German victory over France in June 1940 brought new dangers for those who had sought a safe haven there from Nazi persecution. Especially alarming was the “surrender on demand” clause of the armistice which required authorities in Vichy France, the southern part of the country not occupied by Germany, to arrest any individuals the Nazi regime demanded. Thousands of Europe’s most renowned writers and artists, mostly Jews, now faced immediate threat. What could be done?

Our speakers, historian Daniel Greene and documentary filmmaker Pierre Sauvage, will discuss what Americans knew about Nazi policies toward the Jews, the actions that were taken—and the actions not taken—by the U.S. government, private organizations and individuals. What factors influenced U.S. policy during this fateful year for refugees? What rescue efforts were undertaken? And what more might have been done in the critical period before a policy of expulsion became one of genocide?

They will bring their expertise to these and other still debated questions, focusing specifically on the actions of Varian Fry (1907-1967), a New York intellectual who after the fall of France to the Nazis spent a year in the southern port city of Marseilles. Defying the Nazis, the French Vichy regime and his own government, Fry led one of the most remarkable and successful rescue efforts of the Nazi era, saving some 2,000 artists, intellectuals, and anti-Nazi refugees, Jewish and non-Jewish.

Daniel Greene is Subject Matter Expert at the US Holocaust Memorial Museum and Adjunct Professor of History at Northwestern University. In 2018, he curated Americans and the Holocaust, an exhibition that opened at the USHMM to commemorate its 25th anniversary. The exhibition inspired the Emmy-nominated documetnary series The US and the Holocaust that aired on PBS in September 2022. Greene and Edward Phillips also co-edited Americans and the Holocaust: A Reader, published by Rutgers University Press in 2022. From 2019 to 2023, Greene was President and Librarian at the Newberry Library in Chicago.

Pierre Sauvage is an Emmy Award-winning documentary filmmaker and President of the Chambon Foundation which he founded in 1982. Born in Le Chambon-sur-Lignon, France, he is a child survivor of the Holocaust and a child of Holocaust survivors. Sauvage is best known for his feature documentary Weapons of the Spirit which tells the story of the conspiracy of goodness in a community that saved some 5,000 Jews. Weapons of the Spirit received numerous awards, including the prestigious Dupont-Columbia Award in Broadcast Journalism. It continues to be one of the most widely used documentary teaching tools on the Holocaust. Sauvage is currently at work on a major documentary on Varian Fry and his colleagues