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3 Lisbon and Marseille, 1940 chArleS Joy Arrived in liSbon in mid-SePtember. the voyAge was his first trans-Atlantic flight experience, but he went directly to Lisbon’s old square, where the Sharps had set up their offices in the Hotel Metropole. His first adjustment was to the noise of “the Rossio,” where the circling traffic and constant honking reminded him of New York’s Times Square more than Boston’s Beacon Street where the Unitarians had their headquarters. It was September 17, 1940, and Joy was not able to see Waitstill and Martha because they were in Marseille preparing to bring the novelist Lion Feuchtwanger and his wife to Portugal. However, he was not alone in the office, as several ofVarian Fry’s staff who happened to be in Lisbon were at his service. These men and women were the first of many of Fry’s staff who were refugees themselves and found the Unitarian office to be a good place to hang their hats while they waited for their boat tickets to America.1 The next day,Varian Fry himself appeared in the Hotel Metropole. He had left Marseille the week before with Franz Werfel and his wife, Alma Mahler Werfel, and her fourteen suitcases containing her former husband’s original musical scores. Also, the novelist Heinrich Mann was in the party along with his wife, Nelly, and Thomas Mann’s son, Golo. Waitstill and Martha had helped bring this group together—the most celebrated gathering of Fry’s protégés—after Erika Mann had told them where to find her brother and her uncle. Golo and Heinrich had been together, lying low in southern France before the Sharps got in touch with them. The trip had not been without its problems. Both novelists were in poor physical condition, andAlma’s choice of a hiking outfit included a bright white dress and city shoes. Golo had the greatest fright when one of the officials at Spanish customs had recognized liSbon And mArSeille, 1940 | 55 the name Mann, but the man did nothing more than express his awe at meeting the son of Thomas Mann. The Manns and Werfels were now safely in Portugal after Waitstill had met them in Lisbon a few days earlier, ahead ofVarian Fry, who had visits to make in Madrid. This trip to Lisbon was Fry’s first chance to see at close hand the Unitarians’ setup, and he was happy to see that the Unitarians really were looking out for the refugees that he sent. The refugees were able to send cables to the United States through the Unitarians, and the committee often took their part with the U.S. consulate and British embassy in Lisbon, and if necessary, the Portuguese International Police. Because communication from the United States to Portugal was easier and safer than cabling France, many of the travel arrangements could be handled directly between Fry’s organization in New York and the Unitarian office in Lisbon without going through Marseille at all. The Lisbon office was also in the best position to make bookings on ship sailings and on Pan American Airways. Ninon Tallon, their French office manager, was a multilingual film actress the Sharps had the good fortune to have found and hired that summer. Tallon could use her Portuguese, German, and English, in addition to her native French, to talk to all these agencies and with many of the refugees. Tallon was the niece of a former French premier, and although she had had a promising career as a film actress, she saw no future for herself in Petain’s France.2 Now Tallon was awaiting a visa to the United States and spending her time interviewing refugees and helping them with logistics. Aside from the literary celebrities that the Sharps andVarian Fry had escorted across the border, several dozen of their clients had arrived in Lisbon already. During the next week, Joy counted the refugees who had come through the Unitarian office during the previous month, and it numbered seventy-two people.3 Since the Sharps and Fry had arrived that summer, the mood in Lisbon had changed considerably. During the summer, refugees had been able to move about freely in the city, but many were now being sent to residence force, towns in the outskirts of Lisbon. Lisbon had accumulated more than eight thousand refugees since the French armistice , and these towns were Portugal’s response to the large number of foreigners in...

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