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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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A Message From the Torah for 2026: Live Now in a Way You’ll Be Proud of Later
A Torah scroll. Photo: RabbiSacks.org.
I have always cherished Ludwig van Beethoven’s last words, spoken on his deathbed: “Plaudite, amici, comedia finita est.” “Applaud, my friends, the comedy is over.”
This kind of blunt honesty only comes from people facing their final moments. The masks drop, the posturing stops, and what’s left is pure truth.
Steve Jobs was diagnosed with terminal cancer in October 2003. Remarkably, he lived for another eight years, during which he became deeply reflective, increasingly conscious of his legacy and of life’s meaning in ways he had never been before.
In the address he gave at the Stanford commencement in 2005, he told the graduating class and their families, “You can’t connect the dots looking forward — you can only connect them looking backward.”
He didn’t say it explicitly, but his words came from a deep awareness of his own mortality. The message was clear. He was looking back on his life, taking stock, and seeing patterns that only become clear near the end. When death feels real, clarity follows.
Jobs also talked to the Stanford students about his failure, about being fired from the company he started, and about death itself. Looking back, his speech feels less like a graduation talk and more like a final message. It wasn’t about money or material things, but about meaning. Some things in life matter. Others don’t. Some things are just noise. Others have real substance.
History is full of moments like this, when great figures, as their lives are coming to a close, suddenly see what really matters. Near the end of his life, Thomas Jefferson wrote to his beloved daughter, Martha Jefferson Randolph, “The last pang of life is in parting from you!”
What worried him most about death wasn’t losing power or fame, but the pain of being without those he loved. When all is said and done, relationships with our loved ones are what really matter, and our career or achievements pale into insignificance by comparison.
Sir Isaac Newton expressed something similar, though in a different way, as he looked back on his incredible life. Newton, whose discoveries changed how we see the universe, spoke with great humility: “I do not know what I may seem to the world — but as to myself, I seem to have been only like a boy playing on the seashore, and diverting myself now and then in finding a smoother pebble or a prettier shell than ordinary, whilst the great ocean of truth lay all undiscovered before me.”
Even after a lifetime of achievement, he didn’t focus on his success. Instead, he saw clearly how much was still unknown, and how even greatness can feel small when you look at life’s bigger picture.
This is the emotional and moral setting at the start of Parshat Vayechi, which holds the Torah’s great final conversation. Jacob is dying, and he knows it. In his last moments, he gathers his children and speaks to them — not as a nostalgic father looking back, but as someone who truly understands who they are and what each one needs to hear.
If we expect deathbed speeches to be warm and fuzzy, Jacob’s version of one will come as a surprise. Some of his words are blessings, but others are more like rebukes. Reuven is reminded he didn’t reach his potential. Shimon and Levi are called out for their violence. Yehuda is elevated to family leadership, but is also reminded that this role comes with responsibility, not privilege.
This isn’t a “feel good” speech. It’s a speech that values truth over comfort. And that’s exactly the lesson of Jacob’s last words: legacy isn’t about saying nice things, but about saying what’s needed. Jacob isn’t focused on how his sons feel right now. He cares about who they will become after he’s gone, and how his words will echo through their lives and future generations.
Which brings us to today’s world, where we tend to focus more on our image while we’re alive and often don’t think about how we’ll be remembered. Social media in particular has taught us to always project an image that’s curated and perfect in the here and now, with no thought about the long term impact.
Everything is about appearances and how things are seen in the moment. We tell our own stories as they happen, believing that if we control how things look, we can control the outcome.
Vayechi breaks that illusion. Jacob reveals something uncomfortable: you can’t write your own legacy. He is brutally honest with his sons, and in doing so, he also faces his own role as a father. He doesn’t hide the truth. He points out their patterns, their tendencies, their choices — not to shame them, but to help them see both their strengths and weaknesses, take responsibility, and grow into the best version of themselves.
Vayechi is honest, but it is not hopeless. Yaakov doesn’t say, “This is who you are, and you can’t change.” He says, “This is who you have been — now choose what to do with it.” Steve Jobs ended his Stanford speech with the famous line, “Stay hungry. Stay foolish.”
But the line before is even more telling. He called death “life’s change agent,” the force that clears away what doesn’t matter to make room for what does. The message is clear: it’s better to let that kind of clarity shape our lives now, instead of waiting until the end.
Vayechi teaches this lesson. When we reflect honestly, death doesn’t make life smaller — it makes it sharper. It removes pretense and leaves us with what really matters. Seeing our lives from a distance can be cleansing. The key is to live that way now, so we won’t need to revise it later.
It’s an idea that finds a moving expression in Viktor Frankl’s Man’s Search for Meaning. Frankl describes a woman who was his patient reflecting on her life, a life that was shaped by suffering and sacrifice as she cared for a severely disabled son.
Viewing her life as if from its end, she concludes — through tears — that it was not a failure. On the contrary, it was filled with meaning. The pain had turned her life into one of love and responsibility.
Frankl’s point is devastatingly simple: when life is seen through the lens of its conclusion, meaning often emerges where none had been visible before.
Steve Jobs was right: you can only connect the dots of a life by looking back. But Parshat Vayechi shows us we don’t have to wait until the end to start that process. Jacob connects the dots for his sons while he’s still alive — but more importantly, while they all still have many years to live.
The challenge he gives us is simple: live now in a way that will make sense later, when we look back. Because when the full story is told, the dots will connect, whether we like the picture or not. The only thing we really control is how we choose to draw them from the start.
The author is a rabbi in Beverly Hills, California.
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Israel Cannot Outsource Its Survival
Israel’s Iron Dome anti-missile system intercepts rockets launched from the Gaza Strip, as seen from Sderot, Israel May 13, 2023 Photo: REUTERS/Ammar Awad
Israel’s security doctrine has been shaped by a harsh but undeniable reality: hesitation invites criticism, but delay can invite catastrophe.
This is not a posture of arrogance or defiance; it is an expression of responsibility toward all of Israel’s citizens. For Israel, the cost of miscalculation is not theoretical, it is measured in lives. From its founding, Israel has faced existential threats that no other modern democracy has had to confront so consistently or so closely.
Surrounded by hostile actors, terrorist organizations, and regimes that openly question its right to exist, Israel has learned that survival depends on clarity, preparedness, and the willingness to act when necessary, even when such actions are unpopular internationally. Waiting for consensus or permission has historically proven to be something that could endanger Israel’s very existence.
This does not mean Israel rejects peace. On the contrary, Israel has repeatedly demonstrated a willingness to pursue peace where peace is genuinely possible, and cooperation where cooperation enhances security. Peace treaties with former adversaries, regional partnerships, and humanitarian initiatives all testify to Israel’s desire for stability and coexistence. But peace cannot be built on unenforceable promises or blind faith in actors who have repeatedly violated agreements and norms.
Israel will not gamble its existence on assurances that cannot be guaranteed or enforced. Sovereignty, in this context, is not a symbolic concept or a political slogan. It is the concrete ability to defend oneself when no one else will, or when others cannot act in time. Sovereignty means maintaining independent judgment, operational freedom, and the resolve to protect one’s population under all circumstances.
History has taught the Jewish people an enduring and painful lesson: ultimate responsibility for Jewish survival rests with the Jewish State itself. Centuries of persecution, abandonment, and broken promises culminated in a clear understanding that security outsourced is security endangered. Israel’s independence is not only political; it is moral and existential.
Alliances matter. International partnerships, shared values, and moral clarity play an important role in strengthening Israel’s position and legitimacy. Israel values its allies and understands the importance of cooperation in a complex global environment. But when survival is at stake, alliances cannot replace independent decision-making.
No ally can assume responsibility for Israel’s existence, and none should be expected to.
When Israel acts to protect itself, it often ends up protecting others as well. By confronting extremist ideologies, disrupting terrorist networks, and standing as a frontline defender against radicalization, Israel contributes to global security, even when this reality is uncomfortable or inconvenient for the international community to acknowledge.
In the end, Israel’s guiding principle remains clear: peace where possible, strength where necessary, and sovereignty as the final shield.
History has shown that when Israel defends itself decisively, it not only safeguards its own people but helps prevent greater instability beyond its borders. Whether the world is ready to admit it or not, Israel’s self-defense has often served as a defense of shared values and global security itself.
Sabine Sterk is the CEO of Time To Stand Up For Israel.
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Selective Reporting: How Gaza Aid Vetting Became a Media Narrative
Trucks carrying humanitarian aid and fuel line up at the crossing into the Gaza Strip at the Rafah border on the Egypt side, amid a ceasefire between Israel and Hamas in Gaza, in Rafah, Egypt, October 17, 2025. Photo: REUTERS/Stringer
Embedding operatives in civilian and humanitarian organizations in Gaza to evade detection by Israeli authorities has been a key strategy of Hamas and other terrorist organizations. Israel has consistently worked to prevent well-intentioned humanitarian organizations from being exploited for these purposes.
This past week, Israel demonstrated yet again its persistence in combating terrorism wherever it may exist by suspending the Gaza operations of 37 humanitarian organizations that refused to cooperate with the rules laid out by Israel.
In March 2025, Israel notified every aid organization in the Gaza Strip that they had to complete a re-registration process to be able to continue their operations in January 2026.
The main requirement asked of the organizations was to submit a list of all employees as part of a security screening process. Those who did not complete the process would be unable to continue their operations.
Protecting Aid – Preventing Exploitation
As of January 1, 2026, international NGOs that did not renew their registration will no longer be allowed to operate.
Organizations were notified in March 2025, given nearly ten months to comply, and granted a good-faith extension… pic.twitter.com/U0JqfR8OKF
— Oren Marmorstein (@OrenMarmorstein) December 30, 2025
Many outlets, such as CNN, have framed this as potentially leading to a “humanitarian crisis.” This is despite the total amount of aid from these 37 organizations accounting for only 1% of the total aid entering the Gaza Strip.
Alex Crawford of Sky News claimed that Israel was blocking these organizations “without evidence” that there have been connections to terrorist organizations, calling the groups “respected.”
Israel is blocking some of the world’s most respected aid groups from Gaza, The groups say Israel’s rules to operate are arbitrary and cd endanger lives. Israel insists – without evidence – that they’ve been infiltrated by militants. https://t.co/gMb3i7XUz4
— Alex Crawford (@AlexCrawfordSky) December 30, 2025
But there’s nothing respectable about terrorists infiltrating organizations meant to help civilians in need. More than that, this effort is meant to ensure terrorist organizations do not take control of or subvert humanitarian operations.
Throughout the war, humanitarian organizations have been abused by terrorist organizations.
Doctors Without Borders (MSF), for instance, is one of the organizations whose operations are being suspended in the coming months, after it failed to provide a list of its Gaza employees. But MSF has previous form. In 2024, it was revealed that an employee of MSF was active in Islamic Jihad and another was a sniper in a Hamas unit.
This is your employee, @MSF. A physical therapist by day and terrorist by night.
Fadi Al-Wadiya, who was eliminated by the @IDF 2 days ago, worked both as a physical therapist for Doctors Without Borders and as a prominent terrorist in the PIJ terrorist organization.
Fadi… pic.twitter.com/N1FiO6QgLz
— COGAT (@cogatonline) June 27, 2024
Mosab Abu Toha, a Pulitzer Prize winner exposed by HonestReporting for excusing the abduction of Israeli hostages on October 7, likewise joined the choir online to complain about MSF being suspended in Gaza.
He faces a knowledge gap in understanding that Hamas and other terrorist organizations have embedded themselves in civilian infrastructure, including hospitals. And MSF only operates five out of 220 primary care clinics and medical points in Gaza, as per COGAT.
What country is barring more than 30 humanitarian organizations, including Doctors Without Borders, from operating in Gaza?
As if these aid groups were ever allowed to function freely in the first place. For months, humanitarian organizations have faced blocked access, extreme…— Mosab Abu Toha (@MosabAbuToha) December 31, 2025
Naturally, this context is omitted from international reports on the NGO suspensions, as it does not fit the narrative. It is thus also telling that the media’s focus has been on the 15 percent of organizations not complying with Israel, rather than the 85 percent who are. This would, however, require the media to question why 37 so-called aid organizations are refusing the simple task of providing a list of their employees.
This is not the first time Gaza’s aid system has been highlighted as being vulnerable to — if not outright compromised by — terrorist infiltration. Hamas has systematically embedded members in civilian infrastructure as a way to control resources. As a result, international aid organizations have repeated claims published by Hamas without any scrutiny. These claims have then been uncritically amplified by the media, creating a self-reinforcing cycle in which Hamas’ aid narratives turned into accepted facts.
While terrorist organizations seek to spread false information about the lack of humanitarian aid in the Gaza Strip, the truth remains that 4,200 trucks filled with aid enter Gaza every week, coordinated between Israel and aid organizations that have complied with the rules. Organizations unwilling to comply and provide a list of employees must explain their persistent refusal to meet this basic requirement of transparency.
The author is a contributor to HonestReporting, a Jerusalem-based media watchdog with a focus on antisemitism and anti-Israel bias — where a version of this article first appeared.