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Varian Fry passed away in the middle of the night from a cerebral hemorrhage.

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Varian was awarded the Cross of Chevalier of the Legion of Honor for his work in Marseilles by the French government. That is the highest honor given in France.

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The IRC publicly honored Varian with the medal of the International Rescue Committee for his work in Marseilles.

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Varian later wrote about how he sacrificed so many things like his mental health but he would still do it all over again.(Pg.155)

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Varian was fired from the IRC which had merged with ERC (the IRC is still around today)(Pg.154)

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Varian went to Vichy to complain about the concentration camps and try to get some of the people he helped released. After that didn’t work he went to the American Embassy so he could get his French exit visa renewed and then also get a Swiss entry visa. The embassy refused to help Varian because the US was trying not to enter the war and so they wanted to keep a peaceful relationship with the French government. Sense Varian was causing trouble in France and people had complained about him, so the embassy could not give him his renewed exit visa.

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Varian describes the pressure he was feeling in a letter to his parents: “Almost from the moment I arrived in Marseille I have been all but drowned in a flood of anguished human beings in search of advice and help...All of the time it has been like living in a crowd and being the center of it and the object of its attention.”

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Varian made a deal with the British to help get some of their soldiers that were stuck in Europe, out.

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Varian meets Lisa and Hans Fittoks. They are known for smuggling people over the border and they’re very good at it. At first they wanted to refuse and escape themselves because they had been fighting the Nazi’s for years but in the book it says that they couldn’t just turn their back on others. (Pg.96/97/98)

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In Surrender on Demand Varian writes about what happened when the Werfels and Manns asked him for advice on if they should cross over the mountains today or go back to Marseilles and make arrangements for a later date.: “‘Well,’ I said, measuring my words very carefully, ‘if you think you can make it, I’d advise you to go over the hill today. We know it can be done today. We don’t know what will happen tomorrow of the day after’” (Pg.80)

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Varian is going to accompany the Werfels and the Manns to the French and Spanish border. There he would continue on a train but the others would have to walk over the Pyrenees Mountains, just behind Cerbére. After they made it across the Spanish border they would carry onto Lisbon.

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Miriam Davenport wrote about how Varian acts around them and their clients, “With us and with our clients he was warm, sensitive, witty, and relaxed. At our conferences in his hotel room he became sometimes playful, sometimes ribald, sometimes raucous.”(Pg.54)

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Varian wrote: “We had no way of knowing who was really in danger and who wasn’t. We had to guess, and the only safe way to guess was to give each refugee the full benefit of the doubt” (Pg.54)

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Varian said that deciding who he was going to help was the “hardest part of his job.”(Pg.53)

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Varian meets this group of Austrians who had to leave because their political beliefs put them in danger, they had all their travel visas in order except they didn’t have French exit visas. If you were to try and leave France without exit visas you could be arrested and sent to concentration camps. Sense the Austrians wouldn’t be able to get the exit visas because they were wanted by the Nazi’s they had to find another way out with out getting caught. They came up with a plan to go over the Pyrenees Mountains and enter Spain without being caught by the police. This is the path that many other of Varian’s refugees will use.  (Pg.43)

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Varian met with his first refugee. His name is Franz Werfel and his wife Alma. Franz Werfel was a well known Jewish writer who was wanted by Hitler.

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Varian’s train pulled into the station in Marseilles. That's where he realizes that this is nothing like America. You needed to have papers that allowed you to travel around France. If you didn’t have the proper papers you would be arrested.(Pg.30)

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Varian made it to Lisbon, Portugal after a 36 hour plane trip. He decides to stay and rest a day before moving on to Marseilles, France.

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Varian must get a visa in order to enter France. The Nazi’s there however would only let diplomats or relief workers in. Because Varian couldn’t actually say what he was going there for, the ERC had to get the YMCA, who was already working in France, to send a letter claiming that Varian was their own.(Pg18)

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Varian attends a luncheon hosted by an organization called the American Friends of German Freedom. This happens just two days after the French-German armistice was signed. Their goal was to get famous people out such as writers, painters, sculptors, scientists, and doctors.The organization decided that it would send somebody there, with $3,000, to get well known people out of danger. The new organization they formed was called the Emergency Rescue Committee (ERC). Varian volunteered to go to Nazi infected France.

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Philipee Pétain, the leader of the Vichy administration, signed an armistice agreement with the Germans.(Pg11) One part of the agreement stated that the French government would have to hand over anyone the Germans wanted to them, which people called the Surrender on Demand clause.

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Varian Fry learns from a man named Ernst Hanfstaegnl, chief of the Foreign Press Division of the Nazi Propaganda Minstry and close friend to Hitler, that Hitler and his party wanted to get rid of all Jews but they hadn’t decided which way to do it. One group of people wanted to send the Jews to places such as Madagascar or Palestine, anywhere out of Europe. The other group however wanted to just completely eliminate them by killing them all, Hitler was in this group of people. Varian was shocked to hear this and couldn’t believe that it was true.(Pg.7)

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Varian stands on the sidewalk watching A mob gathered in front of the stores and shops that lined Kurfurstendamm (one of the main streets in Berlin) where they were chanting, “When Jewish blood spurts from the knife, Then everything will be fine again.” Anywhere that people thought they saw a Jew they would go and attack them. Varian recounts, “everywhere he looked Jewish people covered with blood ran down the street.(Pg4) Varian went to Germany because all over the world people had been hearing reports of Hitler and other German citizens mistreating Jews.

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Eileen gets a job at the Time as a researcher and Varian gets a part time job at Consumers' Research magazine as well as teaching Latin at a school in New York.

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Varian marries Eileen and they move to New York to begin their life together.

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Varian graduated from Harvard University with a bachelor of arts degree.

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McClafferty, Carla Killough. In Defiance of Hitler: the Secret Mission of Varian Fry. Farrar Straus Giroux, 2008. 

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McClafferty, Carla Killough. In Defiance of Hitler: the Secret Mission of Varian Fry. Farrar Straus Giroux, 2008. 