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Varian Fry
- ttyprintk 4y agoI don’t think it was “a miracle” that non-Jews took risks to help people escape the Nazis. The movie Casablanca came out in 1942 and the plot was not at all confusing to the public.
- Amorymeltzer 4y agoVanishingly few people did so. "Righteous Among the Nations" maybe isn't the best proxy, but the highest per capita rate is the Dutch, with 1 out of 700.[1]. More relevantly, Fry is one of only five Americans do designated. Notably, Fry was forced to stop in 1941 by both US and French officials. Check out Dara Horn's book People Love Dead Jews, there's a good discussion of this in there. 1: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Righteous_Among_the_Nations_by_country https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Righteous_Among_the_Na...
- ttyprintk 4y agoThat’s an unfortunate name for a book. What I meant was: neither the Christian nor secular definition of miracle is appropriate for people simply wanting to do the right thing at the time. That Fry was not Jewish himself is unrelated to the morality of fighting the way Nazis treated people. And even if the holocaust was not apparent to the American population after the fall of France, everybody understood what Casablanca was about: even if you’re losing to the powers of fascism, it’s important for the survival of all good people that you collectively keep fighting.