‘Assignment: Rescue’: to rescue the rescuer

Why are the Yankees called heroes," asks Catherine Taub, "when Varian Fry was a true hero?"

Taub has made it her mission to tell the world — and the village of Ridgewood, where she lives and where Varian Fry grew up — about Fry’s heroism.

Her efforts culminated in the dedication last year of a Ridgewood street as "Varian Fry Way," exhibits at the Ridgewood Library, and a scholarship in Fry’s name at Ridgewood High School.

Taub first learned of Fry’s exploits about nine years ago, touring an exhibit about him with her daughter, Alison, at the Jewish Museum in New York. Learning about a traveling version of the exhibit, she found out what it would cost — close to $2,000 — to bring the exhibit to Ridgewood, wrote up a proposal, and delivered it by hand to the superintendent of schools, the mayor, and the director of the library.

The response was immediately and overwhelmingly positive.

"We met at the library to discuss costs," she recalled in an interview last week, and someone suggested that Jewish organizations, like synagogues, raise the money. But she told them, "It’s not just a Jewish story, it’s a humanitarian story. There should not just be Jewish fund-raising." The word then went out to the Jewish community and beyond — to churches, organizations, and schools.

"The money more than covered the shipping," Taub said, and what was left over went to a Varian Fry portrait from the Smithsonian Institution and a living memorial — the Varian Fry Humanitarian Scholarship at Ridgewood High School. This is awarded to the student who writes the best essay about performing good deeds — "tikkun olam," said Taub, "repairing the world, the great virtue of caring and making a difference."

Fry’s is "a humanitarian story to hold up to our children," Taub said. "He was a person who did such amazing good. We need more examples of that."

She stressed that the scholarship is "not based on grade-point average or financial need but on following the example of Varian Fry." This year there were 29 applicants.

On June 1, at the high school graduation, Taub awarded the fifth Varian Fry Humanitarian Scholarship to Ryan Michael Thomas Commins.

Ryan wrote about a friend, Nick, whose "cancerous tumor was discovered the day before he was to leave for college and he had to ... begin chemotherapy immediately."

Ryan knew that his friend was "a huge baseball fan," and he sponsored a wiffleball tournament to raise his spirits and raise money — more than $11,000, which "went to Tomorrows Childrens Fund at the Hackensack University Medical Center in Nick’s honor."

Unfortunately, Ryan wrote, "Nick didn’t make it. He died on Nov. 3, 2005. The tournament did not save his life but I believe that it helped resuscitate his spirit and delivered a much-needed message of love, concern, and community support that helped Nick battle on for several tough months."

Ryan, who will enter the University of Notre Dame in Indiana, plans "to repeat the tournament this spring and, hopefully, every spring, in Nick’s memory. This time," he wrote, "the money we raise will go to fund Ewing’s sarcoma research."

Donations to the Varian Fry Humanitarian Scholarship Fund may be sent to the Ridgewood Board of Education, 49 Cottage Place, Ridgewood, NJ 07451.

— Rebecca Kaplan Boroson