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For a major part of the second world war, US authorities had been scarcely touched by the plight of Jewish people and other refugees in Nazi-dominated Europe. An American visa could save a life, but it was rarely granted. A handful of courageous Americans, associated under the name of the Emergency Rescue Committee (ERC), took it upon themselves to set right their country’s indifference. Hannah Arendt, Max Ernst, Marc Chagall, André Breton, Claude Lévi-Strauss and 2,000 others owe their lives to them.
Marseille 1940: The Flight of Literature is the story of the ERC and its founder Varian Fry, told by award-winning German journalist and literary critic Uwe Wittstock. It is as addictive as it is nerve-racking. Across 300 meticulously researched pages, skilfully translated by Daniel Bowles, Wittstock traces the steps of both the smugglers and their “clients”, many of them German writers including Jewish people who had sought refuge in France. After France’s capitulation and the creation of the collaborationist regime, they found themselves at risk of being given up to the Germans.
The book’s principal character is Fry, a Harvard-educated journalist with a contrarian streak. After news of the Nazi invasion of France, Fry and a number of New York figures founded the ERC. With a list of 200 names and a fundraised $3,000 taped to his leg, Fry travelled to Marseille. Once there, he teamed up with several like-minded people and set up an undercover escape agency. Instead of the planned three weeks, he stayed for 13 months.
The ERC bought tickets and provided necessary documents including visas and false passports. The group bribed French officials, co-operated with the Corsican mafia and established clandestine routes across the Pyrenees. When funds from New York were scarce, American heiress Mary Jayne Gold (who worked for the ERC in Marseille) made up the difference, as did Peggy Guggenheim.
Intertwined with the stories of the organisers’ ingeniousness are those of the escapers themselves. Wittstock has written several books about the German literary world, including February 1933: The Winter of Literature, about writers in the aftermath of Hitler’s ascent to power. There are heartwarming tales of generosity but not every story has a happy ending. There is plenty of mindless bureaucracy. Refugees who could be summoned by the Vichy regime on Gestapo’s orders are stuck in a Kafkaesque labyrinth of required stamps, letters and permits.
Many people, including policemen, looked the other way or broke rules. But many didn’t, even when they risked next to nothing. The German-Jewish philosopher Walter Benjamin, who posthumously became one of the most celebrated thinkers of the 20th century, was arrested during his trek across the mountains when border guards discovered he didn’t have one of the required visas. To avoid being murdered in a concentration camp, he swallowed a lethal dose of morphine.
The American consul general in Marseille tried to have Fry expelled for his clandestine activities and in the end succeeded. Eleanor Roosevelt, the wife of the then US president, supported the ERC but did so largely against her husband’s wishes. At the time, Franklin D Roosevelt cared more about good relations with the Vichy regime and didn’t want to fall out with American voters.
Fry was given little credit during his lifetime. His colleagues in New York considered him “politically unreliable” and fired him. Antisemitism was prevalent in America. They wanted to rescue stars of the establishment such as André Gide, Henri Matisse and André Malraux, and there he was saving German-Jewish people, often downright communist ones.
Before his death in 1967, Fry received the French Legion of Honour. More recognition came long after. In 1994, Yad Vashem named him Righteous Among the Nations, one of only five Americans to be given this title, awarded to the non-Jewish who had risked their lives to save Jewish people during the second world war. His story has made it into contemporary culture. The American writer Julie Orringer wrote a novel based on his time in Marseille, The Flight Portfolio (2019), which was in turn adapted into the Netflix series Transatlantic (2023). It is a story well worth retelling — and well worth reading.
Marseille 1940: The Flight of Literature by Uwe Wittstock, translated by Daniel Bowles Polity £25, 336 pages
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