Fry ran a rescue network in Vichy France from August 1940 to September 1941 that helped 2,000 anti-Nazi and Jewish refugees mostly artists and intellectuals, escape from persecution by Nazi Germany during World War II.

[2] Fry spent "thirteen months directing a bold, high-risk, and much celebrated refugee-smuggling operation in the south of France that included an all-star cast of Kulturträgers [culture carriers], among them artists Marc Chagall and Max Ernst, and writer André Breton and philosopher Hannah Arendt.

He was the first of five Americans to be recognized as "Righteous Among the Nations", an honorific given by the State of Israel to non-Jews who saved the lives of many Jews and anti-Nazi refugees during World War II.

His parents were Lillian (Mackey) and Arthur Fry, a manager of the Wall Street firm Carlysle and Mellick.

During World War I, at 9 years of age, Fry and friends conducted a fund-raising bazaar for the American Red Cross that included a vaudeville show, an ice cream stand and fish pond.

In 1927, as a Harvard undergraduate, he founded Hound & Horn, an influential literary quarterly, in collaboration with Lincoln Kirstein.

[6][7] Through Kirstein's sister, Mina, he met his future wife, Eileen Avery Hughes, an editor of Atlantic Monthly, who was seven years his senior and had been educated at Roedean School and Oxford University.

[9] While working as a foreign correspondent for the American journal The Living Age, Fry visited Berlin in 1935, and witnessed Nazi abuse against Jews on more than one occasion, which "turned him into an ardent anti-Nazi".

"[6][10] Following his visit to Berlin, in 1935 Fry wrote about the savage treatment of Jews by Hitler's regime in The New York Times.

[16] On June 25, 1940, two hundred prominent people met at the Hotel Commodore in New York City and founded the Emergency Rescue Committee (ERC).

Another poll taken after the anti-Jewish Kristallnacht riots in Germany, found that only 21 percent of Americans wanted more Jewish immigrants to be admitted to the U.S. Department of State officials in charge of approving entry visas to refugees were often accused of being anti-Semitic and anti-refugee, but they reflected the views of the U.S. government and its people.

In August 1940, Fry arrived in Marseille representing the ERC[22] in an effort to help persons seeking to flee the Nazis.

[23][24] Fry had $3,000 taped to his leg and a list of 200 artists and intellectuals, mostly German Jews, under imminent threat of arrest by agents of the Gestapo.

[26] Fry's organization in Marseilles was called the Centre Americain de Secours (American Center for Relief).

An American named Leon "Dick" Ball guided them via smugglers' foot trails across the Pyrenees to an illegal entry into Spain.

Fry's most important associate was a young French Protestant named Daniel Bénédite who functioned as his Chef de Cabinet and often his eyes and ears.

[33] American Charlie Fawcett was the security guard, responsible for policing the long line of refugees waiting to be interviewed at Fry's headquarters.

Especially instrumental in getting Fry the U.S. visas he needed for the artists, intellectuals and political dissidents on his list was Hiram Bingham IV, an American Vice Consul in Marseilles.

[6][31][38][39] Another diplomat in Marseilles was Mexican Gilberto Bosques Saldívar who is credited with giving visas to 40,000 persons, mostly Jews, to emigrate to Mexico.

[40] The YMCA representative in Marseilles, Donald A. Lowrie was the leader of an advocacy group for refugees of 25 aid organizations in Vichy France.

[44] The Centre Americain de Secours office in Marseilles continued to function after Fry's departure in September 1941, getting an additional 300 people out of France.

[46]The priority of the United States in Vichy France was not facilitating the emigration of refugees to the U.S. John Hurley, a diplomat at the U.S. Consulate in Marseilles, advised Fry to return home and the ERC in New York called him back.

Apparently referring to Fry and the atmosphere at the Villa Air-Bel, Unitarian Charles Joy, said caustically that "working with refugees was not a parlor game.

"[47][2] Fry was forced to leave France in September 1941 after officials of both the Vichy government and the State Department objected to his covert activities.

Author Marino said the artistic and intellectual refugees handled by the ERC were like "herding cats...these were arrogant Germans who were used to having servants and ordering people around.

"[50] The selection of those deeded eligible for ERC help among many tens of thousands of refugees was a brutal process, consisting of interviews and the personal knowledge of Fry and his associates.

The recent reports of the systematic extermination of the Jews in Nazi Europe are of this order... we can offer asylum now, without delay or red tape, to those few fortunate enough to escape from the Aryan paradise.