March 16, 1999
Virginia Noelke
Citizen Stamp Advisory Committee
475 L'Enfant Plaza SW, Room 4474-E
Washington, DC 20260-2437
Dear Ms. Noelke:
(1) The purpose of this letter
is to nominate Hiram "Harry" Bingham IV for a
commemorative US postage stamp. I am the curator of an
exhibit entitled Visas for Life: The Righteous Diplomats.
This exhibit documents the role of diplomats in rescuing
Jews during the period of the Holocaust, 1938-1945. This
exhibit has toured throughout the United States and
Europe. Since its inception, this exhibit has included
the story of Consul Hiram "Harry" Bingham.
(2) Consul Bingham was one of a
very few American diplomats who were willing to risk
their careers and safety to issue visas to save the lives
of Jewish refugees in Europe. I can think of no one more
highly deserving than Consul Bingham to be honored with a
commemorative stamp.
(3) Vice-Consul Harry Bingham
was in charge of visas in the American consulate in
Marseilles, France. He was responsible for issuing visas
to hundreds of Jewish refugees trapped in Vichy, France,
in the spring and fall of 1940.
(4) In addition, Bingham is
credited with personally hiding a number of important
Jewish writers, intellectuals and artists. In performing
these courageous actions, Bingham far exceeded his
authority and was in direct violation of American
immigration policy and the policy of the American consul
general.
(5) Bingham also personally
aided a number of Jewish refugees in crossing the
French-Spanish and -Portuguese borders.
(6) Bingham personally escorted
Dr. Otto and Hedwig Meyerhof across the French- Spanish
border. Dr. Meyerhof was a recipient of the Nobel prize
in physics. In a letter, Walter Meyerhof, who was there
at the time, writes:
...Bingham's role
in helping my parents to enter Spain. Because my
father had been refused the needed French exit visa (I
have the letter from the Vichy Interior Minister), my
parents had to cross clandestinely on foot from France
to Spain. On the Spanish side, my parents were about
to be rejected and sent back to France, when by chance
Hiram Bingham passed through the border station. He
did not hesitate to talk with the Spanish border
police, and my parents were finally allowed to pass
through Spain. [Meyerhof, November 2,
1997]
(7) According to the recently
published book The Holocaust & The Jewsof
Marseilles (University of Illinois Press, 1996),
author Professor Donna Ryan says Bingham frequently
"acted against the wishes of the American consul, Hugh
Fullerton, and directives from his own
government."
(8) Bingham played a key role in
the establishment of the operations for the relief and
rescue of Jewish refugees before the arrival of Varian
Fry and the Emergency Rescue Committee. Bingham
established a safe house (which was his own residence).
He used this house to plan strategic meetings with Varian
Fry, Frank Bohn, and other members of the ERC. Also,
Bingham introduced Captain Dubois, a member of the
Marseilles staff of the Surete Nationale, to Varian Fry.
Dubois was sympathetic to the work of aiding refugees in
escape. In his memoirs, Surrender on Demand (Johnson
Books, 1945), Fry said:
...Harry Bingham
invited me to dinner at his villa, to meet Captain
Dubois. Captain Dubois was a member of the Marseilles
staff of the Surete Nationale. Though a Vichy
policeman, he was friendly to England and America, and
Harry thought it would be useful for me to know
him.
It was. Dubois was the first
French official I had met who was familiar with my
case and willing to talk about it. [Fry, 1945, p.
89-90]
(9) Further, Bingham developed
procedures for hiding refugees from the authorities, and
established contacts with members of the French
underground and other sympathetic French
authorities.
(10) Hiram Bingham introduced
Varian Fry to various members of the French underground,
including American labor leader Frank Bohn. When Fry
wrote his book in 1945, Bingham was still in the State
Department, stationed in Argentina. In his book, Fry
downplayed the role of Bingham in the rescue of the Jews
of Marseilles, to protect Bingham. In his book, Fry
states:
He's
[Bingham] the Vice-Consul in charge of visas,
and the son of the late Senator from Connecticut. I
believe his brother's the editor of Common Sense.
Anyway, he has a heart of gold. He does everything he
can to help us, within American law... [Fry, 1945,
p. 10]
(11) The phrase "within American
law," was written to protect Bingham.
(12) In his book, Fry tells of
the rescue of Lion Feuchtwanger:
"I've promised Harry
Bingham not to breathe a word of this to anybody," he
said, after he had closed the door, "but I'm sure he
wouldn't mind my telling you. It was Harry who got
Feuchtwanger out of that camp. He arranged it all with
Mrs. Feuchtwanger in advance, and she got word of
their plans to her husband. Luckily she wasn't
interned, you see. A few days after the armistice
Harry drove his car out to a place near the camp where
the men were allowed to go and swim, and Feuchtwanger
met him there. Harry had brought some women's clothes
along, and Feuchtwanger put them on and Harry drove
him back to Marseilles."
"Gosh," I said, "he really is
a prince, isn't he! Where is Feuchtwanger
now?"
"Hiding in Harry's villa,"
Bohn said. [Fry, 1945, p. 11-12]
(13) Because of the secret
nature of these operations, and because Bingham wished
his work to be anonymous, Bingham's name has rarely come
up as one of the principle participants in the work of
the rescue. Further, we may never know exactly how many
refugees were saved. Certainly the number was in the
hundreds, and perhaps thousands.
(14) Because of his violation of
the policy of his supervisors, Bingham was transferred by
the U.S. State Department to a posting in Argentina. He
was transferred by the highest authorities, by U.S.
Secretary of State Cordell Hull.
(15) After Bingham's transfer,
Fry was disappointed with his replacement. He states in
his memoirs:
Then Harry Bingham was
recalled, and his place at the head of the visa
service at the American Consulate was taken by a
vice-consul who seemed to delight in making autocratic
decisions and refusing as many visas as he possibly
could. He was also very weak on modern European
history, but very strong on defending America against
refugees he regarded as radicals. [Fry, 1945, p.
215]
(16) Fry concluded that the loss
of Bingham and the tightening of U.S. immigration policy
was a devastating blow to the Emergency Rescue
Committee's work:
By the end of June, the
American Consulates in France received new
instructions forbidding them to grant any visas at all
except on specific authorization from the State
Department. Even transit visas had to be authorized by
the Department, and all the refugees who had been
patiently building up immigration-visa dossiers at the
Consulates now had to begin all over again in
Washington. No one with a close relative in Italy,
Germany or any of the occupied countries, including
the occupied part of France, could get a visa under
any circumstances. [Fry, 1945, p. 216]
(17) In Argentina at the
conclusion of World War II, Bingham began gathering
information on Nazi transfers of money and gold from
Germany to South America. He also reported on the
immigration of former Nazis to South America. His reports
on these matters made the U.S. State Department
uncomfortable. He insisted that this information be
utilized by the State Department to prevent Nazi
infiltration of South America. When the U.S. State
Department refused to act on his recommendations, he
resigned from the State Department in disgust.
(18) Because of his principles,
Bingham's lifelong career as a diplomat was ended. For
the rest of his life, he eked out a living as a small
businessman. Although Bingham was born into a wealthy
patrician family, he had sacrificed his position for his
humanitarian beliefs.
(19) In the recently published
book The Holocaust & The Jews of Marseilles
(University of Illinois Press, 1996), author Professor
Donna Ryan says the following of Hiram
Bingham:
Many contemporary
sources describing conditions in Marseilles during
1940 and 1941 suggest that the U.S. vice consul, Hiram
Bingham Jr., expedited exit visas with letters
promising that U.S. entry visas would be issued
immediately afterward. Bingham, however, often acted
against the wishes of the consul, Hugh Fullerton, and
directives from his home government. [Ryan, 1996,
p. 130]
(20) Later Professor Ryan
says:
Although obtaining all
the necessary visas remained difficult, in the early
days of [Varian] Fry's work there was enough
inconsistency in government policy for Fry and his
clients to exploit. U.S. entry documents tended to
flow steadily, though not profusely. This trend
continued as long as Hiram Bingham remained
Vice-Consul in charge of visas, that is, until June
1941, when U.S. official immigration policy changed.
It appears that the situation in 1940 and early 1941
might have been much worse without Bingham, for the
consul general, Hugh Fullerton, distrusted Fry,
perhaps because he appeared sympathetic to leftists at
a time when fear of Communist infiltration to the
United States reigned supreme. [Ryan, 1996, p.
142]
(21) Professor Ryan
further notes of Bingham's participation:
Without legal exit
visas, Lion Feuchtwanger, Heinrich and Nelly Mann,
Golo Mann, and Franz and Alma Mahler Werfel escaped to
New York via Spain and Lisbon with ERC help.
Unfortunately, Feuchtwanger, eager to exaggerate his
own courageous participation in these events, gave
away the details of his escape, including his rescue
from the camp at Saint Nicolas with the help of Miles
Standish, the U.S. Vice-Consul, and his concealment at
Hiram Bingham's house. His description probably
alerted officials to the need for tighter border
control. [Ryan, 1996, p. 144]
(22) Please find enclosed quotes
from Varian Fry's book Surrender on Demand and
Donna Ryan's book The Jews of Marseilles. I have
also included the letter of Professor von Hofe, who is
the curator of the Lion Feuchtwanger collection at the
University of Southern California. I will provide you
contemporary photographs of Hiram Bingham, if you
wish.
Thank you very much. If you have
any questions, please contact me at (415) 824- 7743 or
(310) 859-9136.
Yours very truly,
[signed]
Eric Saul
Director/Curator, Visas for Life: The Righteous
Diplomats
cc: Robert Kim
Bingham
Enclosures:
von Hofe letter; quotes from Surrender on Demand
and The Holocaust & The Jews of Marseilles,
exhibit text: Visas for Life: The Righteous
Diplomats
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