If ever there was a case for family pride, David Meyerhof has it. As a teacher at Florence Nightingale Middle School in Highland Park, the 50-year-old Burbank resident follows in the academic tradition of his father and his late grandfather, both remarkable men of science. The former, a professor emeritus at Stanford University, the latter, one of the most important biochemists of the 20th century. All three Meyerhofs owe their very existence to one man: World War II-era American rescuer Varian Fry.
Long before moving to Los Angeles, David Meyerhof grew up in Menlo Park, Calif., where his father, Walter Meyerhof, taught physics at Stanford for 43 years. When Walter retired eight years ago, he wanted to honor the man who rescued him and his parents from the Nazis. So, he created the Varian Fry Foundation, dedicated to promoting awareness of the legendary American rescuer.
On a 1935 visit to Berlin, 27-year-old Fry, the Harvard-educated son of a stockbroker, witnessed Nazi thugs assaulting Jewish intellectuals. As France buckled under Nazi occupation and the Vichy regime was established, Fry and a small group of New Yorkers formed an emergency rescue committee to save 200 enemies of the Nazis trapped on the Mediterranean coast around Marseille. Among them: artists Marc Chagall and Marcel Duchamp; writers Hannah Arendt and Franz Werfel; and Walter’s father, Nobel Prize-winning biochemist Otto Meyerhof (who, with British physiologist Archibald Vivian Hill, discovered the fixed relationship between oxygen consumption and the metabolism of lactic acid in the muscle.)
Fry lobbied Washington, D.C., where his cries fell on deaf ears. So, he personally went to Marseilles, intending to spend a month abroad helping those on his short list. That month turned into a year, and Fry’s roster eventually grew to more than 2,000 refugees. Mr. and Mrs. Otto Meyerhof had run into Fry by chance while staying at the same hotel in Marseille. Fry helped the couple, as well as an 18-year-old Walter, secure the visas to escape Vichy France.
Using Fry’s story as an educational and humanitarian tool to promote tolerance, Walter Meyerhof, now 79, established a Varian Fry educational kit. “Assignment: Rescue,” which includes lesson plans for teachers, a video narrated by Meryl Streep, and Varian Fry’s autobiography, has been distributed to 35,000 middle school and high schools nationwide. In California, the packet has been officially adopted as seventh- and eighth-grade study curriculum. Last fall, Walter stood alongside the U.S. ambassador to France and the mayor of Marseille at the dedication of the Varian Fry Plaza in Marseille.
“I’m proud of what he’s doing,” David Meyerhof said of his father. “I believe that it’s extremely important for the public to know what Varian Fry accomplished. He helped Jewish people during a terrible time. He was a non-Jewish person risking his life for the sake of Jewish people and non-Jews. I’m hoping that many people will come to understand the significance of what he did.”
David Meyerhof is no slouch himself. A teacher in the LAUSD system for 24 years, he recently navigated his sixth-graders at Florence Nightingale through a simulated NASA mission-to-Mars, via the Internet. The success of the project warranted a press conference, attended by mayoral candidate Antonio Villaraigosa and various NASA representatives.
The math and science teacher and his wife of 27 years, Carol, have a 14-year-old son.
On April 25, Otto Meyerhof was honored posthumously with the naming of the Otto Meyerhof Centre for Outpatient Care and Clinical Research at the University of Heidelberg in Germany. Co-organized by the State of Baden-Wuerttemberg and the Heidelberg University Hospital, the ceremony was an emotional one for the biochemist’s descendants, many of whom were at the dedication.
Walter Meyerhof is proud of the posthumous recognition his father has received.
“The people at the university went out of their way to be honest about what happened in the Holocaust time,” said Walter Meyerhof, whose memoirs will be published next year by Fithian Press. “I had a feeling my father would have appreciated it too.”
Ditto for David Meyerhof.
“I was extremely proud of being a part of my family and very happy that my grandfather, who was Jewish, was being honored by the country that expelled him 66 years ago,” David Meyerhof said.
For more information on the Varian Fry Foundation Project and “Assignment: Rescue” lesson plans, go to www.holocaust-trc.org; and www.almondseed.com/vfry.
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