A Righteous Gentile Remembered

Debbie Stillman writes about an almost forgotten hero of WWII, Harry Bingham:

He was posted in such faraway places as Peking, Warsaw, and London before he was named the American vice-consul to France and was posted to Marseilles in 1937. The US was neutral at the time and did not wish to annoy Marshal Petain’s puppet Vichy regime. So to that end, President Roosevelt’s government ordered its representatives in Marseilles not to grant visas to any Jews. But for Bingham, who was on the ground and who confronted misery and despair outside the consulate walls every day, this policy loomed before him as immoral and intolerable and so, risking his career, Bingham chose to do all in his power to undermine it. In defiance of his bosses in Washington, Bingham went on to grant over 2,500 US visas to Jews and other political refugees. Among the thousands Bingham saved are some names you might recognize: artists Marc Chagall, Max Ernst, and Marcel Duchamp; sculptor Jacques Lipchitz; writer Thomas Mann; and Nobel Prize-winning biochemist Otto Meyerhoff.

Being Jewish - Winter 2003 - A Dangerous Maverick and Hero