Varian Fry: The American Schindler

By Peter Kross | World War II  | one comment  |  Print This Post  |  Email This Post

Another of Fry’s precious contacts was the Czech consul, Vladimir Vochoc. Vochoc gave the Centre genuine Czech passports for the people on Fry’s register. Valid passports could also be bought at the office of the Lithuanian consul. One hundred dollars bought a passport, no questions asked.

Miriam Davenport, one of Fry’s most trusted employees, put him in touch with a forger named Bill Frier, aka Wilhelm Spira. Frier, a cartoonist by trade, had been arrested by the Germans in France, and he wanted to do something to aid the Allied cause. What better way than working for Varian Fry?

Fry introduced Frier to Marseille con-man and forger Frederic Drach, a onetime employee of the French intelligence service. Drach took Frier under his wing and taught him how to properly forge passports that would pass inspection. Drach’s work helped hundreds of people escape from France.

Fry’s first success came in September 1940. Henry Ehrmann was a lawyer who had escaped the Nazis and fled to Paris, where he met and married his wife Claire. Following the fall of the French capital the couple fled to Vichy. Fry arranged for them to get emergency visas, and they covertly left Marseille, making the dangerous overland hike to Spain. With the help of friendly Spanish border guards, the Ehrmanns were allowed to enter that country, where they boarded New Hellas. Sometime later, the couple docked in New York.

By the end of the year, Fry was having additional success. Using all his available resources — from forgers, guides that took people over the Pyrenees, and aid from a few reliable foreign diplomats in Marseille — he was able to help 250 Jews escape by the end of September alone. People who lived along the French-Spanish border and worked for Fry kept detailed records of the French guards’ comings and goings. From them, Fry knew when the guards took their rest. During those periods large numbers of refugees quietly slipped into Spain.

Besides using overland escape routes, Fry made contact with Italians sympathetic to his cause, and they helped smuggle his people out of France by ship. His Italian liaison men were Emelio Lussu and Colonel Randolfo Pacciardi. Lussu had been successful in previous attempts to bring detainees to safety via a secret North African route. Pacciardi had served with the Loyalists during the Spanish Civil War and was opposed to Europe’s Fascist regimes. Although escape via the North African route was generally successful, at one point a number of refugees were arrested. Other effective sea escape channels put refugees aboard ships bound for the Caribbean island of Martinique, and later Trinidad, where the escapees were given safe harbor.

The only American diplomat in Marseille who aided Fry in his work was Hiram Bingham, a consular officer from a wealthy family. His father served in the U.S. Senate, and his great-grandfather was one of the founding members of New York City’s famous Tiffany & Co., a Fifth Avenue landmark. Among the notable refugees who were aided by Bingham were Charlotte Brand, an artist from Germany who found passage to New York, and Adam and Paulina Kaufman from Poland, who fled imprisonment from the Czechs and made their way to Marseille, after which they were supplied with a visa by Bingham.

During an inspection tour of his operations, Fry met secretly at the British Embassy in Spain with a Major Torr, who was working for MI-6, the British secret intelligence service. Fry told Torr of his covert work in getting people out of France and asked Torr if the British would be interested in using some of his ship-borne routes for the large number of trapped British troops then languishing in Marseille. To Fry’s amazement, the British officer showed no interest.

Soon though, Fry received a call from Torr asking for his help. In an unexpected move, the Spanish government had suddenly agreed to allow Germans, as well as people living in German-occupied territory who had the proper exit papers, to cross into Spain. In a conversation that shook Fry to the core, Torr asked him to become a part of MI-6. Fry met with the British ambassador to Spain, Sir Samuel Hoare, who asked him to help British soldiers then being held in France to escape to Spain. As it happened, the British appeal to Fry was a bit disingenuous. They had known all about Fry’s secret work for months but had done nothing to aid him. Now they wanted him to secure ships to enable the British soldiers to escape. If Fry agreed to the deal, the British would provide him with $10,000 for his expenses in finding the ships. All Fry had to do was locate the ships and get the soldiers out of France.

Help HistoryNet by bookmarking to

Tags: 20th - 21st Century, People, World War II

You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a comment, or trackback from your own site.