Several decades ago, we went to an exhibit at the Jewish Museum in New York honoring Varian Fry, a man I then knew nothing about. Fry, a Christian American, ran an organization called the Emergency Rescue Committee, risking his own life in 1940 to get prominent Jews out of Vichy France to the United States. Working with several others, and with the aid of American diplomat Hiram Bingham IV, who issued authorized and unauthorized visas at the U.S. Consulate in Marseilles, he had remarkable success.

The story is incredible, and the ERC was able to get over 2000 Jews out of France and (via Lisbon or Martinique) to the United States. Those rescued included Hannah Arendt, Jean Arp, Andre Breton, Marc and Bella Chagall, Marcel Duchamp, Max Ernst, Leon Feuchtwanger, Arthur Koestler, Wanda Landowska, Claude Levi-Strauss, Jacques Lipchitz, Alma Mahler Gropius Werfel, and Franz Wefel. Don’t know some of these folks? Google them.

We have just finished watching the seven episode miniseries on Netflix titled “Transatlantic”, based on the historical novel by Julie Orringer, “The Flight Portfolio” which in turn was based on the dramatic story of Fry and the Emergency Rescue Committee. Thus, the story told in “Transatlantic” has gone through many sieves and prisms, and while the forest is fairly accurately portrayed, the trees are not.

I haven’t read the Orringer book, but want to. She took a story and fictionalized much of it, I think, to make some larger points about the rescue efforts, including the horrific choices Fry had to make about who got out and who stayed in. One of his goals was to rescue individuals of particular intellectual or artistic talent, and this has (like everything else) come under some criticism. In addition, she told the story of Fry’s hidden homosexuality (later confirmed by his son), something I believe was untold until that time and a surprise to many (Fry was married; his wife remained in New Jersey while he was in France); for this disclosure, Orringer was subjected to some criticism.

The Transatlantic series continues the fictionalization of the story. The villa where Fry hid some of the refugees did not belong to his homosexual lover, but was rented on the open market. The escapes from the German prison camp never occurred. His wealthy accomplice from Chicago, Mary Jane Gold, never had an affair with the U.S. consul. or with Albert Hirschman. Lisa Fittko, another co-worker, never had an affair with the desk clerk from the Hotel Splendide. Fry himself did not drive Marc and Bella Chagall from Marseilles to Lisbon in a stolen car filled with Chagall canvasses. Many of the characters (the American consul, the Hotel Splendide brothers, to name two) are completely fictionalized.

But the gist of the story is accurate and perhaps, in this case, this is enough, although it would be helpful to have more disclaimers of accuracy portrayed on Netflix, to let the viewers know that that this is a fictionalized version of a fictionalized version of a true story. At the end, there certainly could have been a listing of the major fictionalized aspects.

But there is a bigger problem with the series, I think. Although it is well scripted, and well photographed, and filled with a sense of adventure and tension…….the series is terribly acted. IMHO. I could be more specific, but, you know, lashon hara. (If you don’t……Google it)