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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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Remains of Jewish American WWII Pilot Return to US for Burial 82 Years After Death in Combat Mission Over China
US Army honor guard members begin to settle a casket into a grave at a cemetery in Greenville, South Carolina, Dec. 14, 2025, of 1st Lt. Morton Sher served with the 76th Fighter Squadron. Photo: Air Force Senior Airman Savannah Carpenter
The remains of a Jewish American fighter pilot in the US Army Air Force, who was shot down over China and killed in World War II, have been identified more than 80 years after his death and now buried in South Carolina, the US Department of War announced this week.
Army Air Forces 1st Lt. Morton Sher was killed in action on Aug. 20, 1943, when his P-40 Warhawk fighter-bomber aircraft crashed and burned in a rice paddy in the Xin Bai Village during a combat mission over Hunan, China, during World War II. He was 22 years old. Sher’s remains were accounted for this summer and have since been buried at a cemetery in his native town of Greenville, South Carolina. A memorial was held for him that included remarks by his nephew and a flyover conducted by the Air Force’s 476th Fighter Group, according to the Department of War.
Sher escorted bombers and flew dangerous combat missions in the 76th Fighter Squadron, 23rd Fighter Group, 14th Air Force. His unit was part of the famed Flying Tigers, a name given to a small group of American pilots who flew combat missions in China during World War II to help Allied forces.
“We never knew Morton, but he was larger than life in the stories our family told us, his photos, and his writings,” said Bruce Fine, Sher’s nephew. “He was certainly a man who filled his pages of life with meaning, and he lived every day to its fullest. In fact, the day before he died, on Aug. 19, 1943, he wrote a letter home telling his parents, ‘I let another pilot take that instructing job, for I find things too exciting here to leave right now,’ and the very next day, he was gone.”
Sher as a “real hero,” Fine added, “the kind you read about and see on the big screen, except he was real. We hope his bravery and his courage will inspire the family members who follow us to believe anything you can dream can be truly possible if you’re willing to commit to it and work hard to achieve it.”
During a mission in October 1942, Sher’s aircraft was forced to go down in a Chinese village because of engine damage. Grateful for American protection from Japanese forces, villagers embraced Sher as a hero and welcomed him with food and a celebration. He “entertained 15,000 with songs and a story, received a silk banner for his missions and was warmly escorted through nearby mountain villages back to his base,” according to the Department of War.
“Lt. Sher was shot down on Oct. 25, 1942, and returned to the 76th Fighter Squadron to fly, fight and win another day,” said Mark Godwin, a historian of the Air Force’s 23rd Wing. “He had an opportunity to return home and become an instructor pilot but chose to stay and continue the fight. He personified the last two core values: service before self and excellence in all we do.”
“[He] spent just over a year in China during World War II,” Godwin said. “He racked up three aerial victories before his untimely death. … He gave his life to protect his fellow Flying Tigers. He should forever be remembered for his courage and sacrifice.”
Following Sher’s death, local Chinese villagers placed a memorial stone at his crash site. He was posthumously awarded the Purple Heart in September 1943, which was presented to his mother in Greenville. The US conducted post-war search and recovery efforts, but a board of review concluded on Sept. 8, 1947, that Sher’s remains had been destroyed in the crash. They officially declared that he was killed in action and his body was unrecoverable, the Department of War explained.
After a private citizen contacted the US government’s Defense POW/MIA Accounting Agency (DPAA) in 2012 with a photo of Sher’s memorial site in China, the government agency visited the site in 2019. They initially found nothing but, following a more extensive search in 2024, recovered the plane wreckage and Sher’s remains, which were transferred to a lab in Hawaii. The remains were positively identified using DNA samples from Sher’s nephew and more than eight decades after his death, Sher’s remains were returned to his family.
“This was through team effort,” said Air Force Col. Brett Waring, 476th Fighter Group commander. “The teams that continue to scour the earth for our missing and KIA are beyond impressive. They’re part of that American commitment to individuals that endures across generations … when he was shot down, the local populace protected him when he survived the first [crash], and then prevented the enemy from taking his aircraft and body when he was killed in action. That speaks to the humanity that connects us all, even when other circumstances point towards adversarial actions.”
The Department of War also honored Sher’s bravery and sacrifice.
“Sher loved what he did and created a legacy that endures,” said the department. “His story, once unfinished, now stands a complete testament to service, sacrifice, and a nation’s promise to remember those who gave everything. That enduring legacy, woven from history, heroism and personal courage, continues to inspire both the families who remember him and the generations who follow.”
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New Cooking Show Competition ‘The Great Bubby Cook-Off’ Celebrates Jewish Food, Family Recipes
The four contestants on “The Great Bubby Cook-Off.” Photo: Manischewitz
An original cooking show competition that celebrates Jewish home cooking and family recipes premiered Friday on Kosher.com.
The four finalists on “The Great Bubby Cook-Off,” presented by the famous Jewish food brand Manischewitz, include a “bubby” from Delray Beach, Florida, and another from Manhattan, New York, and two contestants from Flushing, New York, and West Hartford, Connecticut, who were competing with “bubby-inspired recipes.”
The contestants were selected to compete on the show following a nationwide casting call. Home cooks submitted videos of themselves preparing their favorite Jewish dishes, including family recipes passed down through generations and personal twists on classic dishes. After online voting that was open to the public, four finalists were chosen to advance to a live cook-off in New York City in November.
The winner, to be revealed exclusively on the show, will be crowned “Bubby 2025” and receive a $5,000 cash prize, a featured appearance on the Manischewitz Food Truck as it tours the New York City area, and other prizes. The show is hosted by chef and cookbook author Naomi Nachman.
“‘The Great Bubby Cook-Off’ celebrates exactly what Kosher.com is all about — honoring tradition while inspiring a new generation of home cooks,” said Goldy Guttman, director of Kosher.com, in a released statement. “These bubby recipes carry stories, memories, and culture, and bringing them to life on screen allows us to share the heart of Jewish home cooking with audiences everywhere.”
“‘The Great Bubby Cook-Off’ is about so much more than cooking,” added Shani Seidman, chief marketing officer of Manischewitz. “It’s about honoring the women who shaped our traditions, our tables, and our memories — and celebrating the dishes that bring families together.”
More episodes of “The Great Bubby Cook-Off” will be announced throughout 2026. The show is free to watch, and an additional episode is under consideration that will include a behind-the-scenes look into the competition and judging, according to Manischewitz.
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On Instagram, ‘Rabbinic Fit Check’ is a look book for Jewish clergy
Rabbi Rafi Ellenson was getting ready for a full day of rabbinic duties in September when he jokingly asked a colleague, “What do I wear that’s appropriate both for religious school and a shiva?”
After some light-hearted deliberation, Ellenson, who works as an assistant rabbi for Congregation Shir Hadash, a Reform synagogue in Los Gatos, California, said they realized his wardrobe dilemma might deserve a spotlight on social media.
“We were like, oh, this would be a really fun idea for an Instagram account,” said Ellenson. It would show what rabbis are wearing and “the absurd things they have to do every day, dressing for 20,000 occasions and for 50,000 people.”
For help turning his idea into reality, Ellenson called Rabbi Arielle Stein, an assistant rabbi at Congregation Rodeph Sholom, a Reform synagogue on the Upper West Side of Manhattan, whom he had met in Jerusalem in 2019.
After some deliberation, the pair created Rabbinic Fit Check, an Instagram account billed as “a style diary for the rabbinate and beyond.”
“We’re trying to show diversity of rabbis, diversity of genders, diversity of expression,” said Ellenson. “There’s no one model, and there’s no one model in the real world, so we don’t want to feature only one model on the account.”
So far, Rabbinic Fit Check has featured 57 rabbis, clergy members and students from a range of denominations and garnered over 1,300 followers. The outfits range from cozy sweaters and “sensible” office wear to zebra-print skirts and a fashion-forward Delfina Balda pant suit.
“It’s nice to see that rabbis look like more than just that old oil painting of someone in a black coat,” said Rabbi Allison Poirier of the Conservative synagogue Temple Aliyah in Needham, Massachusetts. “It’s nice to see that we’re out here as new people, as colorful people of all ages and shapes and sizes, which I think in the world I work in, most people know, but it’s just nice to uplift that.”
Indeed, a new national study of the American rabbinate released last month by the Atra Center for Rabbinic Innovation found that 51% of the rabbinical students surveyed identified as LGBTQ+. According to the Atra report, 58% of rabbis surveyed identify as women, 30% as men, and 12% as nonbinary.
But the diversification of the rabbinate has also underscored a broader trend, with rabbis more often taking on an engaged, hands-on role rather than the old model of the “sage on the stage.”
Stein, who had already gone viral for her rabbinic style videos on social media and was featured in Vogue last month for her videos on clergy-friendly shoe choices, said the pair’s Instagram account has also come to serve another purpose: showing the rabbinate in a more intimate light.
“I think especially for our generation of rabbis, we’re real people, these are important ways that people can connect with us and build trust and understanding,” said Stein. “We’re not pretending that we’re somebody at work and somebody at home.”
Rabbinic Fit Check posted its inaugural outfits from Stein and Ellenson in mid-October. The pair then reached out to their colleagues for submissions, and users soon asked to be featured.
Poirier said that she had been drawn to post her style (J. Crew blazer, Birdy Grey dress, her sister’s thrifted sweater) because of the account’s “diversity and also the light-heartedness,” which she said offered a contrast to reality.
“Everything is so, so heavy right now, and a lot of our day is rightly dealing with some of the heaviness, and it’s nice to just have something that also uplifts rabbis as fun, joyful people, kind of expressing ourselves in this cute, silly way,” said Poirier.
“Rabbis are kind of in the zeitgeist in a lot of different ways, and there’s a lot to say about that both positive and negative, and certainly we’re tapping into some of that,” said Ellenson. “But I think we’re approaching an angle of we’re humans who have these cool jobs, and we want to show parts of ourselves through our clothing and express ourselves more fully and completely, and not bifurcate these two segments of our lives.”
Einav Rabinovitch-Fox, a professor at Case Western Reserve University who wrote a history of women’s fashion, said that she viewed the Rabbinic Fit Check account as part of a “new phenomenon” in which the public image of the rabbinate was shifting. She pointed to Nobody Wants This, the Netflix show starring heartthrob Adam Brody as a young Los Angeles rabbi that first aired in September 2024. The Amazon series Transparent, Extrapolations on Apple TV+ and the 2023 film You Are So Not Invited to My Bat Mitzvah all featured what Hey Alma, JTA’s sister site, called “hot rabbis.”
“It’s kind of like a sign of our times,” said Rabinovitch-Fox. “Not all of them are like Adam Brody, but I think it’s a depiction of a trend, and I think that Instagram account is part of it, like, ‘oh, look, Judaism is cool.’”
Rabbi Jamie Field, the director of education at Beth El Temple Center, a Reform synagogue in Belmont, Massachusetts, was featured on Rabbinic Fit Check shortly before her appearance on the Netflix show Squid Game: The Challenge. She said it was a “really beautiful that there is an increase in rabbinic visibility.”
“We have a really sacred responsibility to show that rabbis are real people, and that we are engaged and part of the world and being responsible for being part of that conversation, not just witnessing it through Netflix shows about rabbis,” said Field.
While Rabinovitch-Fox said religion does not always “celebrate the individual,” she added that “fashion is a really a great and simple way to make your own statement.”
“People want to find somehow to relate, and I think with this Instagram generation, fashion is something that is important to people, so it’s just another way to relate to that,” said Rabinovitch-Fox. “If you can talk with your rabbi about style, you have a cool rabbi.”
Rabbi Andrea London, the leader of Beth Emet The Free Synagogue, a Reform congregation in Evanston, Illinois, said she submitted a photo of herself and Cantor Natalie Young on Parashat Noah after Ellenson, who is a family friend, mentioned it to her in conversation. For her cameo, she wore a white button-down shirt with a gold necklace and slacks.
London, who was ordained in 1996, said that she had submitted the photo to offer the account “a little diversity of age.” She recalled that early in her career, “as a woman, you wouldn’t dare to be on the bimah without a skirt.”
“One of the things that was annoying in the rabbinate was that people would comment on my clothing a lot, and it was just tiresome and men didn’t get that,” said London. “And now, I think Rabbinic Fit Check is trying to turn it on its head, like let’s have fun with it as opposed to seeing this as somehow discriminatory or sexist in any way.”
So far, Ellenson and Stein said the response to the account from their congregants and colleagues had been positive. Looking ahead, Ellenson said they hoped to feature leaders from other faiths.
“I think it’s about joy, showcasing diversity, showcasing the personal, and showcasing that all of these pieces can be a part of cultivating rabbinic and cantorial and clerical work,” said Ellenson. “We can bring ourselves into the work, and that makes the work better when we’re being ourselves with our communities.”
This article originally appeared on JTA.org.
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