It is in terrible times that we are tested. It is only in danger that we find courage. And it is when no one at all agrees with us that we find the strength to stand alone.

But what do we do in times like these? Despite the daily bombardment of scary news, some of which is all too real and a lot of which are idle speculations and worst case scenarios, we do not here in the Valley live in daily mortal danger or really terrible times. Yes, some of us are worried about our jobs or the economy and what might happen next. Anthrax fears have limited the use of baby powder. But I would be a lot more worried about the daily commute and the drivers out here than getting a poison envelope in the mail. Terrible times it is for those who live in Afghanistan and for all those in this precious world of ours who live in war zones or in daily hunger. The greatest danger right now and here in this nation is our own fears and what they may make us do. The anti-terrorism bill passed Capitol Hill without much fight or questions. Have you read it? Are we going to fritter away our precious freedoms for an illusion of safety? Over 1000 persons mostly of Middle Eastern descent have been arrested since the attacks. How many of those are guilty of nothing more than association, knowing the wrong people? I wish I knew the answers to these questions. How do we make the right choice in these murky times? How do we keep our freedoms while defending ourselves against real dangers? How do we avoid another McCarthy era where suspicion alone can destroy a person's life?

The big question is how we each chose to act. Or chose not to act. And the spirit in which we act. Growing up in Europe with memories of Hitler's Germany and the occupation I would wonder even as a child: what choice would I have made? Would I have had the courage to do the right thing? Maybe what we need in times like these are stories about uncommon courage, about heroes we have forgotten who created conspiracies, not of terror but of goodness.

Varian Fry was one such uncommon and nearly entirely forgotten American hero. Hans Sah, a German poet whom Varian Fry helped save wrote: Fry was an American and he gave us the impression of something particular American: that confidence in man which we in Europe had lost between the two world wars ... He represented the promise of America and made himself a delegate of the true sprit of his country...

Varian Fry's story is about an ordinary man who did extraordinary things in terrible times. If his spirit were to once again come to represent this nation I would rejoice. As you listen I invite you to travel in your mind back to the turmoil and confusion of war and occupation. Ask yourself these questions: Why did some people chose to resist and others to simply looked out for themselves? What might you have done?

Let us set the stage: Germany had invaded France back in 1940. This left the many refugees who had fled to France to escape Nazi Germany in a very dangerous situation. Some were known political enemies of the Nazi regime and others were artists and intellectuals whose works were now considered to be degenerate and an offense to the German State. Many were Jewish and had lost their German passports. Paperless and without a country they were helpless. Germany now occupied the Northern Part of France and the Southern part were governed by the authoritarian Vichy government. The infamous Article 19 required that the French government turn over any German or French nationals that the Gestapo wanted. Thus Southern France had become a dangerous stop for many on their way to a safe haven. The Emergency Rescue Committee was founded in response to this need. Not that this need was well known or generally talked about. Back then you would find no mention in any of the major papers. Pinups and movie stars in uniforms were on the front of Time and Life. But a small group were concerned enough to sponsor a series of fund raising events. At a black tie luncheon in the Hotel Commodore they raised enough to send a representative to Marseilles to rescue as many refugees as they could. Varian Fry at the time was a Harvard educated classicist, a bird watcher, an academic, an editor and hardly the action hero type. But he did speak many languages and besides he was at the time the only volunteer. He wrote later: I accepted the assignment because I believed in democracy. I had seen the democratic governments of Europe fall one by one and was convinced that should democracy survive at all it had better become internationally minded Also among the writers and artists caught in France were those I particularly enjoyed. I owed them a heavy debt of gratitude for all the pleasure they had given me ... And finally I knew from first hand experience what defeat at the hands of Hitler could mean. In 1935 I visited Germany and tasted the atmosphere of oppression. I saw with my own eyes young Nazi toughs gather and smash up Jewish owned Cafes, watched with horror as they dragged Jewish patrons from their seats, drove hysterical crying women into the street, knocked over an elderly man and kicked him in the face.

How many of us believe enough in democracy to put ourselves in danger for it? Varian did and set out from his comfortable New York apartment for Marseilles with 3000 dollars in cash and a list of refugees in his pocket. Since he imagined that much of his work would be diplomatic he spent his last night in New York looking for a dress shirt to go with his tuxedo. He also carried with him a letter of introduction from the American Unitarian Association.

Once he arrived in Marseilles he soon discovered that he was ill prepared. Diplomacy was useless. The United States Consulate staff put up an impenetrable wall of paperwork and obstacles to keep people out of the United States rather than help them get in.

The French Vichy government refused to issue visas to the refugees from Germany. He recalled his first visit to the consulate: After presenting the secretary with my card and letter of introduction I sat down and began to wait. There were five or six mahogany desks and through the great bay windows I could see the lawns and trees of the Chateau and the mountains and the sea beyond them. A young vice consul came up to the desk. What are you doing here? He shouted: Get back to the waiting room where you belong! I got up without saying a word In the waiting room I sat for two hours. Then I went back to Marseilles ... And so it went day after day. Fry realized that he had to look for another way..

He writes: Meanwhile the refugees especially the Germans and Austrian believed that every ring of the doorbell, every step on he stair every knock on the door might be police who had come to take them and deliver them to the Gestapo. Some of them couldn't afford to wait for American passports ... Whenever they had any kind of passports I gave them Chinese, Siamese and sometimes Belgian Congo visas and told them to go as far as Lisbon where they could wait in relative safety for their visas ... But some of them had no papers at all ... The saddest of those the Germans expatriates who were already singled out as enemies of the German state ... Something else had to be done. So he began what can best be called a conspiracy of goodness. At the Hotel Splendide where Fry stayed he hired a motley crew of refugees and expatriates who knew how to forge papers, exchange money on the black market and developescape routes into Spain. By day refugees flocked to his hotel desperate, hoping to escape. By night his committee gathered in the hotel bathroom with water running to muffle the sound of their voices. It was a surreal time. The town was pretty as a postcard filled with sidewalk cafes and on the surface the people looked relaxed even happy. But if you listened closely to those conversations at the next table you would soon learn that they were refugees waiting for a way out. The restaurants and cafes gave them cover.

It takes a lot of imagination and attention to detail to be a successful conspirator. And it takes the effort of many. Like a little Viennese cartoonist named Bill Freir. He was a very skilled draftsman and he could imitate a rubber stamp so well that only an expert could tell it had been drawn with a brush. All day and long into the night he would sit and draw, creating new legal identities for desperate people.

The work continued with agonizing questions: Fry asked: How could we decide who to help and who not to... We had to somehow stick to the list... We would listen to many stories but unless he or she were known to people we could trust we would not help. We couldn't afford to take chances with police stooges... We used to type the reports and insert them into the end of a tube of toothpaste which we would give to departing refugees...

Fry realized he needed a cover and thus established the American Rescue Center, which offered aid and relief. Many of his daytime employees knew nothing of the secret work. In reality he referred people to other agencies such as the Friends Service Committee or the Unitarian Service Committee. Among the papers from his office are some early USC pamphlets with the flaming chalice you see on the front of your order of service.

Unitarians were already involved with the fight against fascism but the Service Committee had been established after Hitler's occupation of Suedentenland. Like Varian Fry's committee their special concern were the anti nazi intellectual and political leaders, people who were in immediate danger. Their goals were twofold: relief and emigration work.

The long hours and facing desperate people daily took its toll. Varian Fry lived in constant fear of the Vichy police who might pick him up at any time. He was wearing down. So when his colleagues found a villa Bel Air and rented it he joined them in the country as often as he could. Refugee painters and writers formed a very select group of visitors with people like Marc Chagall, Max Ernst and Heinrich Mann. While they waited to travel over the mountains to Spain they continued to paint and write and there is a body of work created entirely in this villa of hope. Varian wrote: I now live in a delightful big house with an incredible view over the Mediterranean. Andre Breton and Victor Serge live with us ... I like Surrealists. They are fun.The first night for instance he had a bottlefull of praying mantis, which he released on the table to walk around like so many pets.

But there were other predators hunting him. In December 1940 the French police arrested him and his companions and put him aboard a prison ship in the harbor for three days. No explanation was given. So all they could do was wait and look out a porthole wondering what would happen to them. Just as suddenly they were once again set free. But they knew they were being watched. In 1941 the French authorities expelled him. When Fry asked why the chief of police in Marseilles replied: Because you have protected Jews and anti nazis.

His staff went to the station to see him off. He recalls: It was gray and rainy. As I boarded the train I looked out of the windows and innumerable images floated in my mind, I thought of the fate of thousands of refugees I had sent out of France and the faces of a thousand more I had to leave behind...

He had good reason to worry. When France became completely occupied by the Germans in 1942 the work became nearly impossible. Somehow the Unitarian Service Committee managed to stay. Their office was daily besieged by frantic telegrams and heartbroken letters. State department obstructionism, indifference and restrictive emigration laws from the 1920's meant that only 21.000 refugees were allowed into the US between Pearl Harbor and the German surrender in May 1945. The stonewalling was paid for in human lives.

The USC wrote to the State Department begging for speedy action. Visas were refused. Case after case had this same ending making the work frustrating and seemingly futile. But once in a while someone got through so they continued. USC probably helped save between 1000 and 3000 people. And to save even that number took the action of many including those who had the tedious tasks of finding sponsors for the refugees, unravel red tape and provide jobs and hospitality for the lucky few who got away.

When Varian Fry returned he tried to warn of Hitler's impending massacre of the Jews. In his foreword to Assignment Rescue by he wrote: This is the story of the most intense experience of my life. I have tried, God knows I have tried, to get back again into the mood of American life since I left France. But it doesn't work. But I if I can tell it all just as it happened if I can make others see and feel it as I did then maybe I can sleep soundly again at night. Maybe I can become a normal human being again and exorcise the ghosts which haunts me, the ghosts of the living who do not want to die. If only I can make America listen.

Varian Fry died unexpectedly in 1969 in New York with the pages of his memoirs scattered about him. The police officer who found him described them as "an apparent work of fiction." Every life he saved was precious. Among them were some of the greatest artist and intellectuals of our time. In Chicago at the Art Institute there is a large three-piece stained glass window by Marc Chagall entitled: America, a Tribute to Liberty. It depicts in playful, almost child like drawings a cityscape with a large incredibly deep blue sky full of symbols and whimsy. Among other wonderful and incredible images you see floating human figures, a mystical purple bird, Sabbath candles being lit by hands appearing out of nowhere, a wheel of light in the sky and of course down in a comer the statue of liberty. Why it moves me so I can not explain, perhaps it is that deep almost violet cobalt blue or the spirit of joy that seems to sing all through it. A joy undimmed by pain and sorrow or the struggles of this world. A joy that somehow contains all that and still sings! It is a work that would never have come into existence without Varian Fry and his conspiracy of goodness.

Yes, we live in different times. Our choices are different. We fight invisible fears and nearly invisible enemies. Our tasks are different. Our spirit of freedom, that special American way of believing in the goodness of human beings that Varian Fry had is ours, at the very core of our faith. Before you leave today I invite you to read again our Purposes and Principles on the wall behind me. They are just words unless we put them into action. My prayer is that in the days and months ahead we will find the courage to remain true to our faith as we serve the spirit of freedom.