Assignment by Varian Fry

Author:Varian Fry [Fry, Varian]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9780786755226
Publisher: Argo-Navis

Marc Chagall standing in front of his painting “Three Candles.” (Photographer unknown. 1940–41.)

18

Failure

Four or five days later, Dick Ball brought us the news. He had just come up from Narbonne. As he got off the train, he had seen Paul Hagen’s four friends chained together and heavily guarded, waiting on another platform. We wouldn’t believe him at first, but he insisted there could be no mistake about it. We got our Corsican lawyer to make inquiries and we soon learned that Dick had been right.

The Bouline had slipped out of port right under the noses of the port guard. She had sailed all that night and all the next day. Then, toward evening, she had run into a storm. The wind tore the sails; the waves lashed the deck. By nightfall, the little boat was out of control and leaking badly. Half the passengers were so seasick they didn’t care whether they lived or died. The others worked the pump till it broke. Then they bailed out with pails.

Toward morning the storm subsided, and the day dawned calm and clear. Paul’s friends wanted to continue the trip at all costs, if not to Gibraltar, then to Spain or Corsica. But everyone else on board had had enough. They ignored the pleas of the prisoners and the consequences to themselves if they returned to Marseilles. At about half past eight in the morning, they brought the boat around and started back toward the same port they had left.

Toward noon, a French coast-guard vessel overtook them and towed them to the little harbor of Port de Bouc. There they were arrested and sent to Aix-en-Provence to await trial on charges of attempting to leave France without authorization. It was while they were being transferred from the train to the Aix-en-Provence trolley that Dick had seen them.

We hired a battery of lawyers to defend them, and expected, at any moment, to have to hire another battery of lawyers to defend ourselves. But after three months in jail, awaiting trial, the four men were sentenced to one month in prison. Because they had already served three times that long, they were immediately set free. As they walked out of the courtroom, the Vichy government was waiting to pick them up. They were all returned to the prison of Vernet, where they were put under a much heavier guard.

Our connection with the attempted escape, and the Bouline, was never mentioned. If the police were suspicious, they did not reveal it.

During all this time, Frank Bohn and I were called to the American Consulate almost every day and asked when we were planning to leave France. We also got cables from our relatives and friends and employers in the United States urging us to come home.

Bohn finally decided to go and left the first week in October. I stayed. With Mehring in bed, the Bernhards still waiting in the tourist hotel, and Paul’s friends still in prison, I felt more than ever that I couldn’t leave now, no matter what pressures were brought to bear on me.

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