The Flight Portfolio opens at the Chagalls’ ancient stone house in Gordes, France, as the novel’s hero desperately tries to persuade them of the barbarism and tragedy descending on Europe. Instead, he ended up staying in France for thirteen months, working under the veil of a legitimate relief organization to procure false documents, amass emergency funds, and set up an underground railroad that led over the Pyrenees, into Spain, and finally to Lisbon, where the refugees embarked for safer ports. In 1940, Varian Fry–a Harvard educated American journalist–traveled to Marseille carrying three thousand dollars and a list of imperiled artists and writers he hoped to rescue within a few weeks. Join Orringer for an in-depth look at the research that was undertaken to discover the narratives of those Fry saved, the labor he accepted to ensure their safety, as well as his complex relationships with them. The Flight Portfolio is based on the true story of Varian Fry’s extraordinary attempt to save the work, and the lives, of Jewish artists fleeing the Holocaust such as Marc Chagall, Marchel Duchamp, Max Ernst, Hannah Arendt, Franz Werfel and André Breton.
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