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The Group that Smuggled Intellectuals Out of Nazi-Held Europe
(JTA) Shira Hanau - Justus Rosenberg, a professor of literature and languages who served in the French resistance during World War II, died last month at the age of 100. As a Polish-Jewish refugee in Paris, he worked as a courier for a rescue effort led by the American journalist Varian Fry to save intellectuals, writers and artists stuck under Nazi rule. Rosenberg, who was blonde, appeared younger than his age and spoke French, ferried forged documents and accompanied refugees across the border to Spain. The rescue effort saved 2,000 people, among them the writers Hannah Arendt and Heinrich Mann and artists Marc Chagall and Marcel Duchamp. When Fry's efforts ended in 1941, Rosenberg was sent to a prison camp but escaped and joined the French Resistance. He described his wartime experiences in a 2020 memoir, The Art of Resistance: My Four Years in the French Underground.