Symposium to honor journalist who saved Chagall, other artists from Nazis
In 1940, Varian Fry helped some 2,000 people slip out of France, including Marc Chagall and Max Ernst
Varian Fry (Courtesy US Holocaust Memorial Museum)
NEW YORK — Authors and art experts will participate in a sold-out weekend symposium commemorating a little-known New York City journalist credited with saving scores of writers and artists from the Nazis during World War II.
The New York Times said that Varian Fry was 32 when he volunteered to go to France in August 1940 to help some of the world’s most famous artists escape from Nazi-occupied France.
Fry helped some 2,000 people slip out of France before returning to the US a year later.
He aided such prominent artists as Marc Chagall and Max Ernst, and such intellectuals as anti-fascist writer Andre Breton.
Fry died in 1967 and is buried at Brooklyn’s historic Green-Wood Cemetery, where Saturday’s sold-out symposium is being held.
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