Today is Remembrance Day and while we honour all those who made the ultimate sacrifice, many of our boys and girls still risk their lives in the name of freedom. War comes in many forms and there are many tales of selflessness and courage, both on the battlefields and off. I highlighted one story back in January and I thought it fitting to re-issue it today...
Irving Penn
"If one lives in exile, the café becomes at once the family home, the
nation, church and parliament, a desert and a place of pilgrimage,
cradle of illusions and their cemetery... In exile, the café is the one
place where life goes on."
Hermann Kesten
I
have always loved this quote as it rings so true, especially in France.
Hermann Kesten was referring to the many German and Austrian writers,
artists, intellectuals, political opponents, etc. Who with the rise of
Hitler in the early thirties, left Germany and settled in France.
When
France declared war on Germany in September 1939 German exiles were
considered enemy aliens and interned in hastily constructed camps and
prisons whilst they waited to have their cases heard and hopefully be
released, this process took some time, if it happened at all. In the
meantime they lived in appalling conditions with disease running rife, a
few of them did manage to escape. By June 1940 the Nazis had marched
into France and occupied Paris. An armistice was signed and France was
divided into two, German occupied France and Vichy France under the rule
of the elderly Marchal Petain. The truth is both were very dangerous
places to be and many French found themselves exiles in their own
country.
As
the Nazis were marching towards Paris, thousands were trying to flee
the capital, by any means, trains were full to bursting, all roads out
of Paris were clogged, vehicles were abandoned when they ran out of
fuel, thousands of people slept rough in barns and fields, there was no
news but many rumours which added to the sense of panic, it was chaos.
Many were heading to the south or to the coasts, to try and get boats
out or simply to stay with family or friends as far away from the Nazis
as they could get, some had no clue where they were going, they just
knew they had to leave.
Hitler put pressure on the
Vichy government to round up all the German, Austrian and
Czechoslovakian exiles, these people were now in grave danger, if they
fell into the hands of the Gestapo they were imprisoned, sent to
concentration camps or murdered by firing squads. Now thousands of
French nationals also found themselves in danger, French artists, poets,
writers and intellectuals were at particular risk, many of them were no
longer in possession of the correct identity papers, trying to obtain
the correct papers could result in arrest, they were aware they were on
Hitler's list, many of them headed South to Marseilles where they shrank
into the shadows, stayed in shabby back street hotels and met up with
each other at the cafés, always looking over their shoulders. They were
now people without a state or a homeland, they had become in effect
refugees. They needed a way out.
Film Still from Casablanca
A Real Rick, Varian Fry
Meanwhile
in New York 'The Emergency Rescue Committee' had been set up, they had
compiled a list of around 200 artists, writers and intellectuals who
they considered to be at risk in occupied Europe, the list included
Picasso, Matisse, Chagall, Andre Breton, Max Ernst and Marcel Duchamp,
the objective was to help them to escape.
Havard graduate and political activist Varian Fry was the man who was
chosen to go to Vichy France to set up an organisation to help people
escape, in fact he was the perfect choice, he was a man with a strong
social conscience, he was an intellectual who had studied the classics
and he spoke French and German. He arrived in Marseilles on August 14th
1940 with a suitcase, sleeping bag and air mattress, $3000 taped to his
leg and a list of around 200 names. His return flight to New York had
been booked for August 29th. He had around two weeks to get the job
done!
Varian Fry, Andre Breton, Andre Masson, Jacqueline Lamba and Max Ernst at the CAS office.
Fry
set up his organisation which he named: CENTRE AMERICAN DE SECOURS,
'CAS'. The Tom tom drums had been beating and word got out on the
refugee grapevine, that a man had been sent from America to help, he
soon had a long line of people queuing outside his hotel room, it was
not long before he had to find an office and trustworthy staff.
Eventually
he cobbled together an excellent team including a young American art
student who had formerly been studying at the Sorbonne, Miriam
Davenport. Varian desperately needed more funding, help soon came from
the beautiful, thrill seeking American heiress, Mary Jayne Gold. Mary
Jayne rented Villa Air-Bel, just outside Marseille, it became a home to
CAS staff and some of the refugees (CAS clients), artists and
intellectuals came to visit, there were parties and auctions, which all
helped fund the clients escapes and keep up morale.
Andre
Breton and Jacqueline Lamba fooling around at the Villa Air-Bel, just
outside Marseilles. Breton was convinced that all the surrealists must
defy the spirit of Fascism "by singing and laughing with the greatest
joy"
Even
the Nazis could not stand in the way of creativity, whilst waiting at
the Villa Air-Bel for various visas, Andre Breton had the idea of
producing a collective work of art, they would invent a new deck of
cards, known as 'Le Jeu de Marseille'. The original drawings were
preserved and eventually came to Andre Breton's daughter Aube, she
donated them to the Musee Cantini in Marseilles, where they are on
display to this day.
Max
Ernst the Surrealist painter was one of the many artists imprisoned by
the French in 1939 for being a German national, he was at this time
living with his British lover, fellow surrealist painter Leonora
Carrington, in a small French village in the south of France. With the
help of Paul Eluard and the intervention of Varian Fry he was eventually
released, only to be arrested again a few weeks later by the Gestapo,
he managed to escape and once again helped by Varian Fry, escaped to
America, with Peggy Guggenheim.
Leonora
Carrington, distraught at Max's initial arrest by the French was
persuaded by friends to leave France. She escaped over the Pyrenees into
Spain, where she suffered a breakdown at the British embassy in
Madrid. She was institutionalised in Santander where she received shock
and drug therapy. Her wealthy parents intervened and sent someone to
secure her release (Leonora claimed it was her old nanny) Leonora was
convinced her parents would send her to a mental institution in South
Africa or one of the colonies, one day she persuaded the nanny to take
her shopping and managed to run away, she sought refuge at the Mexican
embassy, eventually she managed to get to Lisbon, where she bumped into
Max Ernst and Peggy Guggenheim who were waiting to leave for America.
Leonora and Max had both been through too much to rekindle their
relationship. Max went on to marry Peggy. Following the escape to
Lisbon, Leonora arranged passage out of Europe with Renato Leduc, a
Mexican diplomat and poet who was a friend of Picasso and who had agreed
to marry Leonora as part of the travel
arrangements to help her. Leonora eventually found sanctuary in Mexico
and went on to become one of Mexico's leading artists.
Max Ernst speaking to immigration authorities at Ellis Island, Peggy Guggenheim looks on, July 14th, 1941
A few of the people Varian Fry helped...
"Artists in Exile", Peggy Guggenheim's
apartment, New York, 1942. Front row: Stanley William Hayter, Leonara
Carrington, Frederick Kiesler, Kurt Seligmann. Second Row: Max Ernst,
Amedee Ozenfant, Andre Breton, Fernand Leger, Berenice Abbott. Third
Row: Jimmy Ernst, Peggy Guggenheim, John Ferren, Marcel Duchamp, Piet
Mondrian. Photograph: The Philadelphia Museum of Art, Philadelphia,
Pennsylvania.
The
situation was becoming increasingly risky for Fry and his clients.
Obtaining exit visas for people was becoming impossible legally, the
only way to get things done was to go down the illegal route, much to
the chagrin of the American consulate and the Vichy government. Fry
became a thorn in their sides and they conspired together to do
something about him (America was still neutral at this point). He had
his passport confiscated and was told it would only be returned on the
condition that he left Vichy France and returned to America. He now
knew what it felt like to be a refugee, his hand was forced, on 6th
September 1941, almost thirteen months after his arrival in Vichy
France, Fry boarded the train in Cerbere and embarked on the long
journey back to America following in the footsteps of all those he had
helped to escape.
CAS continued to operate but went completely underground, it's staff were now part of the resistance.
Over
a period of one and a half years twenty thousand refugees had
approached CAS for help, stretching his mandate as much as he dared Fry
had extended the protection of CAS to more than four thousand people.
CAS had given direct financial support to six hundred refugees. It had
helped fifteen hundred people to leave France both legally and
illegally. It had also assisted in one manner or another in the
evacuation of about three hundred British officers and soldiers. CAS
had set up a dozen communities around Grasse as well as woodcutting and
charcoal burning enterprises in the Var forest that gave refugees not
only employment but also a place to hide. From 1942 until the end of
the war, the clandestine CAS was able to facilitate the escape from
France of another three hundred people.
Excert from Villa Air-Bel
Further reading...
(French Edition)
A Quiet American, The Secret war of Varian Fry, Andy Marino
We shall never forget.
Image via Jamie Oliver
