother significant person in the US administration who was sympathetic to the Jewish plight in Europe was the First lady of the United States, Mrs. Bingham secretly issued hundreds of visas to the United States, saving hundreds of Jewish artists & intellectuals. Fortunately, Hiram Bingham, the vice consul, ignored his boss and the US administration. Orringer details in her book how the US consul general, Hugh Fullerton, tried thwarting the mission’s efforts from saving Jews. From Varian Fry’s Letter to His Wife, Ellen, Written in 1941 The US Government Had No Interest In Saving Jews However, the list of artists needing to get out is endless & the ERC becomes frantically more desperate to save as many lives as possible. The committee interviewed the people wanting to escape to determine whether they met the mission’s criteria for saving.Īs time goes by, Fry and his group become more skilled in organizing false papers and finding escape routes for getting the artists & intellectuals safely off the continent. This raised moral issues! Why save artists when so many other ordinary people are being murdered? However, this was a decision that the committee made. The Flight Portfolio – Who should you save? Is it wrong to save one person & not another?īecause of limited resources, the Emergency Rescue Commission decided to concentrate their efforts into saving artists and intellectuals only. Life in Southern France was very dangerous, in particularly for Jews. However the Vichy government fully cooperated with the Nazis. Southern France was not yet officially under Nazi regime during this period. He and his dedicated group are based in Marseilles which under the control of the Vichy government. Varian Fry is the man in charge of this mission. Their plan is to find ways of helping them escape the continent and go to the United States. Their mission is to save European Jewish artists & intellectuals from the Nazis. When the Nazis take over France in 1940, Varian Fry together with a small and devoted team create an Emergency Rescue Committee (ERC). A Mission for Saving Jewish Artists & Intellectuals from the Nazis He feels strongly that he must do something to help these people.
During his time there, he witnesses Nazi abuse against innocent Jewish people. While working as a foreign correspondent for an American paper, Fry visits Berlin in 1935. Fry is a young American journalist who comes from a privileged American background. “The Flight Portfolio” is about a real life, hardly-known hero called Varian Fry. Historical Fiction WW2 Book – Saving Marc Chagall & Others from the Nazis
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