There is a brotherhood in this world. It is small and exclusive, one whose membership is open to a small but distinguished cadre of people who – when faced with one of the most evil men in world history – stood up and not only refused to assist that monster in his actions but stood up to him and his thugs as best they could. For some, those actions were small and seemingly insignificant. For others, they were grand and sweeping. Yet, all of them have one thing in common. All of them put their lives on the line – or gave them up entirely – to save the Jews from the depredations of Adolph Hitler.
These men are the Righteous Among the Nations, and the United States is honored to have five of our citizens counted among their number.
The story of our own contribution to this brotherhood must begin with Varian Fry of New York. One of the smartest students to attend Harvard, he was multilingual before he passed the entrance exam in the upper 90th percentile. A skill which served him in good stead after he became a Foreign Correspondent for The Living Age in Europe. It was here that Fry would have his first encounter with the rabid anti-Semitism of the Nazis and come to despise them.
In 1935, Fry was in Berlin on business when he witnessed the Nazi’s open and blatant abuse of Jews on the streets of Berlin by the Nazis. Having seen such brutality and inhumanity in person, Fry became an ardent Anti-Nazi and took that position in his columns from that day on. In the lead up to the war, he made a point of warning of the coming abuse of the Nazis at the hands of Hitler and his Nazis and started raising money to smuggle people out of Germany.
In August of 1940, Varian Fry arrived in Marseille. With $3000 in his pocket and a list of individuals under threat of imminent arrest by the Gestapo – provided to him by the Emergency Rescue Committee – Varian Fry was able to put together a network of dissidents who would help him in his efforts. With the Vichy government keeping him under constant surveillance, he began smuggling over two thousand people out of France, through Fascist Spain, and into neutral Portugal. Still more were smuggled from mainland France to Martinique.
For over a full year, Fry ran his network out of his small apartment. He was forcibly ejected from France in September of 1941 after both the Vichy government and the rather anti-Semitic United States State Department both disapproved of the actions of Fry and the Committee. Faced with the revocation of what little support from the State Department he’d managed to scare up, Fry left France and placed the Committee under the leadership of Marian and Waitstill Sharp.
Back in the US, Fry would continue to write against the Nazis and warn the country of what Hitler was actually doing to the Jews in Germany.
Included in Fry’s network were
-Mary Jayne Gold, an heiress and socialite who moved to Paris in 1930
-Miriam Davenport, an American art student at the Sorbonne
-Vice-Consul Hiram Bingham IV, who crafted thousands of illegal visas to help the Jews escape
-Robert Dexter, agent of the Unitarian Service Committee in Lisbon
—
Martha and Waitstill were recruited to go to Europe and help establish a network in Prague by Dr. Robert Dexter of the Unitarian Service Committee to go to Czechoslovakia to work with the Unitarians already present in helping those under threat of Nazi oppression to escape. Even with the Nazis marching on Prague in March of 1939, the two remained in Czechoslovakia in order to remain there and continue their work in spite of the very real threat to their persons. A threat clearly shown to them with the shuttering of their offices that summer. They continued their operations until the Gestapo ordered them to do so under threat of arrest.
The Sharps ceased their operations in Czechoslovakia in order to travel to France and take up the work Fry had begun. In addition to their work helping French Jews escape the holocaust, the Sharps worked with the World YMCA to smuggle Czech soldiers stranded in France out of continental Europe and to the waiting 1st Czechoslovak Armoured Brigade in London.
When their tour of service in Europe ended in 1941, the two returned to the United States and worked with Hadassah, a Jewish women’s organization, to escort women and children to the reborn Jewish Homeland in the British Mandate of Palestine. After the War, Martha worked for the National Security Resources Board in order to help rally supplies and manpower in case of a Soviet attack on Western Europe, while Waitstill would remain in his position as a minister at their Unitarian Church in Wellesley, Massachusetts.
—
Lois Gunden of the Mennonite Central Committee in Southern France had no connection to either Fray or the Sharps. Born and raised in Goshen, Indiana, she had volunteered for a position teaching English at a Children’s Home in France. This children’s home – Secours Mennonite aux Enfants in Lyon – would become a haven for Jewish children and Spanish refugees. Time and again, Vichy police officers arrived at her door to demand the Jewish children under her care be turned over, only for her to run out the clock until they gave up. This continued until the Nazis occupied Vichy France in November of 1942.
With her Children’s Home now inevitably going to be closed, Lois smuggled the Jews under her care out of the country. She was eventually arrested in January of 1943 and was exchanged for a German national in 1944
—
Master Sergeant Roddie Edmonds of the 422nd Infantry Regiment of the United States Army was the senior NCO at Stalag IXA POW Camp after he was taken prisoner at the Battle of the Bulge. Unlike the Luftwaffe and the Kriegsmarine – both of which scrupulously abided by the Geneva Conventions in order to protect against legal and justified reprisals by the Allies – the Wehrmacht had no such orders. To the contrary, the Wehrmacht had an official policy of shipping Jewish POW’s off to the extermination camps in Germany and Poland.
In compliance with this policy, the Commandant of Stalag IXA – Major Siegmann – ordered all of the Jews in the Stalag to report to the front of their Barracks at dawn the following morning. Siegmann arrived to discover all of the American personnel standing out front and waiting for him. Angered at this show of defiance, Major Siegmann drew his sidearm and pointed it at Edmond’s face. Even at gunpoint, Edmonds refused to separate out the Jews and Gentiles. Frustrated over the Master Sergeant’s refusal to obey his patently illegal order and warned he would be executed for a war crime if he pulled the trigger, Siegmann holstered his pistol and stalked away.
—
Special thanks to Eric Mertz for writing this post.
Special thanks to Ty in TX for suggesting this topic.
