Varian Fry (1907–1967)

In August 1940, after Nazi Germany's invasion of France in World War II, Varian Fry went to Marseille on behalf of a group he had helped found called the Emergency Rescue Committee. He traveled with $3,000 in cash taped to his leg and a list of some 200 Jews and other individuals -- artists, political dissidents, and intellectuals -- in great peril from the Nazis. As a researcher and reporter in Berlin in 1935, he had seen Jews assaulted in the street, and knew what would happen if he didn't act. He and a small group of volunteers took up residence at a rundown villa where they hid people temporarily, and set about obtaining false passports and arranging escape routes to smuggle people to safety. By the time Fry was deported by the Vichy government 13 months later, he had saved thousands of lives, among them Marc Chagall, Marcel Duchamp, and Hannah Arendt. In 1945, he published a book about his time in France called Surrender on Demand. In 1968, Scholastic, which markets books mainly to young people, published a new paperback edition under the title Assignment: Rescue. Fry was the author and co-author of numerous other books. Shortly before his death in 1967, the French government awarded him the Croix de Chevalier of the Legion d'Honneur, France's highest decoration of merit. It was the only official recognition he received during his lifetime. In 1994, he became the first American to be named Righteous Among the Nations by Yad Vashem.