Symposium To Honor Journalist Who Saved Artists From Nazis

NEW YORK (AP) — Authors and art experts will participate in a weekend symposium commemorating a little-known New York City journalist credited with saving scores of writers and modern artists from the Nazis during World War II.

The New York Times reports (http://nyti.ms/2wN4VvP ) Varian Fry was 32 when he volunteered to go to France in August 1940 in an attempt to help some of the world's most famous artists escape from Nazi-occupied France.

By the time he returned to the U.S. a year later, Fry's covert rescue operation had helped some 2,000 people slip out of France. Among them were scores of prominent artists such as Marc Chagall and Max Ernst and intellectuals such as anti-fascist writer Andre Breton.

Fry died in 1967 and is buried at Brooklyn's historic Green-Wood Cemetery , where Saturday afternoon's symposium is being held.

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Information from: The New York Times, http://www.nytimes.com