Newly released passenger figures have shown that Varian Fry, an American journalist popularly known as the American Oskar Schindler, has saved as many as 4,000 Jews from Nazis and helped many artists to escape to New York.

The French-Russian artist, Marc Chagall; the French anthropologist Claude Levi-Strauss and Marcel Duchamp, the surrealist artist are one of those saved by Fry.

The German industrialist, Schindler, portrayed in the 1993 film Schindler's List directed by Steven Spielberg, has been internationally recognized for the saving the life of 1,200 Jews.

Among the others who were saved by Fry were the artists Max Ernst and Andre Breton; the Nobel laureate physiologist, Otto Meyerhof; Jacques Hadamard, the mathematician and the writers Franz Werfel, Hannah Arendt and Heinrich Mann.

Fry, a Harvard scholar had covered Hitler's rise while working for an American newspaper before the start of the Second World War.

This month, the Emergency Rescue Committee, an independent organization set up by Americans showing their concern about the prosecution of the Jews, is celebrating its 70th anniversary this month.

Fry, being the part of Emergency Rescue Committee arrived at the French port having a cheque book and a list of 200 people.

Fry died in 1967 just a month before his 60th birthday, was once named as "righteous among nations" in 1995 by Yad Vashem.