One of the righteous

America pays belated tribute to an unsung hero of WWII:

Sixty-six years ago, Hiram Bingham IV, a blue-blood American diplomat in France, defied U.S. policy by helping Jews escape the Nazis in the early years of World War II.

Bingham’s actions cost him his Foreign Service career but won him the undying gratitude of the more than 2,000 refugees he helped save by issuing them travel visas and false passports, and even at times sheltering them in his home. Only in recent years has his heroism been officially recognized by his own country.

[…] But Bingham, in defiance of U.S. policy, went much further, helping thousands of Jews escape. He provided Fry with visa and other travel documents, some fraudulent, let rescue activists use his home for planning meetings and hid refugees there from the local authorities. At one point he helped novelist Lion Feuchtwanger elude the Nazis by dressing him in women’s clothing and spiriting him through German checkpoints by telling authorities the person was his mother-in-law. Among the people Bingham helped save were artist Marc Chagall and philosopher Hannah Arendt.

In a 1980 audiotape made by his granddaughter Tiffany, who was working on a school project, Bingham made clear that his superiors would have disapproved had they known what he was doing.

“My boss, who was the consul general at the time, said, ‘The Germans are going to win the war. Why should we do anything to offend them?’ ” Bingham said on the tape, which was found in the 1990s and played at yesterday’s event. “I had to do as much as I could.”

His name will be honored for a long, long time. Scroll down the page to read the USPS profile on Bingham.