Вариан Фрай: Американский герой Холокоста

American journalist (1907–1967)

Varian Mackey Fry (October 15, 1907 – September 13, 1967) was an American journalist. Fry ran a rescue network in Vichy France that helped 2,000 to 4,000 anti Nazi and Jewish refugees to escape Nazi Germany and the Holocaust. He was the first of five Americans to be recognized as "Righteous Among the Nations", an honorific given by the State of Israel to non Jews who risked their lives to save Jews during the Holocaust.

Fry was born in New York City. His parents were Lillian (Mackey) and Arthur Fry, a manager of the Wall Street firm Carlysle and Mellick. The family moved to Ridgewood, New Jersey, in 1910. He grew up in Ridgewood and enjoyed bird watching and reading. During World War I, at 9 years of age, Fry and friends conducted a fund raising bazaar for the American Red Cross that included a vaudeville show, an ice cream stand and fish pond. He was educated at Hotchkiss School from 1922 to 1924, when he left the school due to hazing rituals. He then attended the Riverdale Country School, graduating in 1926. An able and multilingual student, Fry scored in the top 10% of the Harvard University Through Kirstein's sister, Mina, he met his future wife, Eileen Avery Hughes, an editor of Atlantic Monthly, who was seven years his senior and had been educated at Roedean School and Oxford University. Although Fry was a closeted homosexual, according to his son James, they married on 2 June 1931. Following his visit to Berlin, in 1935 Fry wrote about the savage treatment of Jews by Hitler's regime in The New York Times. He wrote books about foreign affairs for Headline Books, owned by the Foreign Policy Association, including The Peace that Failed. It describes the troubled political climate following World War I, the break up of Czechoslovakia and the events leading up to World War II.

1967 The government of France recognized Fry's contribution to freedom making him a Chevalier of the Légion d'honneur. sparked an interest in Fry and his heroic efforts. 1991 The United States Holocaust Memorial Council awarded Fry the Eisenhower Liberation Medal. 1998 Fry was awarded the "Commemorative Citizenship of the State of Israel" on January 1, 1998. 2001 Fry's story was also told in dramatic form in the 2001 made for television film Varian's War, written and directed by Lionel Chetwynd and starring William Hurt and Julia Ormond. 2002 On the initiative of Samuel V. Brock, the U. S. Consul General in Marseille from 1999 to 2002, the square in front of the consulate was renamed Place Varian Fry. 2005 A street in the newly reconstructed East/West Berlin Wall area in the Berlin borough of Mitte at Potsdamer Platz was named Varian Fry Straße in recognition of his work. 2005 A street in his home town of Ridgewood, New Jersey, was renamed Varian Fry Way. 2007 On October 15, 2007, the U. S. House of Representatives honored Varian Fry on the 100th anniversary of his birth. 2019 Julie Orringer's historical novel The Flight Portfolio is a fictionalized account of Fry's life and experiences in Marseille, which merges real events and historical characters with invented elements. The invented elements include a clandestine love affair and intrigue surrounding the plot to rescue a fictional young physics genius. 2023 – Transatlantic, a streaming television series based on Orringer's The Flight Portfolio, is released on Netflix; Cory Michael Smith plays Varian Fry.