What do Hannah Arendt, Marc Chagall, Marcel Duchamp and Max Ernst have in common? They were all smuggled out of Vichy France by a secret Emergency Rescue Committee, which was run by American journalist Varian Fry and backed by wealthy benefactors including First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt.
It’s a story that’s barely believable, but completely true: Fry and his friends hid people who were in danger (many of whom were Jewish) in a villa, before smuggling them out of the country, often over the border to Spain. When they could, the committee would also use contacts at the Museum of Modern Art in New York and at the American Vice Consul in Marseille to issue (both legal and illegal) visas to help political dissidents, artists and intellectuals get out.
