MIDDLEBURY, Vt.—Middlebury College honored an unsung hero of World War II as the first recipient of the Elizabeth and Felix Rohatyn Global Citizenship Award at a ceremony held May 2 on campus.
The award was presented posthumously to Varian Fry, an American citizen who is credited with saving the lives of more than 1,500 European Jews—including Hannah Arendt, Marc Chagall, Marcel Duchamp, and Otto Meyerhof—from the hands of the Nazis in 1940 and 1941.
Felix Rohatyn—the former U.S. ambassador to France, former chairman of the Municipal Assistance Corporation of New York, and 1949 graduate of Middlebury College—presented the award to Fry’s 84-year-old widow, Annette Fry, at an event attended by nearly 100 Middlebury students, faculty, trustees, and staff.
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| Annette Fry displays the plaque honoring her late husband, Varian Fry. At left is Felix Rohatyn '49. |
Rohatyn, a Polish Jew, was just 12 years old when his family fled the Germans. “We were marked for death if the Nazis caught up with us,” he said, and their journey took them from Poland to Marseille, Casablanca, Lisbon, Rio de Janeiro, and finally New York. “The documents which enabled us to leave Marseille for safety,” Rohatyn said, “may well have been acquired by some of Fry’s associates; we will never know.” So it was with deep personal conviction that Rohatyn chose to honor a person who saved others from Nazi concentration camps as the first recipient of the Global Citizenship Award.
“Varian Fry was a patriotic young American,” Rohatyn said, “but he was also a citizen of the world. He saw through the anguish and confusion of a world at war to the core issues of freedom and survival. Against all odds, and in the space of little over a year, he managed to rescue more than 1,500 people fleeing the Nazi menace.”
Working undercover in occupied France, Fry and others in the American Rescue Committee secured visas and safe passage for some of Europe’s leading intellectuals, as well as hundreds of less-well-known innocent people and their families.
“Fry was a public servant in the truest sense of the term,” said Rohatyn. “He can now be seen as the father of a new kind of international engagement most obviously represented today by hundreds of non-governmental organizations that work ‘without borders’ to tackle problems that the most talented officials will not or cannot tackle.
“They do not have a monopoly on truth or courage any more than governments do, but they have become essential components of international understanding and humanitarian action, often leading the way for nations to try and balance human justice and global peace. For that legacy, too, we have Varian Fry to thank and Varian Fry to remember.”
To extend that legacy to future generations, the College planted a cherry tree to honor Varian Fry on the grounds adjacent to the Rohatyn Center for International Affairs.
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| Gathered for the tree planting on May 2 are, from left, Professor Allison Stanger, director of the Rohatyn Center for International Affairs; Annette Fry; Felix Rohatyn ’49; and President Ronald D. Liebowitz. |
And while most of the attention was focused on the late Mr. Fry and his courage and accomplishments, President Ronald D. Liebowitz emphasized how important Felix Rohatyn has been in shaping Middlebury into the global liberal arts college for the 21st century. Calling Rohatyn “a citizen of the world,” Liebowitz explained how the Rohatyn Center at Middlebury—founded in 2002 by Mr. and Mrs. Rohatyn—engages students and faculty with global leaders and issues through symposia, lectures, and internships; through partnerships with Princeton, Columbia and the University of Texas; and through a research travel grant program for promising undergraduates.
President Liebowitz closed by saying how fitting it was to honor Varian Fry and Felix Rohatyn on May 2, Holocaust Remembrance Day.