Harry Bingham IV, Unsung Hero

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Defying U.S. policy, Harry Bingham IV saved thousands of Jews fleeing the Nazis with fraudulent visas.

An American Vice-Consul stationed in Marseilles, France in 1940, Hiram (Harry) Bingham IV defied U.S. policy and issued false life-saving visas for thousands of Jews fleeing the Nazis, among them Marc Chagall, Max Ernst and the family of the writer Thomas Mann.

Even after Washington lost patience with him and shuffled him off to Buenos Aires, Argentina in 1941, Bingham continued to annoy his superiors by reporting on the movements of Nazis there. Eventually, he was forced out of the American diplomatic service.

Because he went against U.S. policy, he never received national credit, and because he was a man of action and not of words, his story went with him when he died in 1988. That is until his son, Robert Kim Bingham Sr., 67, discovered some of his father’s documents hidden in the family farmhouse in Salem, Connecticut, and embarked on a journey to bring his father’s heroic story to light.

Q1: Describe the drama of discovering your father’s documents.

In 1996, eight years after my father’s death, my mom, a few of my 10 siblings and I started finding documents at the farmhouse in Salem. There were letters, visa papers, and photos from my father’s time in Marseilles. Until then, our family was aware that he had a hand in the rescue of a handful of luminaries, but we had no idea of the scope of his activity, that he was sought out by thousands of people who went to him for their one last chance to live.

We had no idea that he was sought out by thousands of people who went to him for their one last chance to live.

We found out that in addition to issuing false visas, he sheltered Jews in his home in Marseilles and worked with the French underground to smuggle Jews out of France into Spain, or across the Mediterranean. He even contributed to their expenses out of his own pocket. I have heard estimates that he saved anywhere from 2,500 to 5,000 people.

About five years ago, we found a letter to him from Leon Feuchtwanger, an anti-Nazi writer, thanking my father for hiding him and his wife Marta in my father’s residence for some six weeks while my father prepared a false visa for him under the name of ‘Wet Cheek’. Feuchtwanger had written the letter while on board the Excalibur, heading to New York City, and signed it ‘Mr. Wet Cheek’.

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My mother and brother, Thomas, sent some of the Marseilles documents to the Holocaust Museum in Washington, and to Eric Saul, curator of the Visas for Life: The Righteous and Honorable Diplomats Project and the Jewish Rescuers Project, who should really be credited with bringing my father’s story to life.

Q2: How did the remembrance project get started?

In 1998 I went to Israel, on the 50th anniversary of the country, as part of a mission of diplomat children. I was very moved when I saw the exhibit at the Yad Vashem Holocaust Museum in Jerusalem. My father had been singled out for special honor. It was the first time I was really struck by what he had done.

There were many people who were so grateful to him for what he did during the early days of the nightmare of the Holocaust, and many people stepped forward to tell me so. We heard wonderful stories in different parts of the country of righteous gentiles, and it was as though it was my father’s turn to be recognized. That trip to Israel is what triggered my whole incentive to go forward with the remembrance project.

Q3: What is the remembrance project?

The unveiling of postage stamps in honor of righteous diplomats at Yad Vashem gave me the idea to petition our own government to issue a stamp in honor of my father. I started a stamp drive in December, 1998, and in May, 2006, a stamp in honor of Harry Bingham IV was finally minted.

Forty representatives of government and 40 U.S. senators forwarded their support for the stamp to the Postmaster General. We had the entire legislature of Connecticut supporting the drive. It was a thrilling bipartisan experience for me.

My book, Courageous Dissent: How Harry Bingham Defied His Government to Save Lives (2007) was part of the same effort.

Q4: What is your primary drive behind all of this?

For over 50 years, the U.S. State Department resisted any attempts to honor my father. To them, he was an insubordinate member of the U.S. diplomatic service.

At the same time, my father didn’t reveal any details. It was typical of diplomatic families that we traveled with that the fathers did not bring to light their activities to their children. I guess because it was such a terrible period and the memories must have been overwhelmingly negative, perhaps because of those they could not rescue.

Our family thought he deserved to be honored; he put humanity above his career.

For me personally, as a former government employee in the U.S. -- I retired in July after 41 years of service as Inside Counsel to the Department of Homeland Security -- it impressed upon me what my father had done.

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Q5: What drove your father to take such risks?

He came from a long and illustrious line of risk-takers. His father, Hiram Bingham III -- on whom the Hollywood character Indiana Jones is based -- discovered the ruins of the Inca city of Machu Picchu, Peru in 1911.

My father was a deeply religious man who saw his role as saving lives during that nightmare. He felt tremendous compassion for human beings and that each person had a spark of divinity.

Jacques Bodner's visa issued by Hiram Bingham IV on Feb. 27, 1940

Q6: What is one of your fondest memories of your father?

He taught all of his 11 children that we should live according to the golden rule. One instance that made a deep impression on me goes way back to when I was six years old. We used to go to the beach in Connecticut, near an amusement park called Ocean Beach.

We were walking along the sand and snuck into the park without paying the three-cent ‘pedestrian fee’. When he found out he was very angry with us. It’s one of many examples of my father’s deep moral fiber.

Of course I loved my father. He was a wonderful father and we all adored him.

Q7: Is your father finally getting the recognition he deserves?

Besides the stamp, the State Department made a 180-degree turn in 2002 and Colin Powell invited our family to Washington to present us with a posthumous ‘Constructive Dissent’ award in my father’s honor. I was happy about that. He has also been honored by the United Nations and by the State of Israel. Yad Vashem opened an exhibit in his honor called ‘Harry’s Wall’.

But more than these things are the people who continue to come forward and tell us that our father saved their family. During the stamp drive, one 85-year-old lady told us that she and her sister were just teens when they got visas from my father.

Last October, one of my daughter's professors at Harvard, the Dean of the Literature College, originally from Austria, told her that her grandfather had saved his family. The two of them cried together. It is very emotional. He is alive today because of my father. When we hear these stories, it comes very close to home.

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David S. Levine
David S. Levine
1 month ago

At the time he was doing this, his brother, future congressman Jonathan Bingham was in college supporting America First during what author Lynne Olson called "Those Angry Days" in her book with the same title. Hiram Bingham was indeed a courageous man and along with his collaborator Varian Fry deserves to be remembered by all of us.

Rachel
Rachel
1 month ago

I have done some light research about Congressman Bingham and seen no info about this. Although he came from a Republican family, he was elected to Congress for multiple terms as a Democrat from the Bronx. (He lived in Riverdale.) If you can provide additional citations, I would be grateful.

Martin C Shapiro
Martin C Shapiro
1 month ago

He later married a debutant whom he escorted from a wealthy family in Georgia. They started having children, having elevan in total. Several years later, Harry IV was promoted to Vice Counsel in the Marseilles France consulate. At that time, Hitler had over ran France, but Marseilles in the south, was under the Vichy puppet government....also the area where the French Underground operated. There was a German Concentration Camp nearby where German and French dissidents, prominent Jews were being held. A sympathetic American journalist, Varian Fry, was engaged by a Committee in New York, whose mission was to get Hitler's political enemies, and other prominent Germans, French, and Jews, out from Nazi controlled places. IF you wish, I CAN CONTINUE THIS NARRATIVE...BUT tell me you're interested

Martin C Shapiro
Martin C Shapiro
1 month ago

Bingham entered politics and was elected lieutenant governor of Connecticut (1922–24). After winning the governorship in 1924, he almost immediately resigned to fill a vacancy in the U.S. Senate. He was reelected to a full term in 1926, after which he devoted himself to business interests. Harry III was a Senators from CT, at the time of Harry IV's graduation from Yale. All the Bingham childen went to the Groton Prep School in MA, and followed each other to Yale. Father greased the skid to get IV into the State Dept. in a entry-level job. His 1st overseas assignment was as a counselor agent in the London, England Embassy. He was young, handsome, from a good family, He was often recruited to accompany "coming out" debutants in massive society balls. To be continued.....

Martin C Shapiro
Martin C Shapiro
1 month ago

The Jewish Federation of Eastern Connecticut mounted the Visas for Life exhibition at the Lyman Allen Art Museum on the campus of Connecticut College in New London in 2003. I was President of the Federation at that tiime. The location is only a matter of 12+/- miles from Salem, CT, the Bingham Family's hometown. There are many tales of hoe the family, his siblings, ostrasixed Harry IV and his children at the end of the war. As he never disclosed what he did as the Vice Council in Marseilles, his family considered him a 'failure." What could he have done to have had such a dishonorable experience in the U.S. State Department. Most of his siblings had homes on the vast land holdings that the family had in Salem. But Harry and his kids were shunned by these brothers and sisters. TB continued

Sue Carol Isaacson
Sue Carol Isaacson
1 month ago

I am familiar with the Visas for Life Program It brought to light the many diplomats who , like Bingham , rushed their job in defiance of their governments, to save Jews , issue them Visas and get them into safe countries
Together with Rosalind Goodman , in a program to raise funds for charity, and in cooperation with the Universite de Montreal and the City of Montreal , we used the literature , and pictures of some of those diplomats , mounted them on billboards and distributed them in stratus hid areas in the City
We held a special soirée at the U of M in which we featured one of those diplomats who had saved a Montrealer
It was over 25 years ago so my memory on some of the details is dim , but it brought awareness to many of the bravery and humanity of Bingham and others

Barbara Berman
Barbara Berman
1 month ago

What a wonderful story. Not only did he rescue my people, he instilled in his children his own moral code. I currently see the groundswell of antisemitism happening in this country. If we have to leave the U,S,, where would we go today and, who would be there to help?

sheva lazaros
sheva lazaros
1 month ago
Reply to  Barbara Berman

we are never alone.

BBS
BBS
1 month ago
Reply to  Barbara Berman

Haven't you heard of the Jewish homeland?!
(Please spare us replies full of lies & propaganda against the G-d given (& legally) Jewish state!

Dvirah
Dvirah
1 month ago
Reply to  Barbara Berman

1-Israel; 2-the Creator, but also a host of governmental and nongovernmental institutions

truth
truth
1 month ago
Reply to  Dvirah

first the creator then anything else

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