When Anna Winger, the co-creator of the new Netflix series “Transatlantic,” relocated to the vibrant French port city of Marseille last year, she found a dilapidated villa awaiting her. The “relic,” as she called it, was ideal for her purpose: the recreation of the Villa Air-Bel where, early in World War II, a dapper American named Varian Fry oversaw an extraordinary rescue operation for artists and writers, most of them Jews, hounded by the Nazis and the Vichy government of occupied France.
Arriving in Marseille in mid-August, 1940, determined to help those in danger after witnessing the abuse of Jews in Berlin in 1935, Fry had to battle not only the French authorities and Nazi ideology, but also his own risk-averse United States Consulate in Marseille.
Improvising at a time when the United States had not yet entered the war, Fry, a rebel in a suit, navigated a narrow path until his forced departure in late August 1941. He was determined to secure safe passage and overseas visas for the thousands of “foreign undesirables” who soon came knocking on his door.
