Patrick Bade
Varian Fry

Patrick Bade - Varian Fry

- Hi, Patrick.

• Hi, Wendy.

• Hi. Good morning, everybody. Hi, Juds. Patrick, as can see, I’m in the car here. I’m with my grandchildren, so I’m going to hand it over to you and just get started whenever you’re ready. So looking forward to Varian Fry today, and I’m going to look forward to listening to it quietly later this afternoon. So thanks for being with us and hand over to you. So you start whenever you are ready. Thank you.

Images are displayed throughout the presentation.

• Right, well, I’m always ready. So thank you. Thank you Wendy, and thank you Judi. I know that you’ve all been exploring some very dark aspects of the Second World War with Trudy recently. So today, I’m actually going to tell a heartwarming story. It’s a very positive story, and we’re going to celebrate one of the great rescuers. And that is Varian Fry. He is, I mean, nobody knows for sure. It’s very hard to be specific, but he’s estimated to have saved the lives of between 2 and 4,000 people. He, working with a team, with the Emergency Rescue Committee that he headed. And I suppose what makes his story particularly interesting or different from some of the other rescuers is the kind of people that he was rescuing. He set out on a mission to rescue the intelligentsia and the artistic elite of Europe. And if he hadn’t done this, the world would be a very much poorer place. I’m going to go through some of these people and what they did and what happened to them.

Now, he came from a privileged background. He was very well educated, extremely intelligent, always I think probably a little bit rebellious, ‘cause he got expelled from Harvard at one point. But he became a journalist. Here he is at the time of the Emergency Rescue Committee in Marseilles in 1940 to '41. But in the '30s, as the Nazi regime took over the world, the rest of the world looked on with fascination, sometimes with horror, but sometimes just with curiosity. So he was sent as a journalist, and he witnessed the opening shots in the Nazi culture war, from the moment that Nazi regime was in power, they declared war on pretty well all aspects of modern culture. And you all know about the burning of the books. Here is Hitler arriving in the 1934 at Nuremberg rally. And he is making a speech. And one of his speeches in the 1934 Nuremberg rally was an all out declaration of war against modern art. I used to amuse my students by doing an imitation of this speech. I don’t think I’m going to risk that on Zoom to a couple of thousand people. So here is the actual speech of Hitler. He always amazes me that was considered to be such a great orator. He always sounds like total Looney Tunes to me. But you’ll see how he becomes absolutely hysterical as he lists the various different modern art movements.

• Well, enough of him. So you heard him mention cubism, expressionism, and futurism. Oddly enough, he doesn’t mention surrealism, and I will be talking quite a lot about surrealism, because in fact, the surrealists were the artists who were probably most hated by the Nazis, 'cause they were hated not only for the art that they did, but for their left wing connections and their anarchism and their anti-authoritarianism. And I’ll talk more about that later. This crusade against modern art reached a climax in 1937 with the Entartete Kunst Exhibition, degenerate art exhibition, which started in Munich, and then it toured all the main German cities. This is the cover of the catalogue with an illustration of a sculpture by Otto Freundlich. Here you see Hitler arriving at the exhibition. And the Nazi regime had confiscated all the modern artworks that had been brought during the Weimar years by various German museums. And of course, they also confiscated, as you know, many Jewish art collections. And so this exhibition was put on from those works. The works that were saleable were later sold through Swiss auction houses to get cash, the Nazi Germany. And the works that they couldn’t get money for, they just burnt. In this slightly blurred image, I can see works by Kandinsky and, well, I think I’ll move on.

Yes, Kandinsky, top right hand corner. Lion Feuchtwanger. That’s the name I was searching for underneath it. So many German modern artists, not just Jews who needed to escape from Germany because of persecution, but other modern artists fled to France after 1932. On the whole, France was quite welcoming to them. But the moment that war was declared in 1939, 'cause they were all enemy aliens, so they were all rounded up. This is a woman’s camp at Gurs, and Hannah Arendt was intern in this camp. Conditions were pretty terrible. Obviously, not quite as terrible as later Nazi concentration camps and death camps, but nevertheless, people were poorly fed. They were kept in terrible insanitary conditions. And then of course, France forced the Germans. So these people were in a very desperate position. This is another big interment camp, Camp des Milles. And amongst the people who were in this camp were Lion Feuchtwanger, Golo Mann, Hans Bellmer, and Max Ernst. All people who managed to get out, then got themselves to Marseille and they were all rescued by Varian Fry. So this is the great exodus from Paris. In May 1940, as the Germans approached, people feared the city was going to be completely destroyed, that the population would be massacred. And pretty well, the whole population of Paris fled. This shows the Gaumont Montparnos, which was the station you would’ve gone to for the South of France. Now, after the armistice in June 1940, France was divided into an occupied zone, which you see in the north and along the Atlantic coast.

And what we now call Vichy France, which then was called Free France. It was actually very difficult to get from one section of France to another. It was really quite a dangerous thing to try and do it. And it was very difficult to get permission to do it. Now, this map is very interesting, 'cause it shows you where all the artists were. And I’m wondering if I can get rid of this thing at the bottom. Yes, 'cause I want to. So it lists a lot of the main cultural figures, and let’s go through them. Pablo Picasso. He could very easily have gone to America. He would’ve been very warmly welcomed. He would not have been short of cash. There were plenty of collectors. He was the universally recognised king of modern art. He decided to stay in Paris. I’m quite sure that Varian Fry would’ve had no difficulty getting him across the Atlantic. When asked later, “Well, why didn’t you go?” And he said, “Well, it wasn’t any kind of heroism. It wasn’t any kind of moral thing. It was really inertia.” Marcel Duchamp, he was one, I’m not sure if it was Varian Fry, but he certainly got across the Atlantic.

Henri Matisse, there were attempts to persuade him to go. Of course, his son, Pierre Matisse had a gallery in New York, so he had been okay too, but he was quite frail and ill, and he didn’t go. Walter Benjamin was one of the people that Varian Fry tried to help, and I’ll tell you more about him. Kandinsky, again, he was not only excoriated as a modern artist and as an abstract artist. He was Russian, but he was quite elderly. Well, by the standards of the day. He was in his mid to late 70s. Not old today but old then. And he decided just to keep his head down and stay. And he wasn’t Jewish, so he wasn’t in danger of being sent to a concentration camp. Derain stayed and collaborated and paid the price for it after the war. George Braque stayed. Otto Freundlich failed to get out and was taken by the Germans and murdered. He’s probably the most important artist to die in a concentration camp. Wifredo Lam, Victor Brauner, André Breton, Jacqueline Lamba, and others. Eight, they’re all down in Marseille. And they were all got out by Varian Fry, as was Marc Chagall. Gertrude Stein stayed, and oddly enough, I think she was more or less unmolested and survived the war with Alice B. Toklas.

Guggenheim was helped out by Varian Fry. Jean Arp and his wife, Sophie Arp, they were got out, but they actually went to Switzerland. And again, through the offices of Varian Fry. Sonia Delaunay stayed with her very sick husband who died. And she went into hiding and survived. Max Jacob. I mean, that is a terrible, terrible, tragic story. By that time, he was a convinced Catholic. He converted to Catholicism and he entered a monastery. But that didn’t stop the Nazis taking him, putting him in an internment camp, Drancy. There were many efforts to get him out that apparently were on the point of succeeding. But his health was frail and he died. Kahnweiler, who also went into hiding and survived. André Masson was helped out by Variant Fry. Chaïm Soutine, I’m going to tell you about in a minute. Oops, I’ll be frozen. Be frozen, why is that? Oops, there we go. Here we are in Marseille, outside the American consulate with desperate scenes. They are absolutely besieged with people desperate to get out. Now, Varian Fry, of course, couldn’t just act alone.

We know that he had support from Eleanor Roosevelt, for instance. And he also had a great deal, I mean, a lot of the things that Varian Fry did were completely illegal and were not favoured by the American administration. But luckily, the local consoles, a man called Hiram Bingham, you can see him celebrated on a postage stamp here. He turned a blind eye and he was certainly very helpful in issuing these papers, these exit visas that he needed to get out. He came again from a very distinguished family. He’s Hiram Bingham IV. Hiram Bingham III was a senator and a famous explorer. He was the man who discovered Machu Picchu in Peru. I’ve had so many discussions with Trudy over the years, but what makes a rescuer? So, I mean, this is something I’d like to consider and I’d like you to consider, and maybe we can talk about it at the end. Very often, it seems to be people who had a reckless streak, an unconventional streak. Oh, this is one of these magical papers that people so desperately wanted. And there was a black market trade in real and fake papers. And you can see this is one dated 6th of March, 1941. That’s very late to get out from the culprits. And you can see that it’s signed by Hiram Bingham. So Varian Fry actually worked with a whole team of people.

Peggy Guggenheim, who you see on the right hand side, heiress, Guggenheim fortune. So lots of money. She declared that she put herself on a regime, not of food, but of painting. She bought one work of art a day, she said. And amassed a great collection, which of course was the core collection of the, well, actually no, the Guggenheim in New York is Solomon, isn’t it? Well, no, the Guggenheim in Venice is her core collection. And Mary Jayne Gold, she was a young, a wealthy young American socialite. And despite her name, she was not Jewish. She was a WASP, white Anglo-Saxon Protestant. She left it very, very late to get out of Paris. She got down to Marseille, and she saw what was going on. And instead of just leaving when she could, she hung around in order to fund the efforts of Varian Fry and help as many people as she could. This is her book, the French version of it.

I’m sure there must be an English version. And here she is with her best friend, Miriam Davenport on the left, and on the right is her lover. And again, this brings to the question of the sort of people that took the risks to become rescuers. He was a very shady, petty criminal from the underworld. He’d done time in the Foreign Legion. But as I said, he became the lover or Mary Jayne Gold and did all sorts of wonderful, daring things to help people to get out. And he himself got out, but joined the Free French in London and was then parachuted back into France and fought with the resistance and did all sorts of amazing and heroic things. So Mary Jayne Gold provided money to rent a rather decrepit villa outside of Marseille called Villa Air-Bel. And so many of these very distinguished refugees were housed there before they could make their escape. And it must have been a very, very fascinating place to be. I’ve got a few photographs taken at the time. We have Varian Fry on the right hand side with Andre Masson leaning over him.

No, Andre Masson is back left. Jacqueline Lamba and Andre Breton, the founder of the surrealist movement, and two other, a couple who are also part of this little community in the Villa Air-Bel were the explorer, aviator, and writer, Saint-Exupery and his wife Consuelo. And you see them in these pictures. This is another very interesting character, Lisa Fittko. She was a young Hungarian Jewish girl who did, again, did some very daring exploits. She found a new path up into the Pyrenees and a way for people to escape over the Pyrenees. And I’ll mention her again in the context of Walter Benjamin. And this is Sylvain Itkine who was a successful character actor in many great French movies of the '30s. The main picture here is in the Jean de Limur film. Dear, it’s awful doing these lectures. I think I’m losing my marbles. Very famous movie. Not . Somebody’s going to tell me afterwards. The great pacifist movie, banned of course by the Nazis. But he actually got involved in all these activities, and he didn’t get out himself. He stayed and he joined the resistance.

And in 1943, he was caught by the Germans and he was tortured to death. So of course, Varian Fry also needed people to help him on the other side of the Atlantic. And this is Alfred Barr, who was the director of MoMA, Museum of Modern Art. And he was very helpful because he could, Chagall, all these distinguished artists, he was able to arrange exhibitions for them and was very helpful in getting permission for them to come into the States. Now, here are these very famous exit visas that you all know, I’m sure you all know the film Casablanca by heart. Trudy does. She can quote great bits of it over the dinner table. And the whole plot of the movie, of course, revolves around two of these exit visas that have fallen into the hands of Humphrey Bogart. And whether he’s going to give them to Paul Henry and Ingrid Bergman or not, and whether she’s going to stay with him or go with, you know, all know the plot, of course. And the wonderful Claude Rains is the corrupt French policeman. So here it is, one of these papers. This is Arthur Koestler. So one of the ways out from France, of course, was to get to North Africa. Then you go to Morocco. You go to Casablanca.

But where then? So that’s when you needed these papers in order to get to Portugal. And then from Portugal to the other side of Atlantic and safety. Now, this is a book that I recommend you. It’s a fascinating book. It’s a great read. Lisbon was one of the most interesting places or certain cities in the Second World War where Nazis and Jews and Allies rubbed shoulders with one another, and they were sort of nest. Everybody was watching everybody else. Everybody was spying on everybody else. Lisbon, it says, “Wars in the shadow of the city of light,” 'cause Lisbon, of course, was one of the very few capital cities on the continent of Europe where the lights could be kept on because it wasn’t in danger of being bombed. And so Lisbon was, for most of the people I’m talking about tonight, this was the point where they were able to find safety and leave Europe, 'cause they had to get across Spain. That was a dodgy business as well, because Franco was closely allied to Hitler. So here, these ships, all kinds of ships, luxury ships, ships that were held together with sailor, little, tiny old ships, very uncomfortable ships. Some of them that took these desperate people across the Atlantic.

Here, we’ve got buses bringing groups of Jewish refugees arriving in Lisbon. Now, this is a man who certainly needs a mention as well. This is the Portuguese consul in Bordeaux. And he’s actually quite a controversial figure. And I was contacted by Diane Barnett a few days ago. She’s doing research on this guy. He’s called Aristides de Sousa Mendes. Some people estimate that he saved as many as 30,000, but it’s become a political hot potato in Portugal. There was somebody, I think it was my last lecture, maybe it was one before, but at the end, said something about Portugal favouring the Allies. That is not actually strictly true. I mean, Portugal played as Sweden and Switzerland. They all played a very, very dodgy, ambiguous game during the Second World War. Portugal kept the German, Sweden and Portugal between them, kept the German war effort going, 'cause Sweden was supplying the iron ore and the wall bearings. And Portugal was supplying the tungsten, which was absolutely vital to the manufacture of armaments. So in fact, Portugal in some ways, did very, very nicely out of the Second World War. And this guy was De Sousa Mendes.

He was dishing out these vital papers to all sorts of people. But this was very much against the wishes of the Portuguese government. Salazar also, he’s a fascist. So I think he had less reason to be favourable to Hitler than Franco was, 'cause Franco had been put into power by Hitler’s support in the Spanish Civil War. So he earned a great deal of official disapproval. He was punished. His career was blighted. And it’s only in quite recent years that he’s been celebrated as a hero. He did not have the specific mission that Variant Fry had, which was to save the intelligentsia. He was just saving people. But here are four leading cultural figures that he saved. The art dealer, Paul Rosenberg, top right hand side. The actor, Marcel Dalio, a character actor, been in lots of most famous French movies of the 1930s. Salvador Dali, of course. And the interior designer, furniture designer, Jean Paul Frank, who I mentioned before in New York. Sadly, having got to New York, he then committed suicide.

But just to remind you of Marcel Dalio, 'cause all of you know him because he played these cameo roles in Hollywood during the war, the very famous moment in Casablanca where he hands over the gambling winnings to the corrupt police inspector played by Claude Rains. And of course Dali. So he did quite well for himself in Hollywood playing these little roles. He was a sort of always a caricature Frenchman in Hollywood movies in the 1940s. And Dali also did very well commercially and was used by Hitchcock to design a famous dream sequence in the 1945 film “Spellbound.” Now I’m going to discuss first, again, in a little bit more detail people that Varian Fry actually didn’t save, either 'cause they chose not to be saved or because he was unable to save them. Starting with Picasso. Here he is in his studio in Paris in Rue des Grands Augustins, where he stayed throughout the war in a very roomy accommodation. So huge studios and so on, but absolutely freezing. I don’t think he would’ve found it easy to get fuel to put in that big stove that you see beside him.

Now, another reason, another element in this story that makes Picasso stay a little bit surprising is that his lover throughout the Second World War was the surrealist photographer, Dora Maar, who you see on the right hand side who was Jewish. Now, how endangered was Picasso? Well, he was the most famous artist in the world, the most admired artist in the world. And as with Freud, that kind of international celebrity, even with the Nazis, it gave you a certain protection. On the other hand, I think he did take a big risk, because in October 1940, after the fall of France, Hitler went down to the Pyrenees, to Hendaye for a conference with Franco. And Hitler, of course, it was pay up time. He’d won the Civil War for Franco. He’d effectively installed Franco in power, and he expected Franco to join the Nazi Axis. And what he wanted, of course, was Franco to take Gibraltar, which would’ve been a huge blow to Britain and to the Allies. But Franco was a very wily character.

He was a lot smarter than Mussolini who fell for Hitler’s wars. He kept Spain out of the war. My guess is because Franco was bitterly, bitterly against Picasso 'cause of Picasso’s criticism, because of the stance that Picasso took during Spanish Civil War, because of his great masterpiece, Guernica, and so on. So I think actually, Picasso’s fame would not have protected him if Spain had come into the war on the side of the Axis. Oh, here is a Hitler meeting Franco at Hendaye in October 1940. And here is Picasso in his splendid studio. On the left hand in Paris, you can see him in the studio on the right hand side with Jean Cocteau I think is in that picture. Who else is in the picture? Matisse. As I said, Matisse actually, very ill. He’d been operating on for cancer. He was sort of pretty well bedridden through most of the Second World War. So they could have got him out, but he decided to stay. Bonnard, another person who had a big following in America. But I think he was too French.

He was too set in his ways. And he was one of those artists who was completely monomaniac. He was living in the little world that he created himself. So he and his wife, who actually died in 1943, but he was still painting this wonderful sunlit shimmering world with his wife, forever lying in a lovely warm bath. In fact, I went to that house at the beginning of the year before lockdown started. I was very fascinated to see Bonnard’s bathroom, which still exists. This bathroom, which inspired so many of these masterpieces, full of jewel-like, shimmering, glittering colour. It’s actually a very functional, very ordinary little bathroom. Here is a Braque who again retreated into his private world. He was certainly an artist. I think Bonnard, the Nazis would’ve been prepared to accept his work. They certainly weren’t going to accept the work of Braque. So Braque just has to kind, he’s a French equivalent to what the Germans call the inner immigration, these artists who just retired into their own private world.

And the same with Kandinsky, who was elderly and frail and died during the occupation, but died of natural causes. And here is Kandinsky on the right with Otto Freundlich, a very important abstract painter. There was a wonderful exhibition of his work at the Musée de Montmartrethe at the beginning of last year. He was arrested and sent to Drancy, and various artists, including Picasso, tried to get him out, but they failed. And he was deported eastwards in 1943 and murdered in a concentration camp there. And this is one of his abstract works on the black. Soutine is another mysterious figure to me. He would’ve had sponsors in America. I mean, particularly Dr. Barnes. Now, Dr. Barnes of the Barnes Collection in Philadelphia. Now, Soutine came from the direst, direst poverty, from Leguay in Russia and continued to live in terrible poverty and squalor when he got to Paris. There’s this horrendous story of him going to a doctor to complain of earache. And the doctor looked in and found a whole colony of insects inside his ear. And he lived in squalor, poverty until in the early '20s, Dr. Barnes bought 50 of his works in one go. And he went to the gallery. They gave a big ward of money.

He said thank you, left the gallery, held a taxi and said to the taxi driver, “Dive me to Nice.” And I’m just telling you this, because he was, I think he’s a fabulous artist. I absolutely adore the work of Soutine. It moves me deeply. For me, he’s almost my favourite expressionist artist. In fact, he might be, but there was a side of him a bit like, say, Stanley Spencer in England that is naive and childlike. And I think somehow, the idea of leaving what he’s familiar with and going to America was probably too much for him. So he stayed and he had to go into hiding. And he died during the war from the effects of an untreated ulcer. In fact, recent research has shown that the authorities were aware of him, and that when he died, he was about to be arrested. This is Variant Fry’s most famous failure. This is Walter Benjamin, great thinker, still extremely influential thinker. And he was with a small group of refugees who were guided up into the Pyrenees by Lisa Fittko, who you see on the left hand side.

And they arrived on the Spanish border on the 26th of September at 1940. And the Spanish guards wouldn’t let them across. And so they were stuck. And they spent the night in a French inn on the French side. And during the night, Walter Benjamin took an overdose and killed himself. And there’s a lot of speculation about this, a lot of mythology really that’s grown up about this. Some people that say that he did it, he sacrificed himself in order to help the others, and that the others were let through, 'cause the guards were shocked by his suicide. Well, I don’t know about that. The other myth concerning this is that he entrusted a briefcase with papers in it to an another member of the group, saying that in this briefcase were papers that were more important than his life. And so whether it was his unpublished masterpiece or whatever it was, what his testament to the world, we don’t know because it has disappeared without trace.

Now, to get to the ones who Varian Fry successfully got out, this is Franz Werfel, who was the third husband of Alma Shindler Mahler Gropius, who you see on the right hand side, who had, of course, at the turn of the century, being considered to be the most beautiful woman in Vienna. Great femme fatale, really. An incredible list of husbands and lovers. Anybody who was anybody, really, in Vienna in the early years of the 20th century. Varian Fry actually really disliked her. He thought she was entitled and pushy and obnoxious, which was probably true. So she and Werfel had obviously fled from Vienna in 1938 at the time of the Angelus, and they lived in considerable comfort and they had plenty of money in the South of France. But when France fell, they made a desperate journey southwest, like so many people. The roads were crammed with these cars. And they had a lot of luggage with them. And they had a big suitcase. And in that suitcase were the manuscript scores of Mahler’s first symphony and Bruckner’s third symphony.

Now, Mahler’s first symphony, and of course now, it’ll be an incredibly precious object. Far less so then, there wasn’t that much in, obviously, the Nazis weren’t interested in Mahler. They would’ve burnt it if they got all of it. But even in America, Mahler symphonies were rarely played. There was a performance of the first symphony in New York during the Second World War conducted by Bruno Walter. But Mahler was a pretty unknown quantity. But Bruckner, 'cause Bruckner was the absolute hero of Hitler. And Hitler was collecting, it was one of his real fetish obsessions was to collect scores of great young composers. And he desperately, desperately wanted the score of the third symphony, not only because it was the work of probably his favourite composer, but also because it was a work that was dedicated to Wagner. And you can see in the middle here the inscription in the score dedicating it to Wagner. So I mean, instructions were sent down that Werfel and Alma had to be hunted down at all costs.

They had to be stopped from leaving the country with the score of Bruckner’s third symphony. At one point, they were separated from their luggage, and it was something of a miracle that, I mean, under the circumstances, all that chaos down there, that they actually managed to be reunited with their luggage, including the case with the scores. And while they were down in the southwest of France, they went to the pilgrimage site of Lourdes. And Franz Werfel was kind of touched and moved by it. Alma was Catholic. Of course he wasn’t. He was Jewish. But anyway, he made a vow that if they managed to get out, if they managed to survive, he would write a book about Saint Bernadette. So they did get out, they got across the Atlantic, all their luggage, everything. And therefore, then wrote the novel, “The Song of Bernadette” that became one of the all time great bestsellers in America.

It made Werfel very rich, and it made Alma very rich. She was a rich married widow when he died soon afterwards. And of course, it was made into a film with Jennifer Jones. I think a lot of you will know about Alma from the famous song by Tom Lehrer about all her husbands and her lovers. And it starts off with a little spoken introduction where he says he was inspired to write the song by reading her obituary, which he said was the juiciest, spiciest obituary he’d ever read. So even he characterises Mahler as a great composer, and Gropius as a leading modern architect. He’s rather snide about Werfel. He says Werfel, Franz Werfel, the author of the Song of Bernadette and other immortal masterpieces. And the audience cracks up with laughter at that little joke. But actually, it’s very unfair because Werfel, long before he wrote The Song of Bernadette, he was considered to be one of the leading poets in the German language.

Here is our hero, Varian Fry, this time with Marc Chagall and his wife Bella in the grounds of the Villa Air-Bel looking at a painting by Marc Chagall. And Chagall needed quite a lot of persuasion to go rather like Soutine. I think again, a man almost a kind of idiot genius, a man of kind of peasant simplicity in some ways. And he had to be assured that yes, there are trees and there are cows in the United States as well, before he would agree to go. Jacques Lipchitz, leading Cuba sculptor. Ah, but I think in a way, Varian Fry’s most remarkable achievement was to transport the surrealist movement almost intact from Paris to New York. Surrealist movement was launched in 1924 by Andre Breton, a poet. This is the man of the 1924 manifesto of surrealism. Surrealism, a movement that came out of dada. It’s very, as I said, it’s anarchistic, it’s anti-authoritarian. If you read the lives of all the great surrealists, one thing that nearly all of them had in common was a terrible relationship with their fathers. They had a kind of collective Oedipus complex. And this led to their hatred of all forms of authority.

So they were, of course, an absolute anathema. Nazism was an anathema to them, and they were an anathema to Nazism. This is Andre Masson, who’s great proponent of a type of surrealism called automatism, 'cause the whole point of surrealism is that the idea based on Freud, that all of us have inside vast chasms of experience and feeling in our unconscious that are suppressed by our educations, by modern civilization, by the way that we’re brought up. And the whole point of surrealism in a way was to lift the lid on that, let out the unconscious, for the unconscious to express itself directly. And automatism, which really starts off as kind of doodling, letting the hand do what it wants to, is an important element in surrealism. And it was an idea of course that was vitally important for the birth of abstract expressionism in New York in the 1940s. This is Max Ernst, another artist with a very fraught relationship, rebellious relationship with his father. So there’s always a strong element of sacrilege, of blasphemy in surrealism. I love this wonderfully Freudian image on the right hand side. It has the title “Spiritual Repose,” but we’ve got this sort of phallic lighthouse and a tidal wave. And it’s obviously a fairly explicit illustration of an orgasm or a wet dream.

Here is Max Ernst arriving with Peggy Guggenheim, to whom he was briefly married, and filling out papers when he arrives in New York. This is Jean Arp, surrealist sculptor. Hans Bellmer work, which I wonder, I think he must be an artist who’s sort of out of fashion, Hans Bellmer, because it really, rather like Balthus because the inspiration of his work is really obviously paedophile and very sadistic. So it wouldn’t have been just the Nazis who would’ve disapproved of him. This is Oscar Dominguez. And he and my next artist, Victor Brauner, are weirdly interlinked. He is a South American surrealist. Victor Brauner was a Romanian. And this is his self-portrait painted in the 1930s. And as you can see, his hand is slashed. And this actually, in a slightly uncanny weird way, anticipates his suicide by slashing his wrists some years later. This Victor Brauner who, in the late '20s, early '30s, painted this self-portrait with a nucleated eye. And some years later, he was in a studio when Oscar Dominguez got into a fight with another artist, and he smashed a glass and he tried to glass the other artist.

And Brauner tried to intervene. And he was the one who got glassed, and he lost his eye. His eye was gouged out. All the surrealists thought this, “Ooh, this is wonderful.” They loved coincidences like that. They gave him great street cred, to both artists. Wilfredo Lam who was Cuban, with a mixed Black-Chinese origins. So he would certainly have been in trouble with the Nazis if Varian had not got him out. This is Lion Feuchtwanger, great German intellectual leading novelist who wrote the novel, “Jew Süss,” which was an excoriation really of the rationality of anti-Semitism. So he was one of the first authors to be banned by the Nazis, his books including the book burning. And he was actually invited to stay with Hiram Bingham in his house. And here he is in Hiram Bingham’s Library. This Heinrich Mann and Golo Mann who’s the son of Thomas Mann. I’m not sure if Heinrich certainly was a refugee. I’m not sure if he got across with the aid of Varian Fry that Golo man did. This is Claude Lévi-Strauss, great philosopher. And he really got out the last minute in a very dingy little boat, sharing a cabin with several other refugees.

And they got to Morocco and then managed to get from Morocco to Cuba. And this is Victor Serge, who is a novelist and left wing activist who was on that same boat. And of course Hannah Arendt who as I said was an internee at Gurs. And Varian Fry, you know all about her, 'cause I think many of you will have heard the discussion between David and Dennis the other day. And other areas of the arts. This is Max Ophüls, who was a leading European filmmaker in the inter-war period. This was his most successful film of the 1930s, “Liebelei.” Then he went to Hollywood, and after a year or so, he managed to establish himself in Hollywood. Of course came back to Europe after the war. His most famous masterpiece, wonderful film, “La Ronde.” I talked about it before in the context of Vienna, that dates from 1950. Music, Wanda Landowska, who had to abandon her great collection of historic keyboard instruments and flee. And Martinů, who I mentioned, was it last week certainly? Yes, last week in the lecture. Bohuslav Martinů, the great Czech composer.

So they also both escaped with the aid of Varian Fry. This is Fritz Meyerhof. So it wasn’t just the arts. He was a Nobel Prize-winning scientist. It’s extraordinary. One of the mysteries for me about the whole Nazi thing is how in the verge commerce successful they were, having lost so much talent, so many important scientists, so many important inventors. And in addition to that, of course, not valuing the contribution of women. So women were far, it was like they had more than one hand behind their back. How did they achieve if you call it an achievement, the near conquest of the western world? And this is my final image, which is all the great European artists. You can see Andre Breton, left back row, Mondrian, Max Ernst, middle front row. Leguay on the right hand side front row. All these great artists who’d been reassembled in New York and who helped to kickstart New York as the cultural capital of the Western world.

So that is my final image. So I’m going to go into question and answer. See if there’s, no, that’s it, isn’t it? Yes, to see if there are questions coming up. Oh, is it chat I have to go into?

• [Wendy] No, Patrick. Patrick, it’s in the Q&A. I see there’s 20.

• Q&A, yeah.

Q&A and Comments:

• Right, Q&A, yeah. Yes, I haven’t seen it. Somebody else mentioned to me a movie about Varian Fry. A couple of people saying “Varian’s War,” very inspiring movie. And I haven’t seen the monument in Sanary-sur-Mer that records all the artists who left from there. Let me see.

Q: Who is the writer of the direct script?

A: I’m not sure what that is about. Supposed to be related to Chaïm Soutine. I’d be very proud to be related to him. Such wonderful artist.

Ruth Miller, some intellectuals, anti-Nazis and artists escaped to Martinique from Marseille. The name of Mary Jayne Gold’s lover was Raymond Couraud. C-O-U-R-A-U-D.

Yes, and as somebody’s mentioning the book, Villa Bel-Air, that of course, I got lots of information from that book. “La Grande Illusion”, thank you very much, was the name I was searching for, which is a great pacifist movie. Very much disapproved of by both Vichy regime and the Nazis.

Michael Feldstein says there’s a Sousa Mendes organisation in the America, and they do lectures. Somebody else mentioning that.

Roberta Sinor, De Sousa Mendes signed visas for my great-uncle and aunt and their four children. All survived and became American citizens. It’ll be in fascinating to note just how many people are in the world today who owe their lives, when you think of all the descendants.

Somebody’s saying there’s recently a programme on Sousa Mendes Foundation, which are many families saved by him. And it says they do programmes, which you can log into. Somebody else mentioning that.

Helena Bonham Carter’s maternal grandfather, Eduardo Propper de Callejon, was a Spanish diplomat in France also. Trudy, I’m sure, will be talking about this. All over Europe, there were diplomats who were prepared to stick out their neck. There was a Japanese one. And often, they had to pay a price in terms of their career for doing this.

Matisse’s daughter. Yes, she was in the resistance. I think she survived, but I know she was at one point captured and tortured.

Less a question, more of a recommendation. University of Toronto Professor Rosemary Sullivan’s excellent, yes. We’ve had that.

Q: Who’s the man with a small group who enters?

A: Walter Benjamin, who is, I must admit, I find him really hard going to read. But he is, I would say, still one of the most influential intellectuals of the 20th century.

Q: Somebody’s saying, “I visited the concentration camp, Camp des Milles in Marseille about five years ago. Curators knew nothing about Necdet Kent, the Turkish Ambassador in Marseille who saved many lives. Any idea why not know more about it?

A: Well, I didn’t know about him, but as I said, there are many of these diplomats who need to be celebrated.

Somebody would like to recommend "The Flight Portfolio” by Julie Orringer. Interesting novel depicting Varian Fry’s personality. Well, see, it had a rather sad ending. A lot of these people, I said there are often people on the edge, outsiders. But also, I have the feeling reading all these books, like the book about the Villa Air-Bel and so on, that for people like Mary Jayne Gold, it was the adventure of their life. And somehow, the rest of their lives after it was a kind of anti-climax. And I think that was very much the case with Varian Fry who landed up alcoholic and rather sad.

Q: How was Fry funded?

A: Well, it was semi-official, but there were people like Mary Jayne Gold and Peggy Guggenheim who helped out as well.

Q: Was Einstein saved by Varian Fry?

A: Don’t think so. Never read that.

Q: How did the artist and lecturers who reached the U.S. react to the U.S. culture?

A: That is such an interesting question It really needs a whole lecture. And I’d have to do a lot of work to get that lecture together. It does interest me a lot, 'cause there were people who found it really hard and reacted negatively to it, and other people who were very stimulated or adapted very well. There’s a whole variety of answers to that very interesting question. Well, he managed to get transit papers, visas to get people across Spain to Portugal. And sometimes, he had to, sometimes, as I said, he used very unorthodox methods, and smuggling people onto boats and across borders and so on.

Q: What happened to Varian Fry?

A: Well, not a lot, I’m afraid. Afterwards, he didn’t have a very productive or happy or successful life after the Second World War.

Q: How did Alice Sommer get out of Theresienstadt?

A: I wish you’d asked me. I wish I’d done this lecture. I had lunch today with Anita Lasker-Wallfisch, who was a very close friend of Alice Sommer. I will ask her, and I’ll tell you when she tells me that. In fact, I should know, 'cause Alice Sommer wrote an autobiography. So in fact, and I have it on my shelf. That will no doubt say, I have read it, but I can’t actually remember how she got out.

A couple more people talking about “Flight Portfolio.” Lincoln Kirstein, founder of the New York Ballet, Harvard’s classmate, I have actually been quite concerned with him in the last year or so because I wrote this book about Michael Leonard, and Michael Leonard worked with Lincoln Kirstein quite closely and made two very, very memorable portraits of him. I think he was a rather sinister character in some ways. Certainly quite a controversial character.

Somebody saying Breton, Lam, amongst others, went to Martinique. Yes, but they got to America eventually. Did he actually forge visas? I’m not sure about that.

Somebody mentioned the Japanese one, Sugihara Chiune. I hope I’m pronouncing that. Has lots of Soutines around the town. He did a lot of work in the South of France. As said, it’s a rather sad ending.

Not very much happened in Varian Fry’s after the war. He did marry, but Trudy says that he was, oh, somebody’s saying here, Linda Stillman writing from New York, Varian Fry married my aunt, Annette Riley Fry. Afterwards, they lived in New York, had three children. Unitarians supported Fry. That’s interesting., 'cause somebody saying, correctly of course.

Albert Einstein went to the U.S. when Hitler came to power. He did not have to be rescued during the war. Thank you. Quite right, of course.

Another recommendation, Andy Marino, American story of Varian Fry. Somebody saying he was the very first righteous Gentile honoured by Yad Vashem.

Q: Was Gulbenkian one of those saved?

A: No, definitely not. That’s a complicated story. Gulbenkian, that wonderful collection was intended to be left to the National Gallery in London. We would’ve had it. But Gulbenkian stayed in France and he collaborated big time. And as for that, there were sanctions against him from the British. And he, I suppose understandably, took Umbridge and he decided to give his collection to Lisbon rather than to London.

In the brick factory, there are little pictures etched out by the artists there. I’ve not been there. That would interest me very much.

Einstein was in Belgium in '33, invited to Cambridge but chose not to stay and went to the States in '34. Thank you.

Yes, no connection with Varian Fry. Guess Varian Fry began a literary magazine when they were at Harvard together.

I did actually just mentioned Fry’s link to Eleanor Roosevelt, but I don’t know about it in great detail. Right, yes, Emergency Rescue Committee.

I think we’re getting into repetition here.

Do I know about Antonio Gutierrez, secretary of the UN? No, I’m afraid I don’t.

So I think we’ve got to the end. Thank you very, very much for your attention and your comments.

• Thank you very much, Patrick. And thank you to everybody that joined us today, and we will see everybody tomorrow. Thanks, everybody. Bye-bye.

• Thanks you, bye.