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FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE:

Exhibition about Holocaust Hero at Fort Morgan Museum

The Fort Morgan Museum is excited to present a traveling exhibition from the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum and co-sponsored by the Mizel Museum. Varian Fry: ASSIGNMENT: RESCUE, 1940-1941 tells the story of a non-Jewish American who saved the lives of more than 2,500 Jews and anti-Nazis in 1940 and 1941.

The exhibition recreates Varian Fry’s eleven-month sojourn in Vichy France. With a small band of European and American assistants, Fry rescued thousands of desperate men and women who were to be "surrendered on demand" to the Nazis under the ominous Article 19 of the Franco-German Armistice. Some, like Hannah Arendt, Heingrich Mann, March Chagall, Andre Breton, and Lion Feuchtwanger, were among Europe’s leading thinkers and artists.

Days after his arrival in Marseilles in June, 1940 as the representative of a newly formed private group, the Emergency Rescue Committee (now the International Rescue Committee), Fry established a legal relief organization as a cover for his clandestine rescue operation. Working for many months without the protection of an American passport, he persevered as long as possible to save as many as possible. He wrote. "I stayed because the refugees needed me. But it took courage, and courage is a quality I hadn’t previously been sure I possessed."

In honor of his work Varian Fry is the only American who has been recognized as "Righteous Among the Nations" by Yad Vashem.

ASSIGNMENT: RESCUE teaches that each individual has a responsibility to care for others and to act when circumstances dictate. Anyone could have taken Fry’s journey. But, few even tried.

The exhibition opened on Thursday, September 2 and will run through November 27 at the Fort Morgan Museum, 414 Main Street. In addition to the exhibition from the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum Judaica items from regional artists including Melanie Klein, Nancy Sedar Sherman, Debby Sanders, and Heather Oginsky will be on display. Local families are also offering their items and stories to help make this a moving experience for all.