Emergency Rescue Committee

Varian Fry, an American editor at The New Republic, volunteered to go to Vichy, France in 1940 on behalf of the New York based Emergency Rescue Committee, an organization launched by a group of concerned Americans to help Jewish intellectuals and renowned artists and writers escape Vichy, France.

For one year, Fry directed clandestine operations that resulted in the rescue of 1,500 Jews and provided support for 2,500 others. The government refused to renew his passport, forcing Fry to return to the United States. He continued to write about the impending massacre of the Jews, and became an outspoken advocate for increased Jewish immigration.

Harry Bingham IV, a member of the U.S. Diplomatic Service, was posted to Marseilles, France in 1939. Although the State Department ordered him to block immigration applications, Bingham granted over 2,500 visas to refugees, many of them Jewish. He sheltered Jews in his home, obtained forged identity papers that helped them escape Europe, and contributed to their expenses out of his own pocket. Viewed as a maverick by his superiors, he was eventually forced out of the diplomatic corps.

James G. McDonald, the League of Nations High Commissioner for Refugees, recognized the threat Nazism posed to Jews and the free world after he met with Adolf Hitler in 1933. He addressed his concerns directly to President Roosevelt and the Vatican and later served on the President’s Advisory Committee for Political Refugees. An early advocate for the establishment of the State of Israel, McDonald was the first U.S. Ambassador to the Jewish State.