Esta es la historia de Varian Fry y cómo ayudó a escapar de la Gestapo a intelectuales y artistas como Bretón, Alma Mahler, Mann, Duchamp, Chagal...... ( )

"The French Government is obliged to surrender upon demand all Germans* named by the German Government in France, as well as in French possessions, Colonies, Protectorate Territories and Mandates" From Article XIX of the Franco-German Armistice

*"Germans" came to include anyone in territories the Nazis had conquered, and indeed anyone they wanted.

After reading Anna Seghers's Transit], and learning that she escaped from Marseille to Martinique with the help of Varian Fry, I realized that I'd had his book on my shelves for probably 15 years, and that it seemed like a good time to finally read it.

When the Nazis invaded Paris in June 1940, Varian Fry was a 32-year-old journalist and former classics major who had visited Germany in 1935 and been horrified by the Nazis even in those early years. Three days after the French surrender, the Emergency Rescue Committee was formed; its mission was to rescue many of the European artists, writers, musicians, and intellectuals who had initially fled from all corners of Europe to France and who now needed to flee France as well. Varian Fry agreed to go to Marseille to help get them out, believing that it would take him three weeks to contact the people on the ERC's list and not much longer to get them out with the help he believed he would receive from the US consulate in Marseille.

This is the story of the 13 months Fry spent in Marseille and its environs, before finally being expelled with the aid of the US State Department. During that time, he and his colleagues helped some 4000 people and were able to send some 2000 safely out of France. These people included some of the foremost artists, intellectuals, and labor and political leaders of the time, people such as André Breton, Max Ernst, Franz Werfel, Heinrich Mann, Victor Serge, among many others. To do this, he found himself working 18-hour days and doing whatever was necessary, including buying passports and visas, working with gangsters and forgers and money changers, as well as with representatives of the British military, searching for boats that could take people away, and generally staying one step ahead of the French police and the Gestapo (which not "officially" active in unoccupied Marsellle). Fry introduces us to the diverse group of people who helped in both his above-ground and clandestine activities, and to a who's who of European artists, intellectuals, and anti-Nazis.

More exciting than spy fiction because it is real, this book is also the story of a man who found himself unalterably changed by the situation he found himself in and who then found the courage to face incredible danger and undertake activities that he probably never dreamed he would ever engage in, all because they were necessary to get people out. In fact, the afterword to the edition I read (written by curators of the exhibit on Fry that was the opening exhibit at US Holocaust Museum), quotes a letter Fry wrote to his wife on his way home from Europe in which he says "I do not think I will ever be quite the same person I was when I kissed you goodbye . . . For the experiences of ten, fifteen, and even twenty years have been pressed into one. Sometimes I feel I have lived a whole life (and one to which I have no right) since I first walked down the monumental staircase of the Gare St. Charles in Marseille and timidly took a small back room at the Hotel Splendide . . ."

Fry started writing this book after he returned, but didn't end up publishing it until 1945. He kept no notes while he was in France, and in fact he frequently mentions burning papers just ahead of police visits, but his experiences must have been indelibly recorded in his brain, because the people and his activities come alive in his writing. One of the parts I enjoyed was the way some French and other officials unofficially helped Fry and the refugees, or at least looked the other way. In one amusing episode, a sentry at the Spanish border saw the paperwork Golo Mann, who had just climbed over a mountain to enter Spain with his uncle Heinrich Mann, and realized he was the son of Thomas Mann. Of course, when the sentry asked them about this, they feared being on a Gestapo list, but the sentry said he was honored to meet the son of "so great a man" and then sent for a car to come and get them.

Shamefully, the US government did not fully support Fry in his activities, which he found shocking; this got worse as time went on, and finally the State Department collaborated in Fry's being expelled from France. The US became more concerned about letting political "undesirables" into the country than with protecting the intellectual and artistic elite of Europe. Fry came to believe that people in the US didn't fully understand what was going on in Europe, and that he had to write this book to make them see. In his original introduction, which was not published in 1945 but which is included as an appendix to my edition, he wrote:

"I have tried -- God knows I have tried -- to get back into the mood of American life since I left France for the last time. But it doesn't work. There is only one way to try and that is the way I am going to try now. If I can get it all out, put it all down just as it happened, if I can make others see it and feel it as I did, then maybe I can sleep soundly again at night. . . . Those ghosts won't stop haunting me until I have done their bidding. They are the ghosts of the living who do not want to die. Go back, they said, go back and make America understand, make Americans understand before it is too late."

Varian Fry was the first American to be recognized by Yad Vashem, Israel's memorial to the Holocaust, as
"Righteous Among the Nations," a non-Jew who saved Jews during the Holocaust.

Surrender on Demand is Varian Fry’s first-hand account of how he assisted Jewish intellectuals to escape France during World War II. Sometimes referred to as the ‘American Schindler’, Fry was deeply concerned over the potential loss of these writers, artists and musicians. He raised funds domestically and then traveled to Marseille where he helped several thousand people.

Fry feared that any journal or diary he kept could be used against him if discovered by authorities, who routinely searched his rooms. Luckily he was a journalist by trade and many anecdotes he recalls in these pages are quite detailed. In fact, I had a difficult time keeping up with all the names and was hard pressed to keep everyone straight. The numbers of refugees was overwhelming and I certainly understand the 18-hour days Fry put in trying to help them.

Fry was most successful at transporting people by train or on foot as the port authorities watched the boats too carefully and very few automobiles were in operation. He would obtain passports/visas from any country he could get them from. He did not spare the expense if he could get legal documents but when he couldn’t, he employed forgeries.

I’ve read quite a few WWII books, particularly concerning France, but this one held a surprise for me. I had always been under the impression that when someone was arrested they were sent to the camps immediately. Fry mentions how some of the Vichy authorities were sporting about it. They would arrest an individual and tell them to go home and pack a bag and return the next morning for transport. If the individual fled, well, c’est la vie, they got away. If the individual came back the next day, they would do their duty and hand them over.

I read this after watching the movie Varian’s War (starring William Hurt) and perhaps the movie spoiled me a bit for the pacing of the book. It’s interesting for the details, but I didn’t find it to be a page-turner. ( )