Varian Fry (1907 – 1967)
American Journalist,
Born in New York 10/15/1907, in suburban Ridgewood, New Jersey. Finished high school at Riverdale Country School. Finished high school at Riverdale Country School.
June 1940, after the Germany's invasion and partition of France Varian (young editor from New York City) went to Marseilles, France, as the representative of a "newly propounded" community. When there Varian offered aid and advice to the anti-Fastest people who were later found themselves threatened by Nazi Germany in article 1940, emerged from college in the 1930s.However few months prior to his death, France presented him with the Legion of Honor for his heroic work in Marseille from 1940 to1941.
Despite being under constant surveillance
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Beginning in 1940, in Marseille, despite the watchful eye of the collaborationist Vichy, but he and a small group of volunteers hid people until they could get out.
Varian Fry, c.1940,
Others he helped escape on ships leaving Marseille for the French colony of Martinique, from which they too could go to the United State.
Letter to his wife Eileen, February 1941,
What a strange place Europe is when men like this are reduced to waiting patiently in the anteroom of a young American of no importance
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He has taught us that we must not forget - that there is no greater sin than that of silence and indifference. He wrote:
"Memory is a passion no less powerful or pervasive than love. What does it mean to remember? It is to live in more than one world, to prevent the past from fading and to call up the future to illuminate it.
In those times there was darkness everywhere. In heaven and on earth, all the gates of compassion seemed to have been closed. Of these, assistance was provided to approximately 4,000 people, over 1,000 of whom were smuggled from France in various ways.
When asked as to his motives, Varian Fry responded that when he had visited Berlin in 1935, he saw SA men assaulting Jews in the city's streets, and he felt he could no longer remain indifferent. When he returned to US, he decided to act:
''I remembered what I had seen in Germany. I knew what would happen to the refugees if the Gestapo got hold of them
. It was my duty to help them. Friends warned me of the danger. They said I was a fool to go. I could have been walking into the
He was born on February 6, 1895 to his parents Katherine Schamberger and George Herman Ruth Sr. in Baltimore, Maryland.
Occurring in 1942, the Germans believe they have built an ‘escape proof’ camp in which they plan to house their most troublemaking prisoners. What they do not realize, is that they have put all of their greatest masterminds in one place and allowed them to speak to one another. If unable to escape, the prisoners believe it is their job to make the German officials pay as much attention to their confinement as possible and away from other military expenditures. Unlike previous escape plans from the past, Royal Air Force Squadron Leader, Bartlet, plans a massive escape of 250 men through a series of tunnels.
Born August 1923 in Guide Rock, Nebraska. Enlisted in the U.S. Army Air Corps upon graduating from High School in June 1942.
Andrew Foster was a teacher, missionary, and pioneer, He dedicated his life to helping Deaf people learn ASL, and working to assure that Deaf people in Africa had access to education. He was passionate about helping the less fortunate, and felt compelled to go to Africa to do mission work. He stated in some of his writings that he was, “moved by this vast educational and spiritual void among my people.”
But of August 4, 1944, the Gestapo penetrated into the Frnak's hiding place. The 8 Jews, together were taken to Gestapo headquaters in Amsterdam. The Franks, Van Daans, and Mr. Dussel were sent to Westbork.
The train rides to Auschwitz were an introduction to the treatment that the deportees were to receive at the ca...
The first issue that needs to be addressed however is what exactly is memory? “ Without memory we would be servants of the moment, with nothing but our innate reflexes to help us deal with the world. There would be no language, no art, no science, no culture. Civilization itself is the distillation of human memory” (Blakemore 1988). The simple interpretation of Blakemore’s theory on what memory is that a person’s memory is at least one of the most important things in their life and without it civilization itself could not exist.
...urope and the United States. He later returned home, seemingly tired of the Parisian atmosphere.
...s to challenge our assumptions of how things are, including ourselves, its purpose is to find a way to make us question our own mind. It acts as a beacon that prevents our minds from straying too far into a world where reality and rationality does not exist.
A survivor of the Holocaust, named Mr. Greenbaum, tells his experience to visitors of the Holocaust Museum. “Germans herded his family and other local Jews in 1940 to the Starachowice ghetto in his hometown of Poland when he was only 12. Next he was transported to a slave labor camp where he and his sister were moved while the rest of the family was sent to die at Treblinka. By the age of 17 he had been enslaved in five camps in five years, and was on his way to a sixth, when American soldiers freed him in 1945”. Researchers have recorded about 42,500 Nazi ghettos and camps throughout Europe. “We knew before how horrible life in the campus and ghettos was” said Hartmut Bergoff, director of the German Historical Institute, “but the numbers are unbelievable.
...hiding place. Some had to do very terrible and heartbreaking things in order to survive. Every day was a struggle for those who fought but many prevailed and did not give up. They looked evil straight in the eye and said I will not give up, I will survive.
One incident that shaped his resolve took place in 1935, when Fry witnessed first-hand Nazi abuse of Jews. After writing a scathing review of Hitler’s regime for the New York Times, Varian Fry helped raise money to support European anti-Nazi movements. Later called “the American Schindler,” Fry’s biggest contribution came when the man smuggled several thousand intellectuals out of occupied France. An American journalist and Harvard graduate, Fry became the emissary to Vichy France in 1940. Tasked with choosing 200 lucky artists, poets, writers, and philosophers allowed entry into the United States, Fry instead saved more than 2,000. Despite having no clandestine background, or any experience with forgery or the black market, Varian Fry smuggled thousands of Jews and refugees across the French border and into neutral or allied countries. Along with several accomplices, Fry defied “the Final Solution” and turned his three week visit into a thirteen month stay. In fact, the man only left France when the US Department of State arranged for his expulsion. Describing his departure, Fry wrote “I thought of the faces of the thousand refugees I had sent out of France, and the faces of a thousand more I had had to leave behind”. During his stay in France, Fry was arrested and questioned by French police several times, but the man refused to leave- even when his passport expired. Later, co-conspirator Miriam Davenport would describe Fry as “an
which he served as a member of the French army. After the war was finished, he
Memory is the tool we use to learn and think. We all use memory in our everyday lives. Memory is the mental faculty of retaining and recalling past experiences. We all reassure ourselves that our memories are accurate and precise. Many people believe that they would be able to remember anything from the event and the different features of the situation. Yet, people don’t realize the fact that the more you think about a situation the more likely the story will change. Our memories are not a camcorder or a camera. Our memory tends to be very selective and reconstructive.