World War II
After the outbreak of World War II he tried to join US Intelligence but his services were declined, so he briefly joined the Section Volontaire des Américains - the ambulance corps. He was on his way to North Africa to join the Free French when he heard about Varian Fry, who would go on to rescue over 2,000 Jews from Vichy France with the help of a handful of people, Fawcett among them. Among the most famous people they rescued were Franz Werfel, Marc Chagall, Heinrich Mann and Hannah Arendt.
“I went to see him and he wasn’t very interested until I told him I’d been a professional wrestler. He said, ‘Maybe we could use you to sort of keep order. Anybody who’s not supposed to be there, you can get rid of them’,” Fawcett recalled in an interview with Dr Stephen D Smith in 1998. “Fry was perhaps one of the most idealistic men I had ever known and certainly the most unassuming. We got rid in a hurry of his little bow-tie and striped suit. Out of place completely in Marseilles. Maybe one of the reasons he got away with a lot was because he looked so innocent.”
Towards the end of the war, Fawcett married six Jewish women in three months. This enabled the women, who had formerly been imprisoned in concentration camps, to leave France with an American visa.
Eventually, he had to flee France at several hours’ notice after a tip-off that the Gestapo was coming to arrest him. Having left France, he flew in the RAF and later fought with the French Foreign Legion.
Read more about this topic: Charles Fernley Fawcett
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