Villa Air-Bel: World War II, Escape, and a House in Marseille
Rosemary Sullivan, . . HarperCollins, $26.95 (476pp) ISBN 978-0-06-073250-9
The outbreak of WWII took many Europeans by surprise. In France, by the time the fighting began, the papers people needed to get out of the country were difficult to come by. It was on this circumstance that three enterprising Americans concentrated their efforts in the first two years of the war. Ivy League scholar Varian Fry, sent by the American Emergency Rescue Committee, heiress Mary Jayne Gold and graduate student Miriam Davenport turned a Marseille château into a safe haven for dozens of prominent artists and intellectuals waiting for a chance to emigrate in secrecy, including Hannah Arendt, Marcel Duchamp, Marc Chagall, André Breton, Franz Werfel and perennial exile Victor Serge. Canadian writer Sullivan (her
Reviewed on: 08/21/2006
Genre: Nonfiction
Other - 496 pages - 978-1-4434-0256-9
Paperback - 496 pages - 978-0-06-073251-6