Mary Jayne Gold
Mary Jayne Gold, born 1909 - died October 5, 1997, was a wealthy American socialite who played an important role helping European Jews and intellectuals escape the Holocaust during World War II.
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Born in Chicago, Illinois into a WASP family of considerable wealth, Mary Jayne Gold was educated at the Master's School at Dobbs Ferry, New York and a finishing school in Italy. In the 1930s, her money allowed her to enjoy the vibrant social scene in London and Paris, France. Piloting her own airplane, she travelled around Europe, spening her time at luxury hotels, skiing at the best resorts in the Alps, and socializing with the elite of the day.
The beautiful young lady was living in her chic Paris apartment and enjoying the nightlife with an endless supply of handsome suitors when France fell to the onslaught of the German army in 1940. Gold fled to the Mediterranean seaport of Marseille in southern France which, although not Nazi occupied, was under the control of the collaborationist Vichy regime. In Marseille she met Miriam Davenport, an American art student, and Varian Fry, an American journalist and intellect. Fry had come to France on a personal mission to help members of Europe’s intellectual and artistic community escape the Nazi threat. Instead of returning to the safety of the United States, Mary Jayne Gold chose to remain and joined Davenport and Fry along with other volunteers in sheltering refugees and organizing their escape through the mountains to Spain or by smuggling them aboard freighters sailing to either North Africa or ports in North or South America.
May Jane Gold not only risked her life but also spent very substantial amounts of her own money to help with the evacuation of more than 2,000 refugees who came from all over Europe. A great many of the people she risked her life to help were Jews facing deportation to a German concentration camp and certain death. Among the escapees were notables such as the sculptor Jacques Lipchitz, artist Marc Chagall, writer Hannah Arendt and Nobel Prize winner, Otto Meyerhof.
In 1941 Mary Jane Gold was forced to flee Marseille to the safety of her home in the U.S. but returned to live in France after the war ended. She purchased a home in the village of Gassin, Var, not far from St. Tropez, on the French Riviera where the French singer Guy Béart also came to live. In 1980, she wrote about her wartime experiences in a book published in French and in English as Crossroads Marseilles, 1940.
May Jane Gold never married and had no children. She died of pancreatic cancer in 1997 at her villa in Gassin.