A traveling photographic exhibit from the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum that focuses on one man's efforts to rescue thousands of people during the Holocaust will stop at the Aurora History Museum from Jan. 8 to April 27. Admission is free.

"Varian Fry: Assignment Rescue 1940-1941" details how Fry heroically helped political and intellectual refugees escape Nazi-controlled Vichy, France, from 1940 to 1941.

A Harvard graduate working as an editor in New York, Fry volunteered for the Emergency Rescue Committee's project to bring 200 individuals from the French port city of Marseilles to safety.

Despite opposition and no government support, Fry established a clandestine operation by which artists, writers, philosophers, and their families - Jews and non-Jews alike - were spirited away to safety. By the time the French expelled Fry in September 1941, he and his colleagues had managed to save some 2,000 refugees, including Max Ernst, Marcel Duchamp, Hannah Arendt, and Andre Breton.

When Fry returned to New York, he recounted his story, but few listened. Fry died unexpectedly in 1967 with the pages of his memoirs scattered about him; the police officer who discovered them dismissed them as an apparent "work of fiction." Not until 1991 did an American institution recognize Fry's work when the United States Holocaust Memorial Council posthumously awarded him its Eisenhower Liberation Medal.

The Aurora History Museum is a service of the City of Aurora's Cultural Services Division. The museum at 15051 E. Alameda Parkway is open from 9 a.m. to 4 p.m. Tuesday through Friday and from 11 a.m. to 4 p.m. Saturday and Sunday. For more information, call 303-739-6666 or visit www.auroramuseum.org.