Portrait

Bill Spira, a cartoonist, was also known as Bil Freier. He was originally from Austria. During the Holocaust he forged passports for the Emergency Rescue Committee. Despite Varian Fry's (an American ERC representative) intervention, he was arrested and deported to Auschwitz. He survived the camp.

Miriam Davenport Ebel (1915-1999) was born Miriam Davenport in Boston, studied art and architecture history at Smith College, New York University, and the University of Paris, and escaped to Toulouse and then Marseille during the German invasion in May 1940. She worked with Varian Fry at the Centre Américain de Secours, a cover for the Emergency Rescue Committee, helping to smuggle antifascist artists, writers, and intellectuals out of Europe. She joined her fiancé in Ljubljana, Yugoslavia, in October, returned to the United States via Lisbon just after Pearl Harbor, and continued to work for relief, rescue, and refugee organizations. After the war she pursued her career in painting and sculpture and as an instructor in art and French. She married Charles Ebel (1937-2013) in the 1960s.

The portrait was donated to the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum in 1991 by Miriam Davenport Ebel.

United States Holocaust Memorial Museum Collection, Gift of Miriam Davenport Ebel