A Quiet American: The Secret War of Varian Fry

Rating:
Summary: Very Interesting Personal Account of a World War II Hero
Review: Andy Marino writes a compelling account of American journalist turned rescuer Varian Fry. The book recounts in great detail Mr. Fry's efforts to free numerous writers, artists and musicians from Nazi-occupied France. Those with an interest in clandestine operations will find a great deal of detail regarding Mr. Fry's operation and means of exfiltration. Of particular interest to those in the open source intelligence community is the account of Mr. Fry's unsuccessful attempts at rescuing Berthold Jacob the author of Das Neue Deutsche Heer Und Seine Führer, the book that so infuriated Hitler he had the Gestapo kidnap Mr. Jacob in Switzerland. Overall, the book is a very good read which opens the door to the important contributions made by a largely unsung hero.

Rating:
Summary: A complex hero
Review: As the other reviewers indicate, this is an excellent book. The setting of Fry's heroism, Marseille and the environs of the South of France, permit an oblique perspective on the Holocaust, which unfolded principally much farther to the north and the east. Without the overwhelming machinery of the sealed boxcars, the gas chambers, the crematoria, some of the underlying causes of the Holocaust come into focus: the bureacratic obstructionism of the U.S. State department, motivated partly by national self interest and partly by the genteel anti-Semitism of individual Foreign Officers, provides a glimpse into how value-free institutional behaviour can be--a deadly underlying cause in Hitler's rise. The sympathetic behaviour of peasants living on the border and of petty police officers contrasts with the callous, and often actively evil, behaviour of their official leaders.

But always, there is the central enigma of Varian Fry himself--a complex, difficult , troubled man, in many ways a talented failure, who because of his clear moral vision became the catalyst for saving the flower of European artists and writers from the clutches of the Gestapo and their collaborators.

In another book, Todorov posits that in extreme moral situations, the basic moral unit for effective action is two, because he notes that the rescuers--Gentiles who risked their lives to save Jews during the Holocaust were rarely individuals; often they were husbands and wives. Todorov's idea is the combination of personality traits and practical abilities that produces effective resistence to an overwhelming social climate of evil is beyond the range of a single individual, and that it requires a minimum of two people to act effectively in this kind of environment.

Interestingly, Fry did organise a staff of incredibly courageous co-workers to help save his "clients", but the intriguing question is whether his very flaws were part of Fry's mysterious ability to distance himself from his society (ie American) and to plunge into effective action to resist Hitler's evil earlier than almost anyone else.

This intriguing book is very rewarding and worthwhile. I gave it 4 stars instead of 5 only because of an occasional passage in which the author, who seems to be almost super-abundantly talented, seems to stray into almost novelistic detail that would seem unlikely to be supported by his research. This is mostly atmospheric, and doesn't cast a shadow on the facts themselves.

Rating:
Summary: A complex hero
Review: As the other reviewers indicate, this is an excellent book. The setting of Fry's heroism, Marseille and the environs of the South of France, permit an oblique perspective on the Holocaust, which unfolded principally much farther to the north and the east. Without the overwhelming machinery of the sealed boxcars, the gas chambers, the crematoria, some of the underlying causes of the Holocaust come into focus: the bureacratic obstructionism of the U.S. State department, motivated partly by national self interest and partly by the genteel anti-Semitism of individual Foreign Officers, provides a glimpse into how value-free institutional behaviour can be--a deadly underlying cause in Hitler's rise. The sympathetic behaviour of peasants living on the border and of petty police officers contrasts with the callous, and often actively evil, behaviour of their official leaders.

But always, there is the central enigma of Varian Fry himself--a complex, difficult , troubled man, in many ways a talented failure, who because of his clear moral vision became the catalyst for saving the flower of European artists and writers from the clutches of the Gestapo and their collaborators.

In another book, Todorov posits that in extreme moral situations, the basic moral unit for effective action is two, because he notes that the rescuers--Gentiles who risked their lives to save Jews during the Holocaust were rarely individuals; often they were husbands and wives. Todorov's idea is the combination of personality traits and practical abilities that produces effective resistence to an overwhelming social climate of evil is beyond the range of a single individual, and that it requires a minimum of two people to act effectively in this kind of environment.

Interestingly, Fry did organise a staff of incredibly courageous co-workers to help save his "clients", but the intriguing question is whether his very flaws were part of Fry's mysterious ability to distance himself from his society (ie American) and to plunge into effective action to resist Hitler's evil earlier than almost anyone else.

This intriguing book is very rewarding and worthwhile. I gave it 4 stars instead of 5 only because of an occasional passage in which the author, who seems to be almost super-abundantly talented, seems to stray into almost novelistic detail that would seem unlikely to be supported by his research. This is mostly atmospheric, and doesn't cast a shadow on the facts themselves.

Rating:
Summary: Intellectuals and War
Review: Hermann Goering is reputed to have said, "When I hear the word 'culture', I reach for my pistol."
This, from one of the most prolific looters of art in recent history, takes some explanation which, as it happens, is not forthcoming.
However, upon reading of Varian Fry's heroic attempts to keep Europe from "blowing its brains out" by detaining and, certainly, eventually killing intellectuals wholesale, one may have a bit of sympathy for Goering.
It isn't the art, it's the artists.
Fry was an odd character from his earliest days when he easily manipulated his parents into letting him avoid school and do whatever it was that his latest whim desired.
He had an unusual though substantial education, and was a writer and journalist and left-wing intellectual in the Thirties. He was also what used to be called "neurotic" in that he had a number of personality traits we could call counterproductive, if we could ever figure out what Fry might think of as productive. He had a bit of hypochondria, was sometimes hardpressed to make a decision, made friends and lost them over small things, and married an older woman with whom he had a relationship whose aspects, as Marino details them, make the reader squirm, just a bit, over what Marino doesn't detail.
Whatever he managed to accomplish in those days seems to have been a function of high intelligence and fierce energy, opposed by various personality quirks.
And then he went to Marseille to rescue European intellectuals.
His transformation at that point is amazing. From intellectual dilettante, indulging his personal whims, he became, overnight, indistinguishable from a hardened and trained operative of the OSS or the British SOE (Special Operations Executive). Marino does not tell us how that happened, since it is almost certainly inexplicable.
Unfortunately for Fry and others, the same process did not occur in many of those he tried to help.
If there is one thing I did not expect in reading this book, it was the difficulty, sometimes the near impossibility, of chivvying various intellectuals through reasonably simple (given the circumstances) procedures that would save their lives.
Some, told to keep a low profile while things were worked out, paraded themselves in Marseille's restaurants and bars. Others refused simple instructions, or jibbed at the last moment, doing either nothing or something quite stupid. Fry spent a good deal of the time and resources he had--not much of either--in bailing out individuals or repairing or replacing procedures they'd put in jeopardy.
It is almost too good to be true, in terms of literary contrast, to find that Fry also had a group of British soldiers captured prior to Dunkirk to get out of the France. These men, fit and cheerful, followed directions without question, solved what problems remained, and were successfully sent home. There could have been no greater contrast between ordinary people and intellectuals.
Any reader who becomes involved in the narrative must, although sixty years and more have gone, become frustrated at the inability of Fry's charges to get out of their own way. One, after having been trouble on the European end, arrived safely in New York and began babbling to all about every secret arrangement Fry had made to get him and others safely out of the Gestapo's clutches.
Fry, for this period, was clear-minded and hard-headed and full of energy. In periods of crisis, people can go into overdrive for extended periods of time. Eventually, they collapse. Fry, however, managed to work like a fiend for months in circumstances of the greatest stress. He never lost his focus and, indeed, was able to operate outside any constraints that one might have thought his earlier life placed on him. In one case, having been betrayed and done out of a substantial amount of funding, Fry met with some of Marseille's underworld bosses and took out a murder contract on the traitor.
Eventually, having been sent home by the authorities, he returned to the intellectual's life he'd left, including neuroses, counterproductive activities, odd relationships, and eventual death in obscurity.
The obscurity is partly a matter of official activity. It wasn't until many years later, when Fry was honored in Israel as one of the Righteous, that Warren Christopher apologized on behalf of the State Department for all the obstructionism Fry had had to face from the United States.
Fry saved a great many intellectuals from death, providing the West, mostly the United States, with an intellectual boost (some became successful screenwriters as well), by finding within himself a person absolutely invisible to anyone looking at him either before or after his exploits. The greatest mystery of the story is that contradiction.
The second greatest mystery is why saving intellectuals from certain death is so much like herding cats.
What is it about them?

Rating:
Summary: Fascinating revelation of history through personal story
Review: I encourage anyone interested in WWII to read this book. Especially fascinating to me were the depiction of important characters in pre-war Europe. I gobbled the book, then started looking for more - I would advise against following this book with Varian Fry's own account of this period, because it seems like Marino covered it pretty well.

Rating:
Summary: Absorbing well researched book on Varian Fry , Vichy France
Review: If you are interested in the dark events leading to the holocaust, especially French collaboration, this is an absorbing book. For those not quite so familiar with Vichy France it will be an eye opener, for there can be no doubt that many French officials bent over backwards to serve their German masters during those shameful periodic roundups and deportations of the Jews in France. New to this reader, were the descriptions of the horrible conditions of the "refugee camps" in Vichy-controlled France. These were not the infamous concentration camps because detainees could be released, but they were, nonetheless, death camps simply because of shameful conditions and inhuman neglect. In fact, some 3,000 Jews and non- Jews died in those camps in southern France because of the atrocious conditions.

But French Vichy officials were not the only villains. Americans may be surprised to learn just how anti-Semitic U.S. officialdom was during the early years. One could argue that were it not for the openly anti-Semitic treatment of Jews by our own State Department there would be no book written about Varian Fry. If all of the US officials in France, in the Embassy and various consulates, had a mind set to save the Jews it is quite likely thousands more could have been saved. Varian Fry filled a void. He was fighting two battles, the enemy in France and the enemy at home, in the form of the State Department. It was a shameful period, only fairly recently recognized by former Secretary of State Warren Christopher.

This book, about Varian Fry's rescue of the Jews under the auspices of the American Emergency Rescue Committee, raises some questions. Why was he not recognized sooner? And why did many of those Jews rescued seem to turn their backs on him, once saved? Part of the answer is simply that Fry is not a very heroic figure, not even particularly likable. For some he was distant, not easy to know, but he did what he had to do at the time and that did not include being popular with everyone. It is unfortunate that personality flaws probably did play a role early on in the assessment of his role in that period. Even after reading this book, I cannot shake an ambivalent view of Fry as a tragic figure caught very much by accident in an heroic period. Yet, what he did rightfully makes him a hero.

One must read this book to better understand that tragic period and place. Marseilles was the end of a funnel at the beginning of the war. Jews from all over Europe were spilling into that port city, desperate to get out, their backs against the Mediterranean wall, but not a non-Jewish friend in sight to help. Enter a few good people like Fry. It would suffice to be a hero at that time in that place simply by feeling compassion. Elie Wiesel expressed it when he said, "In those times one climbed to the summit of humanity simply by remaining human."

There were other heros and heroines to be sure, the cooperative police inspector, the compassionate Prefet official. I had just finished reading Mary Jayne Gold's Memoir of Marseilles, 1940-1941 in which she recounts her version of that same rescue effort. My feeling is that she deserves a little better treatment than Marino gave her. The fact that Fry may have dismissed her should not diminish her contribution. Although deceased now after a long life, she genuinely felt that those were really the only useful years of her life. (See Amazon.com for review of her book, "Crossroads Marseilles, Nineteen Hundred and Forty" by Mary Jayne Gold)

In short, an absorbing well researched book. Although many of the players on that Marseilles stage have now passed from the scene, including Varian Fry, Marino had the good fortune of being able to interview many of those still living. The book is not at all pedantic, but I do wish to thank the author for expanding my vocabulary with "spavined" and "solipsism".

Rating:
Summary: Astounding tale of an unknown chapter in Holocaust history
Review: Sometime, not-so-admirable people do incredibly admirable things, and find in themselves qualities that no one, themselves included, knew were there. Such was the case of Varian Fry.

In August 1940, Varian Fry boarded a plane in New York and flew to Spain, and from there to Marseilles, on a mission that would resonate far beyond his imagination.

Fry was an historian, involved with "radical" politics: the Spanish Civil War, the looming Holocaust. He went from observing and writing about the coming crises to actively participating in a way that no one who knew him, or even he himself, would have anticipated. Far from being identified as a humanitarian, he was, in fact, an intellectual snob, a classicist by training.

But he put his life on the line in an effort to save the leading cultural, intellectual, and artistic lights of Europe. Truth to tell, he had no idea what he was getting himself, or his New York sponsors, into, so the evolution of this rather untouchable, remote aesthete into a mover and shaker who consorted with the Marseilles underworld (and enjoyed it!) and worked outside the law is fascinating to observe.

Varian Fry was personally responsible for saving the lives of, among others, Marc Chagall, Lion Feuchtwanger, Victor Serge, Heinrich Mann, André Gide, Franz Werfel, Andre Breton, Max Ernst, Hannah Arendt... He also saved about 1500 other lesser known people. Altogether, in the year he spent in France before being arrested and kicked out by the Vichy puppets of the Gestapo, he turned himself inside out, discovering in himself a depth of caring and feeling that neither he, nor most of the people who knew him, would have suspected was present.

The story itself is so riveting that the book would have to be illiterate not to be absorbing. I found it well-written, with fascinating studies of the characters who worked with, and against Fry. It sort of fades out at the end, but then again, so did Fry, after his return to New York. He died in 1967, unrecognized for his work until the year before his death. In 1996, Israel further declared him "Righteous Among the Nations," the only American so honored.

Rating:
Summary: Astounding tale of an unknown chapter in Holocaust history
Review: Sometime, not-so-admirable people do incredibly admirable things, and find in themselves qualities that no one, themselves included, knew were there. Such was the case of Varian Fry.

In August 1940, Varian Fry boarded a plane in New York and flew to Spain, and from there to Marseilles, on a mission that would resonate far beyond his imagination.

Fry was an historian, involved with "radical" politics: the Spanish Civil War, the looming Holocaust. He went from observing and writing about the coming crises to actively participating in a way that no one who knew him, or even he himself, would have anticipated. Far from being identified as a humanitarian, he was, in fact, an intellectual snob, a classicist by training.

But he put his life on the line in an effort to save the leading cultural, intellectual, and artistic lights of Europe. Truth to tell, he had no idea what he was getting himself, or his New York sponsors, into, so the evolution of this rather untouchable, remote aesthete into a mover and shaker who consorted with the Marseilles underworld (and enjoyed it!) and worked outside the law is fascinating to observe.

Varian Fry was personally responsible for saving the lives of, among others, Marc Chagall, Lion Feuchtwanger, Victor Serge, Heinrich Mann, André Gide, Franz Werfel, Andre Breton, Max Ernst, Hannah Arendt... He also saved about 1500 other lesser known people. Altogether, in the year he spent in France before being arrested and kicked out by the Vichy puppets of the Gestapo, he turned himself inside out, discovering in himself a depth of caring and feeling that neither he, nor most of the people who knew him, would have suspected was present.

The story itself is so riveting that the book would have to be illiterate not to be absorbing. I found it well-written, with fascinating studies of the characters who worked with, and against Fry. It sort of fades out at the end, but then again, so did Fry, after his return to New York. He died in 1967, unrecognized for his work until the year before his death. In 1996, Israel further declared him "Righteous Among the Nations," the only American so honored.