Varian Fry (1907–1967) was an American journalist who helped anti-Nazi refugees escape from France.
Varian Fry was born in New York City on October 15, 1907. He graduated in 1931 with a degree in classics from Harvard University, moved back to New York City, and married Eileen Hughes, an editor at Atlantic Monthly. Fry worked as a researcher and editor at a number of magazines in the early 1930s, during which time he traveled to Nazi Germany to report on the country under Hitler’s rule. Upon witnessing an anti-Jewish riot in Berlin on July 15, 1935, Fry wrote several dispatches for the New York Times, describing what he had observed.
After the outbreak of the Spanish Civil War, Fry resigned as editor of the foreign policy magazine The Living Age to work for the North American Committee to Aid Spanish Democracy. Despite its name, the committee supported the Republican side of the war, which included communists, and Fry, a fervent anti-Communist, resigned in June 1937. With wars breaking out all over the world, Fry began writing books for the Foreign Policy Association, including War in China, The Good Neighbors (about US relations with Latin America), Bricks Without Mortar (about international diplomacy), War Atlas, and The Peace that Failed (about the Nazi seizure of Czechoslovakia). Continue reading from The Holocaust Encyclopedia
Varian Fry (United State Holocaust Memorial Museum)
His Bravery Unsung, Varian Fry Acted to Save Jews (The New York Times)
Varian Fry, The Righteous Among the Nations (Yad Vashem, The World Holocaust Remembrance Center)
Varian Fry, 1907-1967 (Jewish Virtual Library)
Varian Fry and the Emergency Rescue Committee (Rescue in the Holocaust)
How Varian Fry Helped My Family Escape the Nazis (The New York Review)