{"product_id":"a-quiet-american-the-secret-war-of-varian-fry-9780312203566","title":"A Quiet American: The Secret War of Varian Fry","description":"\u003cp\u003eThe history of Varian Fry is perhaps one of the least known yet most extraordinary sagas of World War II. In the summer of 1940  following the defeat of France by Hitlers armies  Fry  an idealistic American journalist and classical scholar  arrived in the port city of Marseilles armed with only three thousand dollars and a list of two hundred names. Sent by the newly formed American Emergency Rescue Committee  Fry was charged with the task of finding many of this centurys most famous artists and intellectuals and helping them escape from Nazi-occupied France. With the help of a dedicated staff  Fry immediately established a legal French relief organization  the American Relief Center  as a front for his covert rescue operation. Using a variety of clandestine and sometimes illegal means  from raising funds on the black market and forging documents to smuggling refugees via secret mountain and sea routes  Fry was able to channel some two thousand endangered people out of France and to the relative safety of Portugal  North Africa  and the United States. In a rescue operation unprecedented in modern times  Fry managed to save a virtual roll call of twentieth-century genius. Among the lucky were the artists Marcel Duchamp  Andre Masson  Marc Chagall  Max Ernst  Wilfredo Lam  and Jacques Lipchitz; writers Franz Werfel  Hans Habe  Victor Serge  Walter Mahring  Hannah Arendt  Andre Breton  Lion Feuchtwanger  and Heinrich Mann; scientists Peter Pringsheim  Emil Gumbel  and Nobel Prize winner Otto Meyerhof; and musicians Erich Itor-Kahn and Wanda Landowska. Alma Mahler also escaped  bringing with her original scores composed by her first husband  Gustav Mahler  and manuscript symphonies by Georg Bruckner. After more than thirteen months of tirelessly spiriting people away under the constant threat of arrest by the Gestapo  Fry was finally deported by the Vichy French government in September 1942 as an \"undesirable alien\" for protecting Jews and anti-Nazis. Forced to return to the United States  Fry died in 1967  tragically without ever receiving recognition for his work from his own government. Only posthumously has he been honored by the United States Holocaust Museum and Israels Yad Vashem. A Quiet American is a penetrating examination of the life of a genuine American hero whose courage  humanity  and ingenuity significantly changed the character of American culture.\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"My Store","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":45279942639669,"sku":"ByrdShop_031220356X","price":59.06,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0627\/8139\/0901\/files\/9780312203566.jpg?v=1780616387","url":"https:\/\/atxbooks.com\/products\/a-quiet-american-the-secret-war-of-varian-fry-9780312203566","provider":"ATX Books","version":"1.0","type":"link"}