The Emergency Rescue committee was established in New York in the summer of 1940 in the wake of the defeat of France and its acceptance of Hitler’s terms for an armistice. Article 19 of the agreement committed the new French government under Marshal Petain to surrender on demand all refugees from the Greater German Reich. The members of the American Emergency Rescue Committee feared for the lives of hundreds of anti-Nazi refugee intellectuals and artists, who had fled the Reich and were now trapped within the closed borders of Vichy France. The committee’s mission was to locate a group of some 200 prominent refugees and to arrange for their escape from France and transport to America. For their emissary to France, the Emergency Rescue Committee selected Varian Fry, an editor for the Foreign Policy Association with ties to the International YMCA. This connection allowed Fry to secure a visa to France at a time when they were difficult to obtain, as well as gave him a cover for his rescue work. Fry’s secret mission was intended to last three weeks (August 4 – 29, 1940) and be limited in scope to the names on his list. However, by the time he was expelled from France (August 27, 1941), Fry had spent thirteen months in the country and rescued more than 1,200 people. Among the refugees whom Fry served from his American Rescue Center in Marseille were the artists Marc Chagall, Max Ernst, Andre Masson and Jacques Lipchitz; the writers Lion Feuchtwanger, Andre Breton and Franz Werfel; the scientists Otto Meyerhoff and Jacques Hadamard; and the political scientist Hannah Arendt.

1. Courtesy of USHMM Photo Archive	2. Courtesy of USHMM Photo Archive	3. Courtesy of USHMM Photo Archive	4. Courtesy of USHMM Photo Archive
5. Courtesy of USHMM Photo Archive	6. Courtesy of USHMM Photo Archive.	7. Courtesy of USHMM Photo Archive