EXCITING NEW BOOK ABOUT WWII DIPLOMAT RESCUER HARRY BINGHAM:

“COURAGEOUS DISSENT:
How Harry Bingham Defied His Government to Save Lives”
BY ROBERT KIM BINGHAM, SR.,
Son of Diplomat Rescuer Hiram “Harry” Bingham IV

The author says about his father:

IN SHADOW OF ANCESTERS. My father needs to be remembered as Hiram Bingham “IV,” because

he grew up in the shadow of three previous Hiram Binghams who themselves led extraordinary lives.

His great-grandfather and grandfather, Hirams I & II, were missionaries in the Kingdom of Hawaii,
beginning in 1820, who are portrayed by James Michener’s best selling book and movie titled Hawaii.

Hiram Bingham I and his wife Sybil established a first-rate educational system in Hawaii and helped
establish the written Hawaiian language. Hiram I also donated his land to found the Punahou school in
Honolulu, which today I understand is the largest private school in the United States, from which
President Obama graduated.

Hiram Bingham II continued missionary work in the Gilbert Islands, and spent his lifetime translating the
Bible into the Gilbertese language.

Hiram Bingham III was Harry’s father, an explorer who later became a Connecticut Governor and United
States Senator. In 1911, while a professor at Yale, he had uncovered the ruins at Machu Picchu in the
Peruvian Andies. This majestic stone city above the clouds is now a major tourist attraction and one of
the seven man-made wonders of the world.

As for Hiram “Harry” Bingham IV, I’m proud to have led the stamp drive that resulted in his official
recognition as a WWII rescuer on a US commemorative stamp in 2006. Instead of saving souls like his
forebears, he saved lives during the nightmare of the Holocaust.

OTHER RIGHTEOUS DIPLOMATS. Other foreign diplomatic rescuers also appear on foreign
stamps as ‘righteous diplomats.’ Swedish diplomat Raoul Wallenberg, whom Congress designated as an
honorary citizen, appears on a 1997 U.S. stamp. Hopefully, more WWII diplomats will be featured as
researchers bring them to light.

HARRY’S DEEDS. As my book points out, Hiram Bingham IV is officially recognized by the U.S.
Government as a “Distinguished American Diplomat” for his actions while serving as a U.S. vice-consul
in charge of visas in Marseilles during 1940-41, after Hitler invaded France.

What did he do?

• Harry Bingham not only helped save European artists and intellectuals who were on Hitler’s
most wanted list, like author Lion Feuchtwanger, painter Marc Chagall, and Nobel scientist

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 Otto Meyeroff, but he also issued as many visas as he could to ordinary refugees desperately
seeking to escape the Nazis through Southern (Vichi) France.

• According to the Wyman Institute, as other outposts in France refused to issue visas, refugees
“made their way to Marseilles, seeking to reach Harry Bingham for one last chance to live.”
[Medoff article, 5/6/04]

• In early 1940, Harry Bingham and his colleague, Myles Standish, engineered the escape of
anti-Nazi author Feuchtwanger from the Nimes detention camp, near the camp’s authorized
swimming hole. The author was spirited into their diplomatic car, quickly disguised as
Bingham’s mother-in- law with a shawl, and driven past camp guards to Harry Bingham’s
residence in Marseilles.

• Harry then hid the author and his wife, Marta, in his villa for six weeks while planning their
escape over the mountains into Spain and America.

• Harry provided the author with a false visa under the name of Mr. “WETCHEEK.”

• It was only five years ago that my sister Abigail and her husband Bill Endicott found a letter
in our family farmhouse in Salem which was signed by Mr. “Wetcheek.” The author had
written to Harry from aboard the steamer SS Excalibur while heading to America in 1940. He
thanked Harry for his help and good company while he was hiding in Harry’s home, and I
have posted the letter on my website. [Google Robert Kim Bingham.]

• Worked with Fry. Bingham also traveled around Vichi France with American journalist
Varian Fry, a Righteous Gentile, who was sent by the New York Emergency Rescue
Committee. They searched for people on Fry’s Emergency List. People on the list were
called “Harry’s Friends” by participants in the underground operation.

• Bingham and Fry somehow persuaded the police to release painter Marc Chagall in Marseilles
after he was rounded up with other Jews. Bingham and Fry then coordinated Chagall’s
escape to America with his wife, Bella.

• Meanwhile, at his office alone during the 14-month separation from his lovely wife Rose and
then four children, who were ordered back to the States for safety reasons, Harry issued
hundreds of life-saving visas and “affidavits-in-lieu-of-passports” to exiles whose papers had
been confiscated or lost.

• Bingham also visited detention camps in southern France and alerted superiors to the
inhumane conditions of the camps, and the suffering, and dying of old and young men,
women, and children, who were detained for deportation to extermination camps elsewhere in
Europe.

• There is evidence that the Nazis complained to Washington about Bingham’s activities. The
U.S. had not yet entered the war and was, on the surface, a neutral country.

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 TAPED INTERVIEW. In a tape-recorded interview about 1980, Harry told his 13-year old
granddaughter Tiffany Bingham Cunningham, who was conducting the interview for a class project:
[M]y boss… said, “The Germans are going to win the war. Why should we do
anything to offend them?” And he didn’t want to give any visas to “these Jewish
people.” So, in a way, I had to do as much as I could.
Hull’s telegram. On September 18, 1940, US Secretary of State Cordell Hull sent a stern telegram warning
to the American Embassy in Vichy, condemning the rescue activities by American citizens who “violated the
laws of friendly nations.” The telegram read:
[While the] Department is sympathetic to the plight of unfortunate refugees…this government can
not repeat not countenance the activities of …Mr. Fry and other persons, however well-meaning
their motives may be, in carrying on activities evading the laws of countries with which the United
States maintains friendly relations …. (Emphasis added.)
The telegram from Secretary Hull reveals the State Department’s consternation regarding the activities
of “Varian Fry…and others.” It was also clearly directed at Bingham.
At that time, Bingham and Fry were running the underground rescue operation from Bingham’s house,
which included planning escapes and hiding refugees there, including the Feuchtwangers, Thomas Mann’s
brother and nephew, and others.
Secretary Hull made it clear that American citizens were forbidden to violate the laws “of friendly
nations.” As noted, the US was neutral at that time, after the fall of France in 1940 when refugees flooded
into southern France to escape from Europe.
My father was aware that France’s armistice agreement with Germany required France to ‘surrender
[refugees] on demand.’ This meant that they were subject to detention in French camps until their
deportation to extermination camps elsewhere in Nazi-occupied Europe.
ARMISTICE VIOLATED. By liberally issuing visas to refugees, Harry Bingham plainly contravened
ARTICLE 19 of this armistice “law.” Instead of permitting the surrender of refugees to detention camps,
which would lead to their certain death in extermination camps, he provided passage out of Europe.
TRANSFERRED FROM MARSEILLES. In May 1941, the State Department demoted Bingham from
his supervisory position in the visa section, abruptly transferred him to Lisbon, Portugal, and then assigned
him to Buenos Aires, Argentina (where I was born), far from the European theatre.
FRY LAMENTS. When Varian Fry learned that Bingham was packing his things to leave Marseilles, he
wrote in his May 1941 diary:

[Harry Bingham’s] going will be a great loss to the refugees, and may seriously cripple
our work….

Years later, Fry presented Harry his book Surrender on Demand, bearing the hand-written inscription:
“To my partner in the ‘crime’ of saving human lives.”

In Argentina, Harry continued to alert superiors of the spread of fascism in the Southern Hemisphere. But
he had sealed his fate. He continued to be passed over for promotions, and unhappily resigned from the
Foreign Service in 1945. He brought his family to his inherited farmhouse in Salem, Connecticut, where he
remained until he died peacefully in 1988.

Like other righteous diplomats, my father brought his WWII secrets with him to the grave.

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First inkling 1993. The first inkling I had that he was considered a Holocaust rescuer by anyone
outside the family was in 1993, when the US Holocaust Memorial Museum invited my parents to
attend a huge celebration of WWII rescuers in the amphitheater of the Arlington National Cemetery.

My father was no longer living and his wife Rose was too frail to make the trip. So my mother asked
my sister, Abigail, and I to use their tickets to the grand tribute to Rescue Units of the Allied Armed
Forces and diplomatic rescuers from around the world.

Three years later, in 1996, Varian Fry curators at the US Holocaust Museum, who knew of Harry’s story
through Mr. Fry’s memoirs, persuaded Eric Saul, director of the Visas for Life program at the Simon
Wiesenthal Center, to include Hiram Bingham IV in the world-traveling exhibit of WWII righteous diplomats.
I later learned that my mother, Rose, and brother Thomas, in 1991, had also sent some of Harry’s Marseilles
documents and photos to the US Holocaust Museum, which are posted on the museum’s website today.

EMOTIONAL TOUR OF ISRAEL 1998. As a consequence of the Holocaust museum recommendation to

curator Saul, Harry was featured with ten other righteous diplomats at the Yad Vashem Museum in Jerusalem
during Israel’s 50th Anniversary celebrations in April 1998, which I was privileged to attend with two
brothers, David and William, at the invitation of the Simon Wiesanthal Center.

Also invited were Mrs. Sugihara, widow of famous Japanese rescuer Chiune Sugihara, and the children of the
other featured diplomats. Harry Bingham was the only American diplomat honored in the exhibit.

During our trip to Israel, we heard many moving stories from Holocaust survivors who expressed profound
gratitude for the life-saving activities of the WWII diplomats. We also attended the unveiling of postage
stamps in Jerusalem which depicted four of the diplomats in the exhibit, and we planted pine trees in memory
of the diplomats during a televised ceremony in the beautiful Sugihara Forest overlooking Jerusalem. Harry’s
tree stands there today.

POSTAL SERVICE’S POLITE RESPONSES. This emotional tour inspired me to launch the stamp drive
for my father in December 1998. Each year the U.S. postal service politely wrote me that the stamp proposal
“remains under consideration.” Then, one year, I received a letter stating that the proposal “remains under
SERIOUS consideration.”

Not long after that, in October 2005, I received a confidential phone call from a postal manager in
Washington who revealed that the Postmaster General had approved the Bingham stamp for the 2006 lineup.
I had a hard time catching my breath.
Harry’s postage stamp is part of a set of six “Distinguished American Diplomats,” and, as noted,
recognizes him for his "Constructive Dissent" while serving as a U.S. vice-consul in Marseilles
during 1940-41. Others depicted achieved at least ambassadorial rank.
STATE DEPARTMENT PAYS TRIBUTE. The stamp campaign also had caught the attention of the
State Department and Secretary Colin Powell, who, in June 2002, invited Harry’s children to a ceremony
honoring diplomats in the elegant State Department reception room, at which Secretary Powell spoke and
presented us with Harry’s posthumous “Constructive Dissent” award.

Secretary Powell stated to the many diplomats in attendance that Harry Bingham placed his “life and career
on the line.”

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This was a welcome first-time State Department tribute to Harry, 14 years after he died, and 60 years after
his humanitarian actions.

CHAGALL’S GRANDDAUGHTER THANKFUL. In May 2006, when the stamp was unveiled, Marc
Chagall’s granddaughter Dr. Bella Meyer, spoke at a Capitol Hill “Celebration in Honor of the Hiram
Bingham IV U.S. Postage Stamp.” She recalled that her grandfather “Marc Chagall, too, had a vision – to
teach us how to listen with our hearts and appreciate the beauty of life.”

She added that Harry Bingham helped make it “possible for Chagall’s vision to come to life.” Source:
David S. Wyman Institute for Holocaust Studies (5-25-06).

The late Congressman Tom Lantos, the sole Holocaust survivor in Congress, told the audience:

Hiram Bingham's courage is an inspiration to us all. In an age when too many

chose to ignore the plight of the persecuted, he became directly engaged in their
cause at significant risk to himself. Source: Philadelphia Jewish Voice, August
2006.

HARRY’S PERSONAL TRAITS. Like his great-grandfather in Hawaii, Harry faced the
consequences of standing up for what he believed in. He was true to his faith and, like his
missionary forebears, he died almost penniless. He managed to keep his many acres of Salem land
in tact, which the family continues to farm and preserve as open space in partnership with the nature
conservancy.

My father’s personal motto, which sustained him over the years and which he often repeated to us
children, was simply: “Give the best that you have to the best that you know.”

Instead of saving souls, the best that Harry knew during the nightmare of the Holocaust was to save
LIVES.

He and his beloved wife, Rose, who herself was full of compassion for our fellow men and women, set a
fine example for their children. Like her, he was always looking for the best in people. Seeing a silver
lining in every situation freed them from discouragement over setbacks; although some family members
feel he remained haunted by those he could not save.

By placing humanity above career, he had sealed his fate with the State Department.

Rewarding stamp campaign. The stamp campaign was rewarding not only because it
attracted broad bipartisan support (including the unanimous endorsement of the entire
Connecticut legislature, involving 151 state representatives and 36 state senators; and
endorsements from 40 Congressmen and 40 U.S. Senators, our Governor, and the
Secretary of the State), but also because Harry’s survivors sent me emotional emails
expressing gratitude. My website for Hiram Bingham IV continues to generate wonderful
emails.

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 I have published some in my book COURAGEOUS DISSENT and on the website for Hiram
Bingham IV (just Google “Robert Kim Bingham”).

Lawrence Bodner’s father. In June 2008, Lawrence Bodner wrote about Harry
Bingham's rescue of his father, Jacques Bodner, then a 17-year old who had been detained
by the Gestapo.

Harry rescued the young man from Camp Des Milles in Southern France by writing a
letter to the commandant that a visa was to be issued to him. When Jacques was brought
to Bingham’s office by police in shackles, Bingham angrily demanded that the police
unshackle him. Harry directed his staff to bathe him and buy him a fresh set of clothes to
replace the prison garb. Harry signed Jacques’ visa on February 27, 1940 (which is posted
on my website), bought him a ticket for the steamer SS Champlain, which was docked in
Marseilles harbor, and safely boarded him on this ship that made it to New York City.

SURVIVOR ELLY SHERMAN. In October 2005, a lady survivor who lives in

California, now age 84, sent me the following emotional email after discovering my stamp
drive website:

Of the three [in] my family whom [your father] saved… I am the last one
alive, and I write this with trembling fingers and many a tear…. Without
him we would not have been able to avoid the concentration camp to which
we were assigned two days later….

[Your father] provided us with [documents] because we no longer held

citizenship in any country, and therefore had no papers….We cannot honor
him enough. [Elly Sherman.]

She also sent me copies of her family visas which my father had signed in 1941 when
she was 15. I was thrilled to recognize Harry’s signatures from so long ago, and these
documents are posted.
Please visit my website under the header “SURVIVORS’ QUOTES” for a number of
testimonies received since the unveiling of the stamp.

I hope, by bringing out the story of Hiram Bingham IV and the other righteous
diplomats, we as a society may further the cause of making this world a more humane
and loving place. Having this hope is what my father’s life is all about.

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NOTE: Robert Kim Bingham, Sr. is the author of the book COURAGEOUS
DISSENT: How Harry Bingham Defied His Government to Save Lives, Triune Books
(Second Edition 2009) To Order book: Email Robert K. Bingham at
rbingham03@snet.net
Price $22 + $4 shipping; Website: http://pages.cthome.net/WWIIHERO