IV 
110TH CONGRESS 
1ST SESSION 
H. RES. 743 
Honoring Varian Fry on the 100th anniversary of his birth. 
IN THE HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES 
OCTOBER 15, 2007 
Mr. ROTHMAN submitted the following resolution; which was referred to the 
Committee on Oversight and Government Reform 
RESOLUTION 
Honoring Varian Fry on the 100th anniversary of his birth. 
Whereas Varian Mackey Fry, of Ridgewood, New Jersey, em-
bodied the spirit of American heroism and demonstrated 
personal bravery of the highest order during the Holo-
caust; 
Whereas Varian Fry was born in New York City on October 
15, 1907; 
Whereas Varian Fry graduated from Harvard University in 
1931 with a degree in classics, and an ability to read and 
write in 6 languages; 
Whereas Varian Fry and his wife, Eileen Hughes of Boston, 
settled in New York City where he worked as a magazine 
writer and editor of Scholastic magazine, then called The 
Living Age; 
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•HRES 743 IH 
Whereas in the summer of 1935, Varian Fry visited Berlin, 
Germany, on assignment for The Living Age and was 
horrified by the sight of Nazi storm troopers publicly 
beating and rounding up Jews for deportation; 
Whereas following his trip to Berlin in 1935, Varian Fry 
wrote an article for the New York Times which detailed 
Hitler’s brutal treatment of Jews in Europe; 
Whereas in 1937, Varian Fry took a job with the Foreign 
Policy Association’s Headline Books in New York and 
wrote several books on foreign affairs, including ‘‘The 
Peace That Failed’’; 
Whereas after continuing to follow the news accounts of Jew-
ish persecution in Europe, Varian Fry joined the Emer-
gency Refugee Committee, which was working to raise 
enough money to rescue a large number of intellectuals 
then trapped in Vichy France; 
Whereas on August 4, 1940, Varian Fry flew to Marseille, 
France, to embark upon a dangerous rescue mission on 
behalf of the Emergency Refugee Committee to save the 
lives of hundreds of intellectuals who were being system-
atically hunted down by the Nazis and the Vichy regime; 
Whereas Varian Fry began this perilous mission with only 
$3,000 in his pocket and a list of 200 of the brightest 
scholars in the fields of art, science, literature and medi-
cine who were trapped in Nazi-occupied France; 
Whereas while serving as a representative of the Emergency 
Refugee Committee in Vichy France between 1940 and 
1941, Varian Fry helped save the lives of 1,500 Jews and 
hundreds of other anti-Nazi refugees; 
Whereas Varian Fry established a legal French relief organi-
zation, the Centre Americain de Secou, as a cover for his 
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•HRES 743 IH 
heroic but sometimes unlawful actions on behalf of the 
refugees, including securing false visas, planning daring 
escape routes through the mountains of Southern France, 
illegally chartering ships to transport refugees out of the 
country, and exchanging funding for these operations on 
the black market; 
Whereas in order to save thousands of Jews and refugees 
threatened by the Nazis, Varian Fry risked his personal 
safety, forfeited his employment as a writer with the For-
eign Policy Association, and was ultimately expelled from 
France because his actions contravened the policies of the 
Vichy French government; 
Whereas Varian Fry’s efforts resulted in the rescue of some 
2,000 persons from Vichy France, including such distin-
guished artists and intellectuals as the painters Marc 
Chagall and Max Ernst; the political scientist Hannah 
Arendt; the writers Franz Werfel, Lion Feuchtwanger, 
and Heinrich Mann; the sculptor Jaques Lipchitz; and 
Nobel-Prize winning biochemist Otto Meyerhof; 
Whereas in 1967, for his heroic actions, Varian Fry received 
the Croix de Chevalier of the French Legion of Honor, 
one of France’s highest civilian honors; 
Whereas Varian Fry died on September 13, 1967; and 
Whereas in 1996, Varian Fry was named as ‘‘Righteous 
Among the Nations’’ by Yad Vashem, the Holocaust 
Heros and Martyrs Remembrance Authority in Jeru-
salem, making him the first American recipient of 
Israel’s highest honor for rescuers during the Holocaust: 
Now, therefore, be it 
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