In the fall of 1956, a cable was sent from Vienna to IRC headquarters in New York:

Best we can do to demonstrate solidarity with hungarian liberation forces… is to rush at once massive quantities relief supplies … we are preparing  for tragic possibility soviet recapture control of hungary, when countless escapees will flood into austria and must be ready with resources.

It was signed by IRC chairman Leo Cherne and president Angier Biddle Duke.

A week earlier, on October 23, Hungarian workers, students, and intellectuals publicly proclaimed their desire to be free from domination by the Soviet Union. Staging a peaceful demonstration in Budapest, two thousand marchers made their way to Parliament Square, where the secret police fired upon them. The news spread quickly and disorder and violence erupted throughout the capital. The revolt spread across Hungary and the pro-Soviet government fell. The Red Army intervened but failed to crush the movement and withdrew from Budapest.

From Vienna, Cherne and the director of the IRC’s Vienna office, Marcel Faust, crossed the border into Hungary in a battered Chevrolet loaded with medicine – the first American relief workers to arrive on the scene.  Since the end of World War II and the division of Europe into rival Soviet and Western blocs, the IRC had been aiding stateless refugees and escapees from the Soviet side of the Iron Curtain. Now, the IRC was at the vanguard of the Hungarian rescue mission: While Duke organized refugee assistance in Vienna, Cherne returned to the U.S. to raise funds.

Within 60 days, $2.5 million had collected from the American public – $357,000 of it raised after a passionate appearance by Cherne on the popular Ed Sullivan television show.

On November 4, the Red Army moved into Budapest and this time crushed the revolt. In the aftermath some 200,000 Hungarians fled into Austria. IRC volunteers were among the many that stood on the border to offer aid, encouragement, and support to the refugees.

The burden of so many refugees was more than Austria could handle.  So the IRC stepped up its activities in several European countries. We opened health and training centers and homes for children in Great Britain, Belgium, West Germany, and Sweden.

Cherne and the IRC brought several leaders of the revolution to the U.S to tell their stories to the American people, including the Mayor of Budapest. Many Hungarian refugees were resettled in this country. Long after the Hungarian revolt had been crushed and had faded from the headlines, the IRC continued working to integrate Hungarian refugees into their new environment.

“It’s assaults with bottles and sticks, you name it. It’s brutal. It’s absolutely terrifying … They (rape survivors) won’t live with dignity.”   

- Sarah Mosely, who oversees IRC programs in eastern Congo for survivors of sexual violence, telling NBC News anchor Ann Curry about the systematic use of rape as a weapon of war in the region.

“There are things so horrible that decent men and women find them impossible to believe. Their ends are the enslavement and annihilation of the Jews . . . [and] after them, of all the non-German peoples of Europe, and if possible, the entire world”   

- Varian Fry, writing in The New Republic in December 1942. Fry was sent on a secret mission to Europe by the Emergency Rescue Committee (now the International Rescue Committee) to rescue people on the Nazis’ “most wanted” list.

“The U.S. response to the Iraqi refugee crisis is best characterized as on-going willful denial.”   

- Michael Kocher, IRC acting vice president of international programs, interviewed for a Cox News Service story on Iraqi refugee resettlement in Sweden and the low number being resettled in the U.S.

“To me courage is like a chain. What is most rewarding about my job is to reach out to others and see them find the courage deep within themselves, discover their own voice and reach out to others.”   

- Gertrude Garway, IRC gender-based violence program manager in Liberia, talking about her work with survivors of sexual violence. A new IRC project is enabling women in Liberia and other conflict zones to make their voices heard and help create positive change in their communities.

In 1940, shortly after the world watched the appalling spectacle of Nazi troops goose-stepping down the Champs-Élysées in Paris, a 32-year old American editor by the name of Varian Fry settled into a small hotel in Marseille, France. There he initiated a clandestine operation to rescue some of Europe’s most famous artists, writers, and intellectuals who had fled to France.  Among them were many whose names were on the Nazis’ most wanted list.

Fry had been sent on his mission by the Emergency Rescue Committee (ERC), which would combine in 1942 with the International Relief Association to form the International Rescue Committee. 

Fry arrived in Marseille with $3,000 strapped to one of his legs and a list of some 200 artists thought to be in particular danger.  But once Fry set up his operation, he recognized that the need was much greater.  Consequently, he expanded his mission to rescue many more in flight from the Nazis and their collaborators.

Over the next 13 months, Fry and a small team of Americans and French helped at least 1,500 refugees escape from France to Spain and provided aid to more than 2,000 others.  Among those spirited out of France were the painters Marc Chagall and Max Ernst, the philosopher Hannah Arendt, and Nobel Prize winning medical researcher Otto Meyerhof.

Within a year, the collaborationist Vichy French government learned of Fry’s efforts.  In August 1941, he was expelled “for helping Jews and anti-Nazis.”  In 1942, the ERC office was raided and closed.

Back in New York, Fry loudly, but in the end futilely, tried to alert the world to what would come to be known as the Holocaust.  “There are things so horrible that decent men and women find them impossible to believe,” Fry wrote in The New Republic in December 1942.  He continued, “their ends are the enslavement and annihilation of the Jews . . . [and] after them, of all the non-German peoples of Europe, and if possible, the entire world.”

It was many years before Fry’s exploits won the recognition they deserved.  Five months before his death in 1967, France awarded him the French Legion of Honor.  In 1996, Israel honored him posthumously, when he became the first American to receive its “Righteous Among Nations” medal.

The conviction exemplified in the determination of Varian Fry, that every life has dignity and is worth saving, remains the foundation of the IRC.

In January 1933, Adolf Hitler, the head of the Nazi party, became chancellor of Germany. Within two months, the Nazis had gained virtually total control of the country and had begun what would be a 12-year nightmare eventually engulfing the entire world.  For starters, Germany’s labor unions and opposing political parties were banned.  Civil liberties were suspended.  And the purging of Jews from the German government and universities was launched. 

Although much of the world greeted the Nazi takeover with indifference or apathy, some people were alert to what was happening and the threat it represented.

In July 1933, a committee of 51 prominent Americans was established in New York at the request of German-born physicist Albert Einstein in his role as head of the International Relief Association.  The Americans included intellectuals, artists, and members of the clergy.  Among them were the philosopher John Dewey, the writer John Dos Passos, and the theologian Reinhold Niebuhr. 

The committee established offices at 11 West 42nd St., opposite Bryant Park and not far from our current headquarters location.  Its mission, as The New York Times reported on July 24, 1933, was to “assist Germans suffering from the policies of the Hitler regime.”  And so came into being the organization that would grow into today’s International Rescue Committee.  Although the IRC today is vastly larger and more complex than it was at the beginning, we are still motivated by the same concern that led to our founding: a commitment to fellow human beings who are suffering as the result of persecution, war, or civil conflict.

George Khayat (right) is one of three teenage family members who recently joined a group of IRC-UK board members and supporters on a visit to IRC programs in the

There is no doubt that my recent trip with the IRC to the DRC left a resounding note. Nothing could have prepared me for the sights I saw. Even the blessed Discovery Channel could not compare to the real thing. The country is an amazing place. On entering it you are overwhelmed by a myriad of sights and sounds. It all feels so different to back home…

I cannot deny that I had expected to see poverty to the extent that I witnessed but what was astonishing was the determination of the people living there. It seemed that they had not given up hope just yet. The IRC allowed for that fire to burn, no matter how small and it was its existence that truly mattered. I now know that never again will I complain about not getting what I want (I hope).

I doubt I could ever muster the courage to do what some of the IRC employees do out there. They dedicate years of their lives to other people. They truly are a tough act to follow.  Being the only teenage male on the trip I had to show my strength and ability to take anything and everything in without showing emotion. I failed dismally especially when it came to the Gender Based Violence Clinic visit. Our clan was calmly led by IRC Sarah who specialised in this field. I knew what rape was but had never in my life encountered a victim of it. The age range of three to ninety years old could have been all I needed to hear that day to give the scarring impression I still have now.

Although I did listen as hard as my little mind permitted on the trip I found it hard to come to conclusions as to what needed to be done. There is no doubt that to start a true government needs to be put in place and although the rebel factions have interesting names… the DRC could definitely do without them.