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The Rescuer

JL;DR SUMMARY Dara Horn explores the legacy of Varian Fry, an American who risked his life to rescue over 2,000 European artists and intellectuals from the Holocaust. A way out west there was a fella, fella I want to tell you about, fella by the name of Jeff Lebowski. At least, that was the handle his lovin' parents gave him, but he never had much use for it himself. This Lebowski, he called himself the Dude. Now, Dude, that's a name no one would self-apply where I come from. But then, there was a lot about the Dude that didn't make a whole lot of sense to me. And a lot about where he lived, likewise. But then again, maybe that's why I found the place s'durned innarestin'.

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Tags

Jewish HistoryHolocaustJewish IdentityRighteous Among The NationsFranceRescueAmerican HistoryVarian FryArt And Intellectual RescuePierre Sauvage

Places mentioned

Los Angeles, California, United States
"One balmy winter morning last year, I took myself on a tour of homes in the Hollywood Hills, cruising along palm-lined streets called Napoli Drive, Amalfi Drive, Monaco Drive, and other names evoking the opposite side of the planet."
Marseille, Provence-Alpes-Côte-d’Azur, France
"Between 1940 and 1941, working out of a hotel room and later a small office in the French port city of Marseille, Varian Fry rescued hundreds of artists, writers, musicians, composers, scientists, philosophers, intellectuals, and their families from the Nazis, taking enormous personal risks to bring them to the United States."
Ridgewood, New Jersey, United States
"Fry was honored by Yad Vashem in 1997, 30 years after his death, as one of the Righteous Among the Nations; there is also a street named after him in his hometown of Ridgewood, N.J., not far from where I live."
Le Chambon, Auvergne-Rhône-Alpes, France
"Sauvages fascination with rescuers comes in part because he owes his life to them. He was born in 1944 in Le Chambon, France, a Huguenot village in the south central part of the country in which the entire town, following the leadership of its Protestant clergy, formed a silent conspiracy of goodness, as Sauvage has called it, to shelter Jews from the Nazis."

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Retrieved 2026-04-15 05:33:44 UTC
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