Trudy Gold
Rescue and Resistance in France, Both Jewish and Non-Jewish, Part 2
Trudy Gold - Rescue and Resistance in France, Both Jewish and Non-Jewish Part 2
- Well, good evening, everyone. And this is the second of a three-part series on those who resisted and rescued in France. Of course, it’s a terribly, terribly important subject because, against all the horror we’ve been talking about, there were incredible people who risked everything to save both Jewish and non-Jewish. And today I’m going to concentrate on diplomats who were actually working in France and what they did to save Jews. And can I point out that next time next week we’re going to start talking about the history of the Jews of Albania, but I’m also going to be slotting in a lecture on a whole village in France that saved Jews, Le Chambon. So I think when times are dark, it’s important to remember that there are always people who do turn to the light, and some of them had to face the most appalling decisions. But let’s start. I was first aware of the whole issue of diplomats who saved Jews in the year 2000. It was, for the first-ever international conference of the new millennia, the Swedish government had convened a meeting in Stockholm, 60 heads of state or foreign ministers attended, and it was to discuss whether, by teaching the Holocaust, the world could move forward in terms of its attitude to racism, its attitude to antisemitism; could somehow the teaching of one of the worst catastrophes the world has ever known be a warning cry, a man wolf to the rest of the world. And at that meeting in Stockholm, an American called Eric Schwartz, had put together an exhibition called The Righteous Diplomats. And it was really, I think, the beginnings of taking this seriously. And of course, more and more come to the fore now.
And many of them have been honoured by Yad Vashem. And this is looking at people who, quite often, went against the will of their own governments to issue visas that enabled thousands and thousands of Jews to escape. And I also want you to imagine the atmosphere as it was in France after the Germans invaded. And as we’ve already discovered, Vichy was established in the south. But hundreds of thousands of people made their way down to Vichy, particularly to the port, like a port like Marseille. It was absolutely chockablock with people, all trying to get out. And important to remember that at this stage America wasn’t yet in the war, so there were many Americans there. There were also relief agencies, all sorts of people who were trying to help. And I actually want to start, can we see the first diplomat that I’m going to talk about, please? This is Gilberto Bosques of Mexico. Now, let’s talk a little bit about Mexico because Mexico is, for the first part of the war, is neutral. Of course, it’s very interesting. It borders to America. And it did provide vital materials to America. They’ve reached a mutual aid agreement. And also, in return, the Americans promised the military aid and to professionalise their air force and their militia. They joined the war in 1942 when the Germans sank two Mexican tankers in the Atlantic. And the Mexican foreign secretary took the lead in trying to urge other South American countries to join the war on the side of the Allies. In fact, the small Mexican Air Force that had been trained by the Americans operated with the Americans in the Philippines. But its main help, as I said, the main help that Mexico gave was the supply of raw materials for the American war effort.
Also, something else, and if you think in terms of what’s going on with Mexico and America now, hundreds of thousands of temporary farm workers and railway men were sent to America because, after America is plunged into the war after Pearl Harbour, men are drafted. Now to make up for the shortage of labour, Mexicans were filling that niche either as farm workers or as railway men. And in fact, that programme was not stopped until the ‘60s. Millions of Mexicans actually participated. So important to remember that when France, when Vichy France was set up, America was still allied to Vichy France, they still have diplomatic relations, and so does Mexico. So of course, Mexico, at that time, is a neutral country. So who was this man, Gilberto Bosques of Mexico, who is going to be responsible for saving about 40,000 Jews? He’d come from a mountainous village just southeast of Mexico City. He was an idealist. He participated in the Mexican Revolution. One of the things I’ve always been interested in, what is it? Is there something in the background of people that when the chips are down, when we’re tested, does something happen to actually make people stand up for other people? So we know that he was very politically active. He later worked as a journalist. He went into politics. He was actually director of the government-owned newspaper, and he was a member of the Chamber of Deputies. For a short time, he was actually president.
He was stationed in France between 1939 and 1943 basically as the me Mexican consul general. When the Nazis moved into Paris, he transfers to Vichy from where he organises his consulate in Marseille. And of course, Marseille, as I’ve already said, is the centre of hundreds of thousands of people. Can you imagine? The Nazis, the Germans have moved into Paris, hundreds of thousands of people flee south, not just Jews. Think of all the other refugees. Think of those people who had come to France after the defeat of the communists in the Spanish Civil War. Think about all those lefties. Anyone who was going to be in trouble with the Nazis, they flee south and they go mainly to the ports, particularly Marseille. So in Mexico, he’s now, has the Mexican consulate in Marseille. And he, of his own back, he actually directs his employees to issue visas to anyone who wanted to leave France. And under his watch, working, he saved so many thousand Jews and also republicans who had fought in the Spanish Civil War and fled to France. Remember, he’d fought in the Mexican Revolution. He was himself, he’s got that very kind of, I think, reckless personality. And he obviously is the consul in Marseille. He was a man of means. He rented a castle and a whole holiday camp in Marseille and he used it to house refugees. He insisted that, under international law, it was under the jurisdiction of Mexico. And of course, at that stage, Mexico is neutral so Vichy France has to abide by it. So consequently, he’s housing all these poor unfortunates and issuing them visas, which enables them to get out of France and to get, many of them, of course, dreamt of going to America. And I should report to everyone that finally British television is showing the extraordinary Ken Burns documentary of America in the Holocaust. And it’s absolutely gripping watching.
And I know that many of you in Canada and America have told us about it. Well, now we can see it. But of course, what happens is that the Germans march into Vichy. And at the beginning of 1943, he, his wife, and three children are arrested by the Gestapo, along with 40 members of his consulate and they are sent to Germany where they are put up in a hotel prison. Now, they are released. Why? Because the Mexican government had interned Germans living in Mexico. So as a result of that, there was a prisoner exchange. So consequently, he returns to Mexico with his family and the other members of the consulate in 1944. He went on to have a further career in the diplomatic service. He was ambassador to Portugal, to Finland, Sweden, Cuba. Now, Cuba’s fascinating, because remember the Mexican revolution. Remember, this man is a reckless personality. He’s also a friend of Fidel Castro. And he was incredibly important during the Cuba missile crisis. I’m sure so many of us remember the fear that we all felt at the time the Cuban missile crisis. Is it going to lead to World War III? He was actually one of the main people in creating proper communications between the Americans and the Cubans as a representative of neutral Mexico. He finally retired from the diplomatic core. And his rescue work was really ignored for absolutely decades. He didn’t talk about it. He didn’t think it was important. So many of these characters did it because they believed it was the right thing to do.
What impelled some people to good, others to evil, and the majority of us to indifference. In his retirement, he’s a very interesting poet. Posthumously, the Anti-Defamation League of the B'nai B'rith awarded him the Courage to Care medal, and a film has been made about him by Lillian Lieberman and it’s called “Visa to Paradise”. So here you have an incredible Mexican character who saved and, remember, this is all happening in France under Vichy. So can we turn to the next man, please? Aristides de Sousa Mendes. Of course, most of the characters I’m talking about are male. Why? Because women were not yet given a place properly in the diplomatic service. So I cannot distort history, unfortunately. But as I said to you last week, so many of the rescuers, on an individual basis, were women. Think of the saving of the children. So he, of course, is Portuguese. And there is a huge foundation now, the Sousa Mendes Foundation, which does an awful lot of incredible work in letting people know about the show. So I’m going to talk a little bit about Portugal because, of course, Portugal was neutral. Now, at the start of World War II, on the 1st of September 1939, the Portuguese government announced that the 550 year Anglo-Portuguese Alliance remained intact. But since the British did not seek their military help, they were free to remain neutral. You have this long-standing agreement between England and Portugal. Anyway, it was maintained right up until 1944 when there was a military agreement with America to use Santa Maria in the Azores as a military base. A lot of these countries enter the war very late, particularly because it was obvious, after America enters the war after Stalingrad, they also wanted to be on the winning side.
Now, and the other point, the man, the prime minister of Portugal was Salazar. He was very much an authoritarian. He ran an authoritarian government that had favoured the nationalist cause in Spain. He’d been a supporter of Franco. Why? Because he was terrified of communism coming through Spain into Portugal. And I’m going to, again, emphasise to you that, to many people, communism was seen as a Jewish disease. So the agreement, though, with the UK, allowed Portugal to come to the aid of England in a very interesting way. In July 1940, two and a half thousand evacuees from Malta were shipped to the Portuguese island of Madeira. Also, hundreds of thousands of refugees are going to escape through Portugal, particularly in 1939 to '40, the routes through Spain to Portugal. The government becomes frightened, the Portuguese government become frightened of political and economic consequences. And also, the growth of antisemitism, the fear of foreigners. You know, this is one of the issues, and I’ve said this to you many times, we know when there is economic and social problems, what happens is we tend to fear the other. And to so many of these countries, the Jew was the other, particularly because of the image of the Jews as communist, the image of the Jews as capitalist.
And also, in these Catholic countries, it has to be said, and I’m sticking my neck out here but we will be talking more about it, the influence of the conservative wing of the Catholic church. So what happens is the government decide that they’re going to tighten their rules on visas. But what happens is that many of their consuls decide to disobey their government to issue visas. And according to the figures, it’s very difficult to know how many people Aristides de Sousa Mendes actually saved because those who see him almost as a saint will put the figures as high as 30,000. There are others who believe, because he went against the government of Salazar, they were very anxious that his reputation be solid. However, we do know that Lisbon did allow a large number of Jewish relief organisation to operate there, but it’s a mixed record with Portugal. Portugal traded with Nazi Germany and may well have received Nazi gold. I’m trying to invite a friend of mine in who is an expert on Swiss gold and what happened to the Nazi treasure. So please, I’m just tantalising you with that. But in the final years of the war, they did support some, they did support some help because they did issue a thousand protective, a thousand passports to Hungarian Jews. This was issue, remember, Hungary was not attacked until April 1944. It’s absolutely extraordinary when you think about it. And 50% of Hungarian Jews were murdered between May and July 1944. Well, the Hungarian Portuguese consul, I beg your pardon, the Portuguese consul in Budapest, a man called Carlos de Liz-Texeira Branquinho, issued, he was Portuguese charge d'affaires, he gave out a thousand visas.
So let’s look a little bit at Aristides. He was born in Portugal to very much an establishment family. He came from a wealthy family. He and his twin brother, they studied law at Coimbra University. He married his childhood sweetheart, by whom he had 14 children, born in the various countries in which he served. He entered the diplomatic service. He was in Zambia, he was in Brazil, he was in Spain, he was in America, he was in Britain. In 1921, he was the consul in San Francisco. He had a very mercurial personality. Also, he didn’t react well to orders. That’s another symptom of rescuers, by the way. Quite often, they’re not the kind of people who fit into structures. Anyway, in 1938, he is appointed the consul general in Bordeaux. The 11th of November 1939, the Portuguese government severely limits the number of visas. And as I said, why did they do that? It could’ve been fear of communism. It could also be fear of the adverse economics. Look, can you imagine a lot of those refugees fleeing into Portugal? They would’ve been incredibly well-educated. You know, when I’m looking at the English situation, it’s fascinating how many English doctors protested at the number of Jewish doctors coming from Germany to England thinking it was going to take away their livelihoods. So you have this situation, is it economic rivalry? Is it fear of communism? Is it fear of the other?
But whatever it was, it led the Portuguese government to restrict the number of visas, making it more difficult for Jews to leave. And as I said, Sousa Mendes disregarded the instructions and began issuing visas immediately. This is an act of total disobedience. He said, “Here was,” this is actually, he said, “I had to do it,” and this is from the Israeli historian Paldiel, he said, “Here was a unique act by a man who believed his religion imposed certain obligations.” He came from, as I said, a Catholic education. And what is also fascinating is how his detractors had tried to destroy his own reputation. He also gave instructions, this was with the backing of Lisbon, to give passports to the Luxembourg and Belgiumer families. On the 16th of June 1940, he issued 40 visas, including to the Rothschild family. And he did pay a compensation. They had to pay a compensation fee because he had to work on a Sunday. He had a nervous breakdown. He was also having an affair. He’s quite a complicated character. And he said, he wasn’t well, and he came back and he said, “From now on, I’m giving visas to everyone.” His son later said, “The conscience of God dictated what course of action our father should take.” In 2015, the president of the Sousa Mendes Foundation, she argued that he saved about 60,000 people. Others were saying, in fact, these terms have been, they’ve been completely exaggerated to attack the Salazar government. But finally, he was honoured by Yad Vashem.
But in 1990, in fact, he was the first diplomat to be honoured by Yad Vashem in 1966. But on the 9th of June 2020, the Portuguese granted official recognition to him. And in the Portuguese border town of Vilar Formoso, there’s a museum, it’s called the Frontier of Peace. So now I think, in a way, he’s won the battle. He’s been rehabilitated by the Portuguese government, but also he’s a hero of Yad Vashem. Can we go on? Now, let me say, obviously I’m not going to be able to look at all these characters. I just wanted to give you a kind of taste, particularly as we’re coming up to Holocaust Memorial Day on the 27th of January. I really felt that we’ve got to honour the righteous. Now, this is an extraordinary man called Hiram Bingham IV. And as, of course, you can guess, he is American. And he himself comes from a fascinating background. He was one of the seven sons of an American senator and a former governor of Connecticut, Hiram Bingham III. And his first wife, Alfreda, who was the heiress to the Tiffany Fortune through her maternal grandfather. So he comes from a wealthy, cultured, incredibly righteous kind of background. And his father was an adventurer. His father, Hiram Bingham III was the first American to explore the Inca ruins at Machu Picchu. So he comes from a fascinating family. He had a very wide education. He graduated from Yale, entered into the foreign service, he goes to Japan, he travels in India, he travels in Egypt, and then he comes back, goes to Harvard Law School, and goes into the diplomatic service.
So he’s very wide. I think that’s important, too. He comes from a fascinating family and he’s got a wide interest. He’s curious about the world. And also, I think a very contented man. That’s another issue that quite often comes in with the righteous, that they have a sense of their own self-worth. His first assignment, it was in China, and he was there to witness the beginning of the communist revolution. He then travelled again in Asia, which awakened his interest in Eastern philosophy, which he tried to, he was a very religious Christian, and he tried to reconcile Eastern philosophy with Christianity, an incredibly thoughtful man. He then went to Warsaw, served in Warsaw, and then was the third secretary in London. In 1939, he is sent to the American consulate in Marseille. He is in charge, he’s responsible for the visa department. So the fall of France, Vichy France. Now, as I’m sure you’re all aware, particularly as a response to the marvellous film, the Americans want to limit refugees. Also, they had relations with Vichy. It was always touch and go how America would deal in World War II. And it’s a fascinating issue as to, if the Japanese had not bombed Pearl Harbour and, five days later, Germany declared war on America, whether the Americans would come into the war. We know that Roosevelt was sympathetic to England.
We know that, but there was a huge argument in America for isolationism and, as you know, there was a huge immigrant German population in America, there were also many American patriots, in inverted commas, people like Lindbergh, great heroes, people like Henry Ford who were so against America entering the war. “Why should America be involved in a European war?” So when he is consul in Marseille, America has relations with Vichy France. And America had instructed all her consulates to be very cautious about visas. But there were American rescuers already in Marseille, and I’m going to talk about that in a minute. And they realised that Hiram Bingham was a different kind of character. And he’s going to work closely with all the American rescue organisations and some of the Jewish rescue organisations in Portugal to actually get people out. An American rescue worker, her name was Martha Sharp, she was later awarded righteous amongst the nations. She was on the Unitarian Service Committee. The Unitarians, they were another group that did everything they could to try and get people out. Because, remember, Americans could operate in Vichy. She said this of him, now she later organised transports of children and managed to get some of them to America. What he did, he gave them some passports, which were refugee travel documents.
They were first issued by the League of Nations as a result of the refugee crisis at the end of the First World War. So Hiram Bingham is issuing these passports. And this is what Martha Sharp said of him, “I am proud that our government is represented by a man of your quality. I believe that such humane handling of individuals is what we need, coupled with intelligence and good breeding.” And one of the people he helped was actually the wonderful writer, Feuchtwanger. He worked with Varian Fry on this. And he actually got his release from an internment camp and sheltered him in his own home until plans could be made to take him over the Pyrenees. In 1941, America pulled him out of France to Portugal and then to Argentina, where, after the war, he had a new kind of career: he helped track down Nazis in South America. In 1948, the State Department were not happy about this kind of work because, again, there is another terrible story. How many Nazis, actually after the war, went to work for the State Department? They worked for the British, they worked for the Russians. Once the war is over, who is our real enemy? Now, here you have a righteous man. And in Argentina, he tracks down Nazis. You know, he didn’t tell his story. And after his death, his wife and son actually found all these documents from Marseille in their attic and they actually donated them to the Washington museum. And years later, more documents were found of his struggle, of his struggles to save refugees. Since then, he’s had many, many honours.
But in his lifetime, none. He didn’t even talk about it to his family. There are quite a few rescuers like that. They didn’t believe they’d done anything extraordinary, and I think that’s what makes it even more important. In 2002, the Secretary of State, Colin Powell awarded him the Constructive Dissent Award. Now that’s interesting, isn’t it? The Constructive Dissent Award. Now, can we turn, of course, to the very famous, Varian Fry? Now, my colleague Patrick did a whole session on Varian Fry, but I thought that I couldn’t teach about France without at least mentioning him. He was a fascinating character. His date’s 1907 to 1967. He was born in New York. His family were very wealthy. His father was the manager of a Wall Street firm. Incredibly bright, incredibly precocious, a very solitary character. He read and he read. His major hobby as a young boy was bird-watching. And during World War I, when he’s more or less still a child, he conducted an appeal for the Red Cross. He went to Harvard in the top 10%. He was multilingual. He was totally rebellious. He hated following any kind of instructions. He was expelled in his senior year for a naughty prank. As an undergraduate, he founded, with a man called Lincoln Kirstein, the Hound and Hare, which becomes a very influential literary quarterly. He mixed with the kind of American intellectuals. Through Kirstein’s sister, Mina, he met his future wife, Eileen Avery Hughes, who was the editor of the Atlantic Monthly. She was seven years his senior and she’d been educated at Roedean and Oxford.
Now, he has a career in journalism and he’s a foreign correspondent for the American journal The Living Age, and he goes to Berlin in 1935, and that’s when he understands. He’s actually walking on Ku'damm when he witnesses some of the atrocities against Jews. Later, he said, he wrote this in 1945, “I couldn’t remain idly by as long as I had any chance of saving even a few victims.” And following his visit to Germany, he wrote an important article in The New York Times about the savage treatment of Jews “The peace that failed”. In 1939, we find him in London. When he returns to America to be part of the Emergency Rescue Committee where he obtained help from Eleanor Roosevelt, who was incredibly important in so many liberal causes, he raised money for European anti-Nazi movement. He’s very much criticised by a whole section of American opinion that wanted neutrality and those that were pro-Hitler and anti-Semitic. And he realised, May 1940, the fall of France, he had to get there. And he had made an extraordinary decision. How many of us, when faced with this, how would we play? He decided what he’s going to try and do, is save as many important cultural figures as he could. And he needed to raise money for visas, which the Vichy French would issue, and he came into France through Portugal and he led a group of volunteers. He purchased a villa called the Villa Bell-Air, where he put people up. Also, he managed to, according to the figures, he smuggled out 2,200 people to safety through Spain and Portugal so that they could take the route to America. Other routes he took were from Marseille to Martinique.
He worked with Miriam Davenport, who’d been a former student at the Sorbonne and a very wealthy American heiress, another woman, Mary Jayne Gold, she’d come to Paris for the good life and she met up with Fry and decided, 'cause you’ve got to remember so many Americans came to giddy Paris in the '30s, she decided to stay behind and do everything she could do to help, worked with a Jewish character called Albert Hirschman. Now, and as I’ve already said, he was very much helped by Hiram Bingham, and who was always in a battle with the State Department over antisemitism. And Hiram Bingham issued thousands of visa. Some were legal, some were illegal. And Fry very much had to rely on the Unitarian Service Committee in Lisbon to help refugees. The joint was in Lisbon, and they also supplied money. Also important to remember, there are lots of refugee organisations in Lisbon and in France trying to help people. Fry was forced out by September '41 because, not just pressure from Vichy, but also pressure from the State Department. And in 1942, the Emergency Rescue Committee joined forces with the American branch of the European-based International Relief Association, which still operates today.
So these initiatives established in World War II went on. This is a letter that Varian Fry wrote to his wife. “Among the people who come into my office, or with whom I’m in constant correspondence, are not only some of the greatest living authors, painters, sculptors of Europe, but also former cabinet ministers and even prime ministers of half a dozen countries. What a strange place Europe is when people like this are reduced to waiting in an anteroom of a young American of no importance whatsoever.” And when he’s back in America, this is what he wrote December 1942 in an issue of The New Republic, it’s entitled “The Massacre of the Jews of Europe”. Remember, the actual final solution, to use the vile euphemistic term of the Germans, begins with the invasion of Russia. And by the end of 1942, you’ve already had the allied declaration. So it’s not a secret. This is the point. The actual location of Auschwitz perhaps, but people knew what was happening. And this is what he wrote in the article: “There are some things so horrible that decent men and women find them impossible to believe, so monstrous that the civilised world recoils incredulous before them. The recent reports of the systematic extermination of the Jews in Nazi Europe are of this order. We can offer asylum now, without delay or red tape, to those fortunate enough to escape from the Aryan Paradise. There have been bureaucratic delays in visa procedures which have literally condemned to death many stalwart democrats. This is a challenge we cannot, and must not, ignore.” Now, he is now regarded as one of the great rescuers. In his personal life, he divorced.
Remember, he married a woman much older than himself. He did remarry. He remarried a woman 16 years younger than him. He had three children by her. They separated. He worked as a journalist and he taught in college, he taught film production. But he was both physically and mentally unwell. Many writers believed that he was actually homosexual, and at a time when it was considered in many circles taboo. And what is, I think, even greater tragedy. I’m going to tell you just some of the most important people he rescued. None of them kept in touch with him. And he actually died alone. And he was honoured by Yad Vashem in 1994. Now, who were some of the people he brought up? Well, Marc Chagall. Chagall, saved by, and this is his poem for the slaughtered artists. This is Chagall. “I see the fire, the smoke and the gas; rising to the blue cloud, turning it black. I see the torn-out hair, the pulled-out teeth. They overwhelm me with my rabid palette. I stand in the desert before heaps of boots, stained clothing, ash and dung, and mumbling my Kaddish. And as I stand, from my paintings, and in the painting David descends to me, harp in hand. He wants to help me weep and recite chapters of the Psalms.” And Bernard Lewis said, “Chagall, inadvertently, became the public witness of a now vanished civilization.” So he gets Chagall out, he gets Jacob, and I’m only going to give you a few. But before I go on to some of those characters, what a dilemma. It reminds me of another dilemma that I was discussing recently with a very close friend.
A Hungarian Jew realised that he could get some of the best young pianists out of Germany and Austria to Palestine, to the orchestra. So he had to create piano competitions to choose who was good enough to go. And if you think of those who weren’t quite good enough, how on earth do we make those decisions when we are in hell? And as I said, it’s Fry who makes the decision that he is going to try and save the remnants of European culture. Never forget the words of a colleague, of Max Reinhardt. He was a non-Jew, and he wrote to Max Reinhardt when the books were burnt in Austria. And, of course, Max Reinhardt was one of the co-founders of the Salzburg Festival in 1921. In 1938, his non-Jewish friend writes to him in Hollywood and said, “Today, we burned European culture.” So Jacques Lipchitz, who was born Chaim Jacob Lipchitz, of course, very close to artists such as Picasso, and he is very important in the creation of cubist sculpture, he had fled to France and settles in New York. He’s interesting because, in later life, he returned to Judaism and became very influenced by the Lubavitcher Rebbe. And he went to live in Italy. He died in Capri, but is buried in Jerusalem. Heinrich Mann, a very important writer, he is facilitated by Franz Werfel, who I’ve already mentioned to you. Of course, Franz Werfel married, at the time, to Alma. He was a writer. He was one of the greatest writers in Germany. He also wrote plays. In 1926, Max Reinhardt staged his play “Juarez and Maximilian”, about the revolution in Mexico.
He wrote about the Armenian genocide, “The 40 Days of Musa Dagh”. He denounced the Nazis. He’s forced to leave Germany. And on May the 10th, of course, his books were burnt and he’s then forced to leave Vienna. He lived in a fishing village in Marseille. He was visited Brecht, he was visited by Thomas Mann. He is brought out, with Alma, by Varian Fry. Alma had a huge suitcase with her, in it was the original score of Bruckner. Bruckner, by the way, was one of Hitler’s most favourite composers, and that was the score that Hitler wanted. And of course, Alma Mahler, she finishes up in New York, she’s a great hostess. And I’m sure you all know the Tom Lehrer line that when he saw her obituary in the New York papers, he decided to write about her. He said she must’ve been fascinating, because she either married or slept with most of the creative men in Central Europe. Of course, Mahler, Gropius, and then Werfel. But she had a huge affair with Oskar Kokoschka, who grew to hate her so much that he took a mummy off her to any dinner party he went to. She was quite a character, evidently. Not a very pleasant one. Another person that Fry got out was Andre Breton, who, of course, the important surrealist. Fascinating character. He had been to Mexico. He was close to Trotsky, to Diego Rivera, Frida Kahlo. He wrote a manifesto for an independent revolutionary. He was hated by the Nazis on many different scores. He got him out, he got out Max Ophuls, the great director who was born Oppenheimer. Max Ophuls actually went on to, he was a theatre director.
He started out as a theatre director in Germany. And then into Vienna, he becomes the director of the Burgtheater, very close to Max Reinhardt. He produces over 200 plays. And he then works with Anatole Litvak at UFA in Berlin. When we turn to Germany in a few weeks, we’re going to give some individual lectures on UFA because it was one of the great film studios of the world. He flees to France when the Nazis come to power. He becomes a French citizen in '38. It was Bingham and working with Fry that managed to get him out. And of course, in Hollywood, he creates an extraordinary film, “Letter from an Unknown Woman”. And because we don’t have to be dark all the time, for Valentine’s Day, I’m going to give a presentation on the great romantic movies and I’m going to include his “Letters from an Unknown Woman” because it was written by Stefan Zweig, well, a novella, and directed by Ophuls. And Ophuls also went on to create “La Ronde”, based on Schnitzler. Again, another great man who would’ve been murdered if it wasn’t for Bingham and Fry. Victor Serge, the great anarchist leader, associate of Trotsky and Radek and Joffe. And this is how Fry described them all in Marseille. “Here is a beggar’s alley gathering the remnants of revolutions, democracies and crushed intellectuals. In our ranks are enough doctors, psychologists, engineers, educationalists, poets, painters, writers, musicians, economists and public men to vitalize a whole city.”
These are the characters. So again, who do you save? Max Ernst, the important painter, he’s brought out. He was a sculpture. He was a prime mover in both Dada and Surrealism. And he was actually interred as an undesirable, and Varian Fry got him out. He was helped, by the way, this will interest Wendy, helped by Peggy Guggenheim. So Meyerhoff, I can go on and on and on, but I won’t. Hannah Arendt was another one. But I think that is enough, Heinrich Mann, just to give you a flavour. I suppose the one I have to mention, though, is Walter Benjamin, who was one, a very fragile child, a brilliant, brilliant individual. He was a philosopher. He very much was interested in Jewish identity. He created a kind of cultural Zionism. He was the hero of my mentor, Robert Wistrich. Jewishness, to him, let me throw a phrase at you, which we could spend hours debating. His kind of cultural Zionism, though, it meant commitment to the furtherance of European culture. What does it mean to be a Jew? There are so many debates in all of this. I think it’s fascinating because, in Israel, if you think now we have the Jewish state, and those years between '45 and '48 are so important. We have a Jewish state. There are some, and I would include Netanyahu’s father in this. Of course, he was a professor at Columbia who believed that the state itself was what mattered because it will save the Jews. There were all those other Zionists who said it had to be the morally righteous state.
So what kind of state should it be? And I want to quote my friend, Anita Lasker-Wallfisch, who I will be interviewing again on Holocaust Memorial Day, because she said, “Isn’t it fascinating that the world now expects the greatest victims to be the moral arbiters of the world?” Anyway, I’m throwing these ideas at you for you to consider because they’re going to lead, I hope, to a very, very important debate. And of course, tragically, Walter Benjamin, he was stopped at the border and he was terrified that he would not be allowed in, so he committed suicide. And Arthur Koestler, who was very close to him, also attempted suicide, but he survived. And as a result of what happened to Benjamin, the others in the party were actually allowed into Spain. So Varian Fry, as I said, I obviously could spend a lot more time on him, but because Patrick has done a whole session, which you can get, of course, from lockdown, but I couldn’t really talk about these characters without mentioning him. Can we go on please, Lauren? Now, this is another interesting man, Luis Martins de Souza Dantas, and he comes from an very aristocratic Brazilian family. Now, Brazil is fascinating because between 1918 and 1933, Brazil admitted 96,000 Jewish immigrants. Please don’t forget that land had been brought. All sorts of Jewish immigrants paid for by Baron de Hirsch, went to Argentina, went to Brazil, but only admitted 12,000 between 1933 and 1941 because of stringent government policies.
Why was this policy? Well, war, fear of foreigners. Ironically, there was a real debate in Brazil because many of the modernizers wanted these innovative German and Austrian Jews, the stereotypes, think stereotype of Jew. They believed they could assist them in building up the country. Urban nativists were terrified that the Jews would come in and take away all their businesses. Brazilian intellectuals, some of them had been influenced by Nazi race theory, all the insecurities that I’ve already mentioned. And Brazil was neutral at the beginning of World War II and had solid relations with both America and with Germany. The historians call it the pendulum policy. Now, the situation changes when the Germans began the maritime blockade in the Atlantic. And the maritime blockade is, of course, against any supplies reaching first France after, before the fall of France and then England, and some Brazilian ships were attacked. That led to demonstrations around the country. And President Vargas had a meeting with Roosevelt and said he would cooperate with the Americans, but what would Brazil need in return finance, equipment, and training. Now, Pearl Harbour. There’s then more attacks on Brazilian ships. And on the 22nd of January 1942, Brazil joined the war on the side of the Allies. But don’t forget, when he is stationed, this is before America’s in the war.
And he also came from a very aristocratic family. He entered the foreign service, he was ambassador to France, he’d also been Brazil’s ambassador at the League of Nations. Brazil was very much the aristocratic landowners and a large peasantry with an emerging middle class. He had been ordered to stop issuing visas. But he was motivated by what he said was a decent feeling of mercy, and so he begins to issue visas to allow people to travel to Brazil. And he, in a letter to Brazil’s foreign minister in late '42, he stated, he said, “Look, the camps are being established by the Nazis and they are out of Dante’s Inferno. Jews are being either enslaved or exterminated.” He was recalled and faced disciplinary action for breaking the immigration laws. But because he had technically retired, he was becoming quite elderly, there was no punishment. Ironically, after the war, he married a Jewish woman called Elise Meyer Stern, who he married very well because she was the daughter of the fifth chairman of Federal Reserve and first president of the World Bank, and the family published the Washington Post. The couple retired to Paris, where he died in 1954. So again, he broke orders. He came from an aristocratic background. He was a religious man. In 2003, remember it’s late, it’s that exhibition of the year 2000 that got many things going, he was awarded righteous amongst the nations. It’s estimated that he saved 800 people, 425 confirmed as Jewish.
He also saved other persecuted peoples, communists, homosexuals because you know what the Nazi policy was towards homosexuals. So he was very active in that. Can we move on to the next man? Eduardo Propper de Callejon of Spain. I hope I pronounced that correctly. Now, interesting, Spain, neutral Spain. Within two years of Hitler’s rise to power, some 3,000 Jews had entered Spain. When the civil war erupted in July '36, there are about 6,000 Jews there. Quite a few Jews went to fight for the, went to fight on the side of the Republicans, including a couple of my great uncles. Jews and the left, we won’t go there now. But by 1939, the majority of Jews had left Spain. And after the civil war, all Jewish organisations in Spain had been shut down. After France surrendered, tens of thousands of refugees flee to the border as a stepping stone to get out of Europe. Despite the strict rules of entry, many did manage to get over the border. Unfortunately, and remember to get over the board, you had a visa to travel through. Many of them who had missed their boats or didn’t have a visa were detained in a place called Miranda de Ebro, a concentration camp, and they were to be transferred back to Vichy. Now, during the first half of the war, some 25,000 were given permission, but some were sent back.
Now, during the summer of 1942, when the Nazis began deporting Jews, remember this is the final solution from France, Belgium, Luxembourg, and Holland, some crossed illegally into Spain, some were caught. And again, the government threatened to send them to Germany. Now, this is where the Allies intervene and say that if the Spanish send these people back, it’s going to have a detrimental impact on the allied policy towards Spain. And in April 1943, the Spanish agreed to admit refugees provided they would be of no expense and that they would immediately leave the country. And this is where the joint came in and provided for them. Anyway, I’m just briefly going to talk about Eduardo because he’s fascinating. So he was the first secretary to the Spanish Embassy in Paris. And in July 1940, he issued from the Spanish consulate, from Bordeaux because he comes, of course, he comes south, in cooperation with the Portuguese consul, more than 30,000 transit visas for Jews to cross Spain to reach Portugal. And when it was discovered by the Spanish Foreign Ministry, he was transferred to a Spanish possession in Morocco. But he managed to issue 30,000 of these passports, which got people out.
Now who was he? His father, Maximilian was a Bohemian Jew and his mother was a Spanish Catholic. He’d been raised as a Catholic. He married a woman called Baroness Fould-Springer, who was a painter, she was a socialite, she came from a Franco-Austrian-Jewish banking family who were descended from the Ephrussis and the Foulds. Her sister was Liliane de Rothschild. On her father’s side, Barron Gustav von Springer. So she really came from, inverted commas, “Jewish aristocracy”. He is the father-in-law of Raymond Bonham Carter, the son of Sir Maurice Bonham-Carter, and his wife Violet Asquith, the Asquith family. So he’s also related to very important English political figures. And in fact, he is the maternal grandfather of the British actress, Helena Bonham-Carter. A real hero, 30,000 people to his credit. No public recognition whatsoever during his lifetime. But in 2007, righteous amongst the nation. So I think we will stop there, and I will continue with this next week because next week I want to talk about the villages that saved Jews. So have we time for questions? Let’s have a look.
Q&A and Comments:
Oh, this is incredible. Helen Cohen: “My mother sent me at age 14 to Le Chambon, to college, to learn French and piano, knowing the history.” Helen, that’s incredible. Wow, and I will be talking about that next week.
“Adolfo Kaminsky, Franco Jewish resistance worker, died ninth of January; forged identity cards and documents, enabling many Jews to be saved.” Ah, you know, this is incredible. I’m getting so many stories that add to our knowledge. Thank you.
Q: “My mother arrived in northern France in 1940 with the wave of Jewish refugees out of Belgium. She fled south to Vichy France, and from there to the Italian occupied area of France in the southeast. When the Italians withdrew in September '43, she tried crossing over into Italy with the Italians but had to cross back several days later when the Nazis took over Italy as well. Trapped in the Alps between France and Italy, she was fortunate to somehow receive assistance from some French partisans. Arrangements were made for her to go underground. She received papers to prove her identity as a French Catholic girl and was directed to a modest kitchen job in Grenoble, where she was able to hide and survive until the wars end. Were the partisans part of the French resistance? My mother owes her life to them, but I really don’t know who these people might have been.”
A: Elaine, there were lots of separate partisan units, and in the end they all did come together in the Mache. Many of them were communists, by the way. But they were incredibly brave people. Of course they were.
Q: Monique: “When collaboration is discussed, I never heard about the writers Robert Brasillach, executed after the will; Drieu La Rochelle, committed suicide; and Louis-Ferdinand Celine, fled to Scandinavia. Have I missed something?”
A: No, you haven’t at all. And we are leaving that to Patrick Bade to discuss, because this is very much his area. One of the reasons of having so many of my colleagues. What we try and do is we take a theme and we all come it at different angles.
Amelie is saying, “I live in Mexico. It’s been years and Gilberto has not been recognised as righteous. It’s incredible.” Amelie, write a letter immediately.
Q: “Hi, Trudy. What can you tell us about Albert Camus, did he help Jews? I’ve read a bit about how he quit work in France and moved to Algeria, where he taught Jewish children to help save Jewish children. He also broke with left wing intellectuals, who were silent on the abuses of left wing regime.”
A: Yes, Peter, it’s a big story and I think it’s going to be covered either by David or by Patrick. I’ll find out for you.
Q: “40,000 refugees would’ve needed many ships. How did Bosques managed that?”
A: Peter, lots of ships were being provided money from the joint, all sorts of things. There were an incredible amount of good people in this horrible story.
This is from Stuart. “Interesting fact. There are about 65 to 70,000 Jews in Mexico today. And at a hotel in Mexico City, it has a full black kosher kitchen. I saw a Hasidic wedding reception in Mexico when I visited several years ago.” You see, we go on. We are the eternal ones.
“De Sousa is said to have rescued Magda Gabor, the sister of Zsa Zsa.” Wow, I didn’t know that. That’s an interesting story, Celine. The Gabor sisters were quite something, weren’t they? I can’t remember which one of them said, “I want a husband. The question is whose?”
This is from Sally saying that she’s glad we’re not, we’re speaking about others apart from Varian Fry. And of course, one could speak about many others. We’ve had to be selective.
This is from Sefton. “My great-aunt had a cottage in Goussainville, near Paris, where the family survived the war because the inhabitants refused to give they’re Jews. I think because it was a communist community.” Thank you, David. Yes, people sometimes acted out of ideology. When we look at Le Chambon, they acted out of, they were Huguenots, religious belief because they just thought it was wrong, and they had a history of persecution. Before I talk about Le Chambon, don’t forget that Pierre Sauvage, whose family survived because of them, he made a wonderful film called “Weapons of the Spirit”, which you can certainly get either on YouTube, and also you can see interviews with him.
Q: “Why would the fear of communism cause them to limp the number of visas for Jews?”
A” Because, believe it or not, although it’s completely irrational, it was the belief that communism was a Jewish disease. Tim, you can’t look for logic, unfortunately, in any of this.
Q: Is Mendes a Jewish name?
A: It can be, but I think it also isn’t. And de Sousa certainly wasn’t.
Yes, Peter’s saying there’s a book about his story. Yes, it’s worth looking these characters up. There have been books written about some of them.
This is Robert. “Also, I was married to a granddaughter of a Panamanian woman whose maiden name was Mendes, and we believed to be with Jewish roots.” You’ve got to remember a lot of Spanish and Portuguese people have Jewish roots. Think the conversos. A colleague of mine who sat with me on the task force, he was invited to a Portuguese university, where the rector told him that at least 60% of the Portuguese think they have a trace of Jewish blood. I don’t know. I don’t know.
This is from Susan. “Suggest watching a podcast Rachel Maddow’s "Ultra”, about members of American Congress, who were influenced by Hitler’s government, when opposed America joining the war.“ Thank you for that, Susan.
Francine is echoing that, "The film 'Atlantic Crossing’ does a great job of portraying how FDR and other American officials responded to calls for American isolationism.” So much is coming out now.
Abigail: “I just listened to a talk on the infiltration of Nazis in the US, all over the us, but especially in LA and how they infiltrated even the police and the sheriff’s office, how Jews fought clandestinely against this situation. The sad part is that these Nazis were never acknowledged and actually formed the background of the current right-wing groups in America, the Proud Boys. We will share the video with you once it’s posted.” Thank you, Abigail. Yes, there are so many avenues that one can go down, aren’t there?
“As regards Varian Fry, who qualifies as an important cultural figure, are regular Jews not worthy of being saved? There are many ways to look at the dilemma. The movie ‘Sophie’s Choice’ illustrates that.” I loathe “Sophie’s Choice” as a movie, though. I really, really, really do. Look, I’m not passing any judgement . I wasn’t there. I cannot. He made the decision to save cultural figures. Look, every life is equal before the Almighty. Look at that terrible decision that Hungarian Jew had to make, who was good enough to go. As survivor friends of mine have said to me many times, “Don’t pass judgement unless you’ve been to hell.” You can pass judgement over the perpetrators, but it’s so complex. We weren’t there. What would you do? You’ve got hundreds of people banging on your doors for salvation. And you know what really, really makes me angry? We still haven’t learned much about any of this, have we? The world has not learned.
Yes, this is from Susan. Hi, Susan. “Many Quakers were also instrumental in saving Jews. American Quaker Emma Cadbury worked at the Quaker office in Vienna, which was inundated with the request. She was supported by an Englishman, John Sturge Stephens, member of a prominent Quaker family in Falmouth, Cornwall, helped many Jews to escape, even housing them, including artist Albert Reuss and his wife Rosa.” Thank you for that intervention. Yes, the Quakers were incredible, so were the Unitarians. As I said, there were a lot of righteous people.
Myra: “Book about the American Nazis by Bradley Hart, ‘Hitler’s American Friends’.”
Ruth: “May I suggest two other books about this rescue effort? ‘Escape from Vichy’ by Eric Jennings and ‘Villa Air-Bel’ by Rosemary Sullivan.”
Hindi: “I first learned about Fry by chance 10 years ago when I found a movie which starred the late William Hurt. Very riveting and emotional, worth watching.” Yes, I remember that. And if I remember one of the Redgrave girls, not Vanessa, played Alma.
This is Rose, says, “The issue with Varian Fry was the select elite he saved. Can we please have the poem of Chagall set perhaps on lockdown email? I think he also saved Thomas Mann.” Yes, he did. Yes, he did, Rose.
Abigail: “Julie Orringer wrote the novel ‘The Flight Portfolio’, a historical novel well-researched about Varian Fry.” This is what’s so wonderful about lockdown. You really, really enhance through your own knowledge.
“It sounds like European culture was worth saving, but not Jewish religion.” Please don’t forget, though, Sugihara, the Japanese consul; he saved a whole yeshiva. Look, how do people make choices? How do people make choices?
Myrna: “I recommend a movie about Alma, ‘Bride of the Wind’.” I’d like to see that. Thank you, Myrna.
Susan Vike is saying, “There’s a great YouTube series on Varian Fry and Villa Bel-Air, Air-Bel.”
Rose Rahimi: “For me, Hannah Arendt causes me problems. I almost feel she was a self-hating Jew.” Yes, I also have problems with Hannah. I totally agree with you. Yes, she was a brilliant, brilliant writer and philosopher. Some of her books are spellbinding, but yes. You know, her first work was on Rahel Varnhagen, you know, the salon, who came from a wealthy Berlin family, hosted a salon, and, of course, was terribly uncomfortable about her Jewishness and converted. Yeah, yes. And of course, her attitude at the Eichmann trial. We could spend a lot of time on Hannah Arendt, and I believe I will ask Dennis Davis to do that because he’s fascinated by her.
“There are those who wish to see photos to accompany talks, while those who wish to see speaker’s faces.” I believe lockdown is trying to strike a balance. Wow.
This is Susan again. Hi, Susan. “During my own research, I came across a book called ‘Le refuge et le piege: les Juifs dans les Alpes’, ‘The Refuge in The Trap: Jews in the Alps’. One chapter by Jean Kleinman describes the arrival of the Gestapo in the east, led by the notorious Alois Brunner, commander of Drancy Camp, an assistant to Eichmann.” Yes, he was one of the most evil of them all, Susan.
Q: “Can I recommend a biography of Fry?”
A: We’ve had some up on here.
Yes, Abigail says, “Sousa Mendes was one of the saviours who suffered terribly because of his work,” yeah.
Q: Harriet: “Were the border guards able to determine the difference between legal and illegal visas? How could they know what official visa was supposed to look like?”
A: That is a very, very good question, Harriet, and I have a hunch that forged visas did fool a lot of people.
Q: “What was the name of the Hungarian pianist?”
A: I do not know. The story was told to me by Anita because her husband, who came from Breslau was actually, he was not her husband then, she’d known him at school in Breslau, that’s how he came to Palestine. I don’t know the name of the person. I will ask her to see if she remembers. I’d never heard that story before.
Mary is saying she’s learning about people and their phenomenal lives. I think this is the whole point, isn’t it? That’s why I’ve decided to come, and Wendy and I made a real decision to talk about biography because it humanises it all, doesn’t it? It’s so important to know these things.
Yes, Patrick said there was no resistance in France until Hitler invaded Russia, yes. And Stalin told the communists to start resisting. Yes, Patrick’s right. I’m talking about the, and I discussed that a couple of weeks ago. What I’m talking about, these are foreign diplomats working in France. Yeah, the real resistance begins with the communists. And remember, Stalin doesn’t act while he’s allied to Hitler.
Q: “Were there other rescuers of Jewish descent?”
A: Yes, I don’t know about in France, but certainly there was an English rescuer, they call him the British Schindler, an amazing man, and he was of Jewish descent.
Monty: “The movie you mentioned is very sad. Brace yourself for it,” yes.
This is from BC. “I’m so proud. My uncle, who was in the OSS, helped resistance, later headed the joint in Geneva, France, Romania. Most Americans don’t know about the joint.” I think we’re going to have to talk about the joint. It was such an amazing organisation. And tragically, that was one of the reasons that the Swedish rescuer Wallenberg, you know, he was accused of working for the joint when he was taken into Russia.
Q: “Is there any idea how many Jews were saved during the Holocaust? Frightening to think that so many more than six million would’ve perished.”
A: Don’t forget, Brenda, the Nazi total at France was 11 million. It’s very difficult to have completely accurate figures. Like, for example, with Sousa Mendes, there’s a big argument about it. I couldn’t estimate. I don’t know if Yad Vashem has. Actually, I will speak to the librarian there.
“Necdet Kent, the Turkish ambassador to Marseille, saved many Jews by issuing them with visas. Wonderful story. When many Jews were loaded onto a cattle car and he boarded with them and the next stop they demand he get off, but he refused unless the Jews were allowed to go. His son became the CEO of Coca-Cola.” I love that story. That is a lovely story. Thank you. Again, we’re accruing information.
Yes, Iva, “The US and the Holocaust” did, has just come on to British television on BBC Four, the wonderful Ken Burns document. Thank documentary. He’s a wonderful filmmaker.
Rita is telling us, “An excellent resource, Yad Vashem.” Yeah, always. Shirley: “Hi, Trudy. I spent New Year’s Eve with Danny Gossels, the son of one of the children of Chabannes. Lisa Gossels, his sister, made an Emmy-winning documentary about this story. And their father, who came to America, went to Harvard and was an amazing man. Belated Happy New Year.”
Shirley, can you perhaps put us in touch with this family? Maybe we could have the documentary.
“There are about 29,000,” this is Ross Springer. Hi, Ross. “There are about 29,000 righteous among the nations, and an additional 300 a year.” Yes, you’ve got to remember a lot of the righteous, it wasn’t just that they weren’t recognised; it’s a lot of them didn’t see that they’d done anything special. That’s the point also.
Again, the book by Rosemary Sullivan called “Villa Bel-Air”. Barbara wishes, yes.
Jane Green: “Lillian Hellman’s wonderful play, ‘Watch on the Rhine’ was written to alert Americans to the danger of Nazi Germany, encouraged them to join the Allies.” Yes, of course there were the American intellectuals, the liberals, who believed America should join the war.
Yes, it was Huberman. Oh, you clever woman. Susan, I’m sure it was Huberman. Well, no, wait a minute. No, I’m not. I don’t know if he was the one. Huberman was involved with the Palestine orchestra. I don’t think it was him who went in to get the children. I’m going to have to find out, ‘cause I didn’t know this story until it was told me.
And this is from Roberta, saying she agrees with us doing biography. There is time for exploring this. And as Wendy keeps on saying to me, “We have all the time in the world.”
“Yad Vashem has the numbers.” Thank you, Joan. I think they do. How are you, Joan? See you soon.
Q: “I recently visited Marseille and walked near the deportation memorial. The tour guide didn’t point it out, so I asked about it. She then explained about it. Are there similar points of interest in Marseille?”
A: I am not sure, but I can certainly know someone who will know the answer.
“It was Huberman who interviewed the musicians.” Thank you, Carol. I’m going to have to look that story up. The play by Hellman is currently on in London. Yes, I went to see it. It’s a very good production.
Yes, there’s a movie “Orchestra of the Exiles” on Prime, yes. Yes, don’t forget the Turkish consul Ulkumen, who saved Jews from deportation on the island of Rhodes, yes. Huberman was the man who put the orchestra together. I better do a research on that.
“'Watch on the Rhine’ is the play at the Donmar theatre.” Yes, I went to see it.
Thank you all very much. I think that answers all your questions. I wish you a very, very good evening, and I wish you all a good night. And I will see you next week. Lots of love to everyone.