The film had a 50-city theatrical release, received two national prime-time broadcasts on PBS in 1990—accompanied by Bill Moyers' probing interview of the filmmaker—and remains one of the most widely used documentary teaching tools on the Holocaust.
In a paper presented in 2000 at the Remembering for the Future conference at Oxford University, Sauvage argued that "Viewed within the context of its time, Fry's mission seems not 'merely' an attempt to save some threatened writers, artists, and political figures.
"[1] While celebrating some remarkable Americans—Varian Fry, Miriam Davenport, Mary Jayne Gold, Charles Fawcett, Leon Ball, Hiram Bingham IV—the documentary places the story in the context of those challenging times, addressing American policies then towards the unwanted refugees.
Sauvage's footage, author Dara Horn reported in her book People Love Dead Jews, introduced her posthumously "to several exceedingly intelligent, colorful, and sincere Americans (none of them Jewish)".
Sauvage spent five years trying unsuccessfully to create a historical museum in his birthplace of Le Chambon and overseeing a temporary exhibit area in the heart of the village.
In 2013, a museum Lieu de Mémoire, spearheaded by then Le Chambon-sur-Lignon Mayor Éliane Wauquiez-Motte, was at last inaugurated in the village, with Sauvage was presenting the French version of Weapons of the Spirit on this occasion.
Sauvage returned to Paris at 18 to pursue his studies, staying with his cousin, Samuel Pisar, the Holocaust survivor, attorney, and author, who was to become the stepfather of U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken.
Although he had contributed to a documentary about the artist Robert Malaval in the '60s, Sauvage settled behind the camera as a staff producer-reporter for Los Angeles public television station KCET-TV, producing over thirty hours of varied programming dealing with a wide range of subjects.
For over 40 years, a lecturer on the Holocaust and its continuing challenges, Sauvage has long been one of a pioneering handful of experts on rescuers of Jews during the Holocaust—"righteous Gentiles"—and contends that they still have much to teach us.