(5-58) Harry took eloquent photographs of these camps. One shows a long black tunnel with rows of army cots. At the end of the tunnel, light shines as a beacon.
(5-59) With the power to get people out of the concentration camps on his signature alone, Harry could issue what was called a convocation. He would then show up to call the individuals out of the camps. But Feuchtwanger was too high profile a character for Harry to get out that way.
Hiram Bingham
took this rare photograph of interned Germans and
Austrians at a camp in Aix-en-Provence, France. The young
vice consul would often enter internment camps and
arrange to have the imprisoned people released into his
custody. He would then arrange for their safe passage to
Portugal and the United States.
(5-60) One day when Feuchtwanger was out walking in the far
reaches of the camp, Harry arrived in a fancy car, wearing a
smartly tailored white suit and knit gloves. Harry was a tall and
handsome man, with a modest but imposing athletic presence. His
confident, polished manner must have gone over well with the
internment guards, as he managed to spirit Lion away. Once in his
car, Harry gave Lion dark glasses, a woman's coat, and a shawl to
throw over his head. If they were stopped at any of the Gestapo
checkpoints, Lion was to be his mother-in-law.
(5-61) He kept Feuchtwanger hidden in his house for weeks, waiting until safe passage could be arranged. Teaming up with Thomas Mann's brother and son, Feuchtwanger's group was taken by train to the last French stop before the Spanish border.
(5-62) For Spain, in lieu of passports they had affidavits signed by Harry. But the problem was the French exit visas, which were certainly not being issued for political refugees or escapees from the camps. At CerbËre, the last stop before the border, they disembarked and climbed up through olive groves into the hills and over the mountains into Spain while Fry took their bags over the border. One of the suitcases included an original manuscript of a Mahler symphony.
(5-63) When the weary hikers arrived at the Spanish border with their sandals full of rocks and their purses full of jewels, they bribed the Spanish border guards with cartons of Galouise Bleu given to them by Harry.
(5-64) Fry sent a telegram to Harry that night, saying that it would be OK for more of "Harry's friends" to come, code for telling Harry that Spain was still accepting affidavits in lieu of passports.
(5-65) On Oct. 27,1940, Thomas Mann wrote in a letter to Harry that his family "have repeatedly spoken to me about your exceptional kindness and incalculable help to them in their recent need and danger." Mann went on to ask for further help in procuring more visas for other refugees, then says, "I would be very pleased if I might have the opportunity of meeting you when your arduous duties permit you to return to the United States...
(5-66) "I want particularly to be able to thank you personally for your sympathetic help to the many men and women, including members of my own family, who have turned to you for assistance." The letter is signed, "Yours Very Sincerely, Thomas Mann."
(5-67) Harry kept signing affidavits. He provided papers, the routes, and the strategy for how to make it work. There was soon a steady flow of people getting out of the camps, and getting from Harry the precious visas that others refused to issue.
(5-68) One woman wrote in a recent issue of the Foreign Service Journal of her family's story. Her father was a publisher of anti-Nazi stories and was high on the Gestapo list and thus in great danger. "We joined the long line of refugees going south on the roads of France, one step ahead of the advancing German Panzer division." The American consul in Lyon refused to give them a visa. But in Marseilles, "the consul was Hiram Bingham, who did not hesitate to issue visas for our entire family. His courage and generosity cost him much. The Germans complained of his activities to the Vichy government, who then complained to Washington."
(5-69) Meanwhile, Harry kept arranging other escapes. At the border, a villa was rented where the refugees changed into the clothes of migrant workers to wear on what they began to call the "F route": a climb up over the Pyrenees to the Spanish border and then, by train across Spain to Lisbon and from there to freedom.
(5-70) The state department was getting increasingly agitated. They did not condone or approve of such activities. The United States was still not at war with Germany, and there were some people in power who thought the Germans would win. Therefore, for business reasons, friendly relations ought to be maintained.
(5-71) In September 1940, the New York Times, without naming names, carried the story of Feuchtwanger's escape. Within days, the U.S. Secretary of State sent a telegram to the Vichy Embassy and to the U.S. Consulate in Marseilles: "This Government does not repeat does not countenance any activity by American citizens desiring to evade the laws of the governments with which this country maintains friendly relations." To the side of the typed telegram was a hand-written insert: "You may point out also that their activities may be extremely embarrassing to American officers in their efforts to afford protection to American citizens and American interests."
(5-72) Clearly, Harry, in order to continue in his rescue efforts, had to go against the declared policy of the state department.
(5-73) At first, the U.S. Consul General tried to ignore Harry's actions, but soon, as a matter of policy, he threatened to have Fry arrested. So Harry stuck to the letter of the law during his hours at the consulate, but after hours, in his house, he still hid refugees and planned escapes.
(5-74) Harry was clearly exceeding his authority. He was doing what he thought was the right thing to do. The loss of his career and the approval of his family would be the resulting punishment for listening to his conscience.
(5-75) On April 26, 1941, in a telegram Secretary of State Cordell Hull sent to the American Consul in Marseilles, Harry was relieved of his post. It was emphatically stated in the telegram: "This transfer not made at his request nor for his convenience."
(5-76) The state department reassigned Harry to Lisbon. From there on in, Hiram Bingham IV would be repeatedly denied any further advancement in the Foreign Service.
Saved: Lion
Feuchtwanger, anti-Nazi German novelist. (AP photo)
(5-77) Yet during the space of one year, Harry had helped save
more than 2,500 lives. Among those saved:
- AndrÈ Breton, poet
- Marc Chagall, artist
- Marcel Duchamp, artist
- Max Ernst, artist
- Lion Fuechtwanger, historical novelist and author
- Konrad Heiden, anti-Hitler biographer
- Jacques Lipchitz, sculptor
- Golo Mann, historian, and Heinrich Mann, writer, brothers of the great novelist Thomas Mann
- AndrÈ Masson, Surrealist painter
- Walter Mehring, poet
- Dr. and Mrs. Otto Meyerhof, Nobel Prize-winning biochemist, and their son, Walter
- Guiseppe Modigliani, brother of the artist and leader of the Italian Socialist party
- Victor Serge, novelist and poet
- Friedrich Stampfer, former socialist deputy of the Reichstag
- Franz Werfel, author, and his wife, Alma, the widow of Gustav Mahler
- Arthur Wolf, prominent anti-Nazi lawyer
(5-78) Marc Chagall was on the Gestapo hit list because his art was unconventional and, by its very nature, inflammatory. Surrealism suggests the possibility of ambiguity, the opposite of the doctrines of Nazism. Though not interned, Chagall was in hiding in the South of France. Harry often visited his countryside studio and became a friend, with Chagall encouraging Harry's fledgling attempts at painting. (In the last year of his life, Harry took up free-style painting again with a passion and his last paintings suggest the work of Chagall.) In a letter from Chagall that survives, he writes to Harry, his "bon ami," that "Your good letter to us has touched me infinitely. Thank you with all my heart."
(5-79) It was all very well to arrange for the escape of such famous men as Chagall and the family of Thomas Mann, but Harry increasingly found himself in a terrible moral and practical dilemma. The famous great men had money and it was easy to get help for them. His son John says, "He did talk about helping Chagall and Feuchtwanger because they were semi-approved. And those early rescues were probably pretty exciting. But then came a flood of people trying to get out. He was approving visas, yes. But there had to be a huge number he was not approving as well."
(5-80) Those denials must have haunted Harry. The rank-and-filers, the humble, they, too, were in mortal danger.
(5-81) In my own process of discovery, I was struck by the photograph of people lining up for visas in front of the Marseilles Consulate. There is an air of desperation in their stance. The security guards at the front of the line look relaxed; they are talking with each other. But the people waiting in line are leaning forward, anxious, alert. These are not people with assigned seating passes to safety.
(5-82) And there were hundreds of them.
Every day.
(5-83) For a man who considered himself a strong Christian, for a man who believed that every man had a touch of divine, these decisions about who to save must have wracked him as it did some of the other righteous diplomats. Chiune Sugihara kept on signing visas even as his train was pulling out of the capitol of Lithuania. Yet for the rest of his life, instead of exulting in those he had saved, he was haunted both by his government's reprimands and those he had not saved.
(5-84) I will hazard a guess that one reason for Harry's silence on the subject of his rescues was due to that very same guilt.
(5-85) During the Nuremberg Trials, the Nazis said that they were simply obeying orders. In honoring the families of the righteous diplomats, Eric Saul, the founder, creator and curator of the "Visas for Life" exhibit at the U.N. said, "Your fathers could say, `I was only not following orders.' "
(5-86) When Harry was reunited with his wife and family, his eldest son Tony noticed that during the year they had been separated from him, his father's hair had turned white.
