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The real Jewish history behind Netflix’s ‘Transatlantic’ and the WWII rescue mission that inspired it
(JTA) — While the United States swung its door shut to most refugees during World War II, a young American in France saved thousands, including some of the 20th century’s defining artists and thinkers — such as Marc Chagall and Hannah Arendt — from the Nazis.
The rescue mission of Varian Fry, which went largely unrecognized during his life, is the subject of Netflix’s new drama “Transatlantic,” launching Friday from “Unorthodox” creator Anna Winger.
Starring Cory Michael Smith as Fry, the seven-episode “Transatlantic” aims to recreate his operation in Marseille after the Nazis defeated France and before the United States entered the war. Winger has injected several imagined romances, war efforts and characters into the fictionalized series, including one posed as Fry’s lover, named Thomas Lovegrove (played by Israeli Amit Rahav). Although Fry’s son has said that he was a “closeted homosexual,” no such person is known to have existed.
Winger believes these inventions will invite Netflix viewers to learn more about the true story.
“The people who lived through these stories are dying out,” she told the Jewish Telegraphic Agency. “My job is to bring this to a wide audience, to people who don’t know anything about it.”
The story behind the series
The real Varian Fry, a 32-year-old journalist and suit-clad Harvard graduate, showed up in Marseille with $3,000 taped to his leg and a list of 200 names in August 1940.
After France surrendered to Germany, Fry was among 200 Americans — including journalists, artists, museum curators, university presidents and Jewish refugees — to create the Emergency Rescue Committee at the Hotel Commodore in New York. This group was concerned with Article 19 in France’s armistice with Germany, which required French authorities to surrender any individuals demanded by the Germans.
The private relief organization drew up frenzied lists of anti-Nazi intellectuals who were trapped in France. With the help of first lady Eleanor Roosevelt, the ERC obtained some emergency visas and sent Fry to lead the rescue efforts in Marseille, a port city in the southern, unoccupied part of France.
What he found there was impossible to manage alone. His mission began in his room at the Hotel Splendide, where long lines of refugees waited in the morning before he woke up and at night after he went to bed. They sometimes walked straight into his bedroom without knocking, Fry wrote in a letter to his wife shortly after he arrived.
Gathering a small devoted staff, including Frenchmen, refugees and American expatriates, Fry moved his office to Rue Grignan and later Boulevard Garibaldi. Outside of Marseille he rented the Villa Air-Bel — colorfully recreated in “Transatlantic” — to house eminent writers and eccentric Surrealist artists waiting for visas.
The group developed legal and illegal branches, with the cover organization offering humanitarian relief while a behind-the-scenes operation flouted the law to help refugees escape. Using Marseille’s lively black market, the staff found hiding places, forged documents and bribed officials. Bil Spira, a Jewish Austrian-born cartoonist, forged passports for the ERC. (He was caught and deported to Auschwitz, but survived.) Resistance fighters Hans and Lisa Fittko devised an escape route to Spain, guiding refugees across the Pyrenees mountains on foot.
By the time he was forced out in October 1941, Fry’s shoestring operation had enabled 2,000 Jewish and other anti-Nazi refugees to flee Europe, including such towering artists as Chagall, Max Ernst and Marcel Duchamp, and intellects such as Arendt, Heinrich Mann and André Breton. It has been estimated that 20,000 refugees made contact with the rescue center in Marseille.
Fry’s illegal efforts made him plenty of enemies from his own country, who accused him of interfering with American neutrality in the war. He angered the state department, officials at the American consulate in Marseille and ERC members in New York. In August 1941, he was arrested by Vichy police and sent back to New York.
Fry died in 1967 at the age of 59. Only a few months earlier, he had received the Croix de Chevalier de la Legion d’Honneur, France’s highest decoration of merit — and the only official recognition in his lifetime. In 1994, he became the first American honored by Yad Vashem, Israel’s Holocaust memorial and history authority, as Righteous Among the Nations.
The Emergency Rescue Committee merged with another relief organization and became the International Rescue Committee in 1942. It is still in operation today and currently led by a Jewish CEO, former British politician David Miliband.
What’s in the show, and why some are against it
Some of Fry’s colleagues are fictionalized in “Transatlantic,” including the Jewish Berliner Albert Hirschman (Lucas Englander), who would become an economist in the United States; the Chicago heiress Mary Jayne Gold (Gillian Jacobs); and the Jewish Austro-Hungarian activist Lisa Fittko (Deleila Piasko). American diplomat Hiram Bigham, who gave Fry crucial help and even hid writer Lion Feuchtwanger in his home, is also a character in the show.
Throughout the seven episodes, rescue missions swirl around a series of fictional love affairs. In addition to Fry’s relationship, a triangle unfolds between Hirschman, Gold and the fictional American Consul Graham Patterson. (There is no evidence that Gold romanced either with her comrade or with any American consul in Marseille.) Lisa Fittko has an affair with the fictional character Paul Kandjo, who organizes armed resistance to Vichy.
Gillian Jacobs as heiress Mary Jayne Gold. (Anika Molnar/Netflix)
Several wartime plot points are also invented, including a prison break at Camp de Mille and Gold’s collaboration with British intelligence.
The degree of fictionalization has angered some people close to the real history. Pierre Sauvage, president of the Varian Fry Institute, called the show’s trailer “shocking.” Born in 1944, Sauvage survived the end of the Holocaust in the French village of Le Chambon-sur-Lignon, although his Jewish parents were turned down by Fry’s overwhelmed committee. He became close friends with some of Fry’s fellow rescuers in their later years, including the late Gold, Hirschman and Fittko.
“Are there any red lines?” he said. “Can one fictionalize at will, with no concern for the reality of the story, for the false impression that people will get — and for the way it affects the private lives of the families of people portrayed?”
Sheila Isenberg, who documented Fry’s operation in her book “A Hero of Our Own,” has described the series as a “travesty.” Thomas Fischer Weiss, a child survivor who attempted Fry’s escape route through the Pyrenees at 5 years old, also said the historical events needed no embellishment.
“I think you should tell it straight,” he told the JTA.
The legacy of the ‘troublemakers’
Sauvage believes that if Fry and his associates were alive today, they would like to be remembered for their convictions.
“These were people who were sort of in your face,” he said. “People who knew clearly what they felt and expressed it. They would often describe themselves as troublemakers. Mary Jayne [Gold] said about Varian that he was an ‘ornery cuss’ — it took orneriness to stick to your guns.”
That orneriness was critical at a time when many Americans were apathetic to the plight of European Jews — a 1938 poll in Fortune magazine found that fewer than 5% believed the United States should raise its immigration quotas for refugees. By the summer of 1941, it was too late to open the doors. The German policy of expelling Jews had changed into extermination.
According to Sauvage, America’s refusal to accept more refugees had something to do with that shift.
“The Nazis could legitimately come to the conclusion that the world wouldn’t do anything about the murders and wouldn’t really care all that much,” he said. “What the Varian Fry mission symbolizes is people who cared.”
Varian Fry with Miriam Davenport in the first offices of the Centre Américain de Secours in Marseille in 1940. Davenport, a friend of Mary Jayne Gold, also worked in the rescue effort but is omitted from “Transatlantic.” (Varian Fry Institute)
After their year in Marseille, the rescuers settled into more ordinary lives. Hirschman became an economist with appointments at Yale, Columbia and Harvard. Lisa Fittko ended up in Chicago, where she worked hard in import-export, translation and clerical jobs to earn money, eventually joining protests against the Vietnam War. Gold divided her time between New York City and a villa on the French Riviera.
They all remembered the rescue mission as their finest hour. Speaking with Sauvage, Gold called that year “the only one in her life that really mattered.”
A refugee story for troubled times
Fry’s rescue mission inspired Julie Orringer to write “The Flight Portfolio,” a 2019 novel that became the basis for “Transatlantic.” Orringer was captivated by the image of a young man arriving in Marseille, idealistic and unprepared for the depth of anguish he would find.
“The task was way too big,” she told the JTA. “He realized quite early on that he was going to ask for help, that he was going to have to turn to others who had deeper experience. And in collecting this group of incredible individuals around him, he assembled a kind of collective mind that really could make a difference under the very difficult circumstances that he faced.”
She believed that Fry left an example for the inexperienced. “If you‘re the kind of person who wants to take action on behalf of refugees, but doesn’t know how to do it, ask for help,” she said.
Winger, a Jewish Massachusetts native who has lived in Berlin for two decades, conceived of making a series about Fry in 2015. Germany saw an influx of more than a million migrants that year, most of them fleeing Syria’s horrific civil war. She optioned Orringer’s book in 2020.
“I thought a lot about the fact that people like us — artists, Jews, both — had to leave Berlin as refugees, but now there were so many people coming to Berlin as refugees,” said Winger.
Then, just as she started filming “Transatlantic” on location in Marseille, a new war broke out in Europe.
“The war in Ukraine started three days into the production and there was a whole other wave of refugees coming to Berlin,” she said. “Suddenly we were making it in another refugee crisis.”
Russia’s invasion of Ukraine hit close to the show, whose cast and crew hail from across the continent. Winger’s cinematographer is married to a Ukrainian woman. In Berlin, she saw thousands of refugees crowding into the central train station, some without shoes, food or plans for shelter.
“I think it gave us all a strong sense of purpose,” said Winger.
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The post The real Jewish history behind Netflix’s ‘Transatlantic’ and the WWII rescue mission that inspired it appeared first on Jewish Telegraphic Agency.
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Does Jewish law say it’s OK to lie to the high-roller who wants to manage your rock ‘n’ roll band?
The year is 1986.
Last night, as I left for our gig at the Ritz, Migdalia — a stunning Puerto Rican hooker — was back on my stoop, proffering her nasty wares and services. Coming home later that night with an onion bagel and a half-gallon of milk, I see her again, this time with beard stubble pushing up through her makeup. She shoots me a forlorn look and continues pissing, upright, in the tiny foyer of my Hell’s Kitchen apartment.
“Hey,” I say. “Wouldn’t it be better for everyone to pee outside the entryway?”
Once inside, moonlight is glinting off what appear to be diamonds — dozens of them. On closer inspection, I see they’re just bits of glass. Some asshole shot out my back window again.
In the morning, out on 47th Street, a car honks and I head downstairs. It’s a gold stretch limousine. My roadie — and soon-to-be manager — Wess is sitting in back in torn Levi’s, his pasty knees poking through the holes. Today we’re heading to Caesars Atlantic City to meet Jimmy Valenti. Jimmy got my new record from his nephew Bobby, a DJ at a club in Bergen County, and now he wants to help. They say he’s got connections.
The limo driver starts the car and turns around in his seat. “You guys need anyting, jus’ ask. We got shrimp cocktails and plenty o’ booze in the fridge.”
“Thanks,” I say.
“Jimmy’s crazy excited to see the bot’ a youse. He wants ya to know you’ll be flyin’ back to the city in his private chopper.”
We arrive at Caesars and two bellmen with little white towels draped over their forearms greet us at the door. Each towel is embroidered with my last name in gold. I quickly notice Himelman has been misspelled — one m where there should be two. Wess and I trade what-the-hell looks as we ride the elevator to the penthouse.
“Enjoy your stay,” one of the bellmen says, leading us into a room big enough for a grade-school soccer game.
In the center of the penthouse is a kidney-shaped swimming pool overlooking the Atlantic Ocean. Draped over a chaise longue are a swimsuit and two enormous towels, both embroidered with my last name — again, spelled incorrectly.
The ornate double doors swing open. In walks Jimmy Valenti, a large, gregarious man with dyed black hair and a Buddhist mala bead bracelet around his left wrist.
“Sit down, boys. Relax,” he says. “I’ll have Scotty send up lunch. You like chops?”
He leads us to chairs near the pool. “Pete, ya know the difference between a stallion and a gelding?”
Before I can answer — and of course I have no idea — Jimmy says, “A gelding is a horse with its balls clipped off.”
He pauses, letting the thought hang there.
“Without capital, that’s exactly what you are — a ball-less perdente. Good news is, I’m here to give you some. What do you need? 500K? A million?”
“Actually,” I say, “I hadn’t really given it much thought.”
The doors open again and two long tables are wheeled in. On the first is a platter of lobster tails on ice alongside a trough of French-fried onion rings. On the other, a crystal bowl of jumbo prawns, three massive Caesar salads, and a tray with enough porterhouse steaks to feed a dozen men.
Jimmy spears a slab of meat with the tip of his steak knife and waves it in my face. “Mangiare!”
“Jimmy,” I struggle to say through bites of the tenderest steak I’ve ever eaten, “I already got a guy helpin’ us out. He’s kind of our manager. Kind of.”
“Oh yeah?” Jimmy says. “What’s he puttin’ in, cash-wise?”
“Well, considering his time and everything, probably around $1,500.”
With a mouthful of bloody meat, Jimmy laughs. In fact, he laughs so hard and for so long I think he’s going to choke to death. He finally catches his breath.
“I see you in a rock video with some big-titted broad, walkin’ hand-in-hand near that giant globe they got down at Epcot Center. Romantic as hell. You ever been there? We shoot a real classy video for your song, “Only You Can Walk Away” for around 100, 150 grand. Then we pull some strings and get MTV to play the shit out of it.”
He leans in. “Whaddya say, Pete? You a stallion or a gelding?”
Jimmy pulls out three cigars. “Cubans,” he says, and from under the table produces a gold bucket of matchbooks, each bearing a close-but-no-cigar version (Samson Laraunce) of my band’s name, Sussman Lawrence, embossed in gold letters.
He cuts the tip of a cigar with the steak knife and asks, “Pete, I gotta know. You a horse with balls or no balls? Which is it?”
He looks out at the dark waves.
As I struggle to come up with the right answer, I can’t help imagining some unfortunate future in which I’m forced, at the barrel of a gun, to sing at Jimmy’s cousin’s wedding, his uncle’s birthday, his nephew’s christening, and his great-aunt’s wake.
Clearly, I am the gelding.
“It sounds amazing,” I say. “I’ll just need a day or two to think it over.”
Jimmy reaches for the phone. “Scotty, can we fly these boys back to the city in the bird, or is the weather too rough?”
A couple days later, back in Hell’s Kitchen, I compose this simpering, utterly gelding-esque letter:
Dear Mr. Valenti,
Thank you for your graciousness and generosity. This past month I’ve been offered a position as a broker with Merrill Lynch, and today, regrettably, I’ve decided to join the firm.
Should I ever decide to pursue a career in music again, please know you’ll be the first person I call.
Today, decades later, I search for a justification for my lie. Since nothing else seems to apply, I turn to Halacha, Jewish law, and settle on this: pikuach nefesh — the saving of a life — overrides nearly every commandment. Given the circumstances, a credible argument can be made that my life would have been at risk if I failed to perform or show up when asked; therefore, lying was permitted.
That said, I should also mention that the man did not have the best personal hygiene. I’m not certain that alone rises to the level of pikuach nefesh, but it didn’t help.
As for the “bird,” Jimmy was right. The weather was too rough. Scotty had the limo we came down in “all refreshed ‘n’ replenished.” The same driver took us all the way back to Hell’s Kitchen. Migdalia was there, sitting on the front stoop. I stopped into a bodega and picked up a tuna sandwich for the both of us.
The post Does Jewish law say it’s OK to lie to the high-roller who wants to manage your rock ‘n’ roll band? appeared first on The Forward.
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In two controversial ads, a tale of how not to fight antisemitism — or support Israel
Multimillion dollar ad campaigns aimed at scaring Jews, or scaring others on Jews’ behalf, are not working.
They are not effectively combating antisemitism. They are not strengthening Jewish life. And they are not persuading Americans to embrace Israel or its government’s current course of action. They are, in fact, backfiring.
That was recently made clear in two very different contexts: A New Jersey Congressional race, and the Super Bowl. The reactions to two disparate ads — one attacking former Rep. Tom Malinowski, and one advocating an approach for fighting antisemitism that some found dated — sent the same message.
We Jews are tired. We are tired of being told that the only way to be Jewish in the United States is to defend Israel’s indefensible actions. We are tired of being blamed for every policy choice the Israeli government makes. We are in a precarious moment in history, possibly a pivotal one — and we are tired of being shown half-hearted solutions. We are tired of being afraid.
Fear is not a strategy. It is a reflex. And acting reflexively will not help us build a strong future.
A telling political miscalculation
The United Democracy Project, the super PAC affiliated with AIPAC, spent at least $2.3 million attempting to defeat Tom Malinowski in the race to replace now-New Jersey Gov. Mikie Sherill in the House of Representatives. Malinowski is no fringe critic of Israel. He is a longtime supporter of the Jewish state, who has said he would not deny the country what it needs to defend itself.
His only deviation from AIPAC orthodoxy was that he refused to rule out placing conditions on U.S. aid. For that, he became a target.
The AIPAC-backed ads themselves did not mention Israel at all. Instead, they criticized Malinowski for a vote on immigration enforcement funding during President Donald Trump’s first term, in a clear attempt to paint him as unreliable on domestic security issues. The goal, as a spokesperson for the PAC stated openly, was to push votes toward the group’s preferred candidate in the crowded primary.
Instead, Analilia Mejia, a left-leaning organizer who openly stated she believes Israel committed genocide in Gaza, surged to the lead. She declared victory on Tuesday.
In other words, after $2.3 million in negative ads, the candidate who most directly accused Israel of genocide appeared to benefit the most.
Many of AIPAC’s choices in this matter could be criticized, including their stance that openness to any conditions on aid is anti-Israel or worse, antisemitic. But perhaps the most important one was their decision to treat the issue of support for Israel as one that must be smuggled into a race under cover of unrelated issues.
If the case for unconditional support of Israel’s current government is strong, then why cloak it in ads about ICE? If such support is as morally and politically sound as its architects insist, it should be able to stand in the open.
The choice to obscure it suggests something else: that traditional, narrow support for the current Israeli government and its military campaigns no longer carries the traction it once did. Voters can sense when an argument is being rerouted through unrelated fears. And when they do, it breeds not persuasion but distrust.
Post-it advocacy
Then there was the Super Bowl.
An ad funded by Patriots owner Robert Kraft’s Blue Square Alliance Against Hate, formerly known as the Foundation to Combat Antisemitism, ran during the game. In it, a teenage Jewish boy walks down a school hallway, not knowing that someone has put a Post-it on his backpack reading “dirty Jew.” He looks small and isolated.
A larger Black classmate notices, covers the note with a blue square, then puts another blue square on his own chest in solidarity. The message is that allies can stand up to antisemitism.
But the image felt oddly untethered from the current moment. It asked viewers to see Jews primarily as vulnerable targets of crude prejudice. It did not speak to the nuance of Jewish life in America today. It did not grapple with the political entanglements or technological shifts shaping public debate. It flattened Jewish identity to an experience of persecution.
The same broadcast gave us a chance to understand the risks of that approach — of acting like minorities live in a state of constant endangerment.
Puerto Rican artist Bad Bunny headlined the halftime show with a performance that was an act of cultural declaration. His staging celebrated Puerto Rican life and heritage, in all its complexity. There were the sugar cane fields, where enslaved people were forced to labor before emancipation, turned into a site of essential but emotionally mixed heritage. There were joyful community scenes interspersed with critiques of infrastructural failure. He performed almost entirely in Spanish, ending with a roll call of countries across the Americas and a message of unity that transcended borders and expectations.
That was a radical act at a time when this country is rife with state violence largely targeting Spanish speakers from many of those countries. Immigration and Customs Enforcement raids, deportations, and threats against immigrants that have left families terrified and communities in crisis. Just days before his performance, Bad Bunny used his Grammy acceptance speech for Album of the Year to demand “ICE out,” a protest call to make clear that immigration enforcement’s brutality was unacceptable and dehumanizing.
The contrast could not be sharper.
Bad Bunny’s presence, his language choice, his celebration of heritage spoke to millions; it was the most-watched halftime show ever. It’s hard to imagine it being so successful if he had focused exclusively on the Latinx experience of persecution in the U.S.
Cultural vitality is an essential partner to moral clarity in building a stronger future. That building means saying no to violence, but also yes to life, even when it is complex and unsettled. It means joy. It means pride.
The AIPAC-funded ad against Malinowski and the Blue Square Alliance-funded one about fighting antisemitism made the same mistake. Fear alone does not persuade people to seek change. Faith in the good that life has to offer must be part of the picture.
In the classic Jewish text The Big Lebowski, Walter Sobchak delivers a vocal celebration of our identity. “Three thousand years of beautiful tradition from Moses to Sandy Koufax,” he says, “you’re goddamn right I’m living in the past.”
It’s a funny line. But it’s also a reminder.
We come from a civilization of argument, poetry, exile, reinvention, baseball heroes, mystics, storytellers, radicals, comedians, ping-pong hustlers and stubborn moral voices. We do not need to be reduced to frightened caricatures. We do not need to outsource our dignity for protection. We do not need to insist on adherence to dated principles in order to prove our belonging.
If we are going to invoke thousands of years of Jewish history, let it be the history of ethical wrestling, cultural creativity, and unapologetic presence. Let it be a Judaism that refuses both erasure and weaponization.
That is the Jewish future worth living for.
The post In two controversial ads, a tale of how not to fight antisemitism — or support Israel appeared first on The Forward.
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Tucker Carlson, the Kennedy Assassination, and the Theater of ‘Just Asking’ About Israel
Fox personality Tucker Carlson speaks at the 2017 Business Insider Ignition: Future of Media conference in New York, U.S., November 30, 2017. Photo: REUTERS/Lucas Jackson
In one of Tucker Carlson’s recent Instagram reels, drawn from a conversation with far-left anti-Israel pundit Cenk Uygur, Carlson returned to a maneuver that has become central to his treatment of Israel and Jews.
Carlson noted references to Israel in the assassination files of John F. Kennedy and Robert F. Kennedy, and wondered aloud why some remain redacted more than 60 years later.
His guest, Cenk Uygur, supplied the line that Carlson basically asked for: “That’s almost an admission.”
Carlson widened the frame: Why do we keep seeing Israel [in these files]? Why are the lines blacked out? Why, he asked, are there two “monuments” in Israel to James Jesus Angleton, the CIA’s former counterintelligence chief?
Then came the disclaimer. Carlson says he opposes conspiracy thinking because it “drives you crazy.” But, he adds, “if you don’t tell people the truth, like what are they supposed to think?”
The performance is familiar. The host is merely “asking questions.”
But questions of this type are not requests for information. They are accusations regardless of the punctuation. They gesture toward a very nefarious destination, while preserving the speaker’s ability to claim he never quite traveled there.
And as with almost everything Carlson has written or said about Israel in the past few years, this series of “questions” is missing important information and is deeply misleading.
Anyone who has spent time with the Kennedy archives knows that Israel is hardly unique in attracting redactions. Black bars sit beside Mexico, Cuba, the former Soviet Union, Jordan, and a host of other countries. They exist for reasons that are often mundane: protecting sources, preserving methods, honoring liaison agreements, or shielding names that remain sensitive.
A redaction is not a confession. It is often paperwork.
Carlson should know this. Uygur should as well.
But this ordinary explanation, and the fact that many other countries have redactions in the Kennedy assassination files, would collapse the drama.
The “show” depends on persuading viewers that redactions related to Israel must mean something darker.
And so, evidence is withheld. Suspicion advances. Tone does the work that proof cannot.
This is not investigation. It is nefarious storytelling.
Then there is the Angleton insinuation.
Angleton oversaw counterintelligence and, among many responsibilities, managed relationships with allied services across Europe and the Middle East. His ties with Israel grew out of years of professional cooperation and personal familiarity.
Israel later honored him.
There is nothing extraordinary in that. Intelligence communities commemorate foreign officials who strengthen relationships and collaboration. Streets are sometimes named. Plaques are mounted.
Gratitude is not evidence of control. And commemoration is not proof of conspiracy.
To present routine diplomacy as something sinister is to convert normal statecraft into conspiracy.
Carlson’s particular gift (and grift) lies in inversion. He warns against conspiracism while practicing it. He performs reluctance while manufacturing certainty.
If conspiracy thinking corrodes those who consume it, as he says, one might imagine restraint before distributing it at scale.
But insinuation has become Carlson’s product. And it is not randomly distributed. It moves in one direction. The questions chosen, the contexts omitted, the raised eyebrows, the studied bewilderment — they point somewhere specific.
Toward Jews. Toward Israel.
There is never any actual evidence that Tucker provides. What remains are misleading hints elevated into conclusions, delivered with deniability and received, inevitably, by far too many, as fact.
History knows this propaganda method well. It is the politics of implication, the art of constructing guilt through repetition rather than demonstration. The speaker positions himself just outside the accusation while ensuring that the audience hears it clearly.
We know, in retrospect, what such machinery can produce.
The tragedy is not only that it is dishonest. It is that it works.
Micha Danzig is an attorney, former IDF soldier, and former NYPD officer. He writes widely on Israel, Zionism, antisemitism, and Jewish history. He serves on the board of Herut North America.