Miriam Davenport or Miriam Davenport Ebel (June 6, 1915 – September 13, 1999) was an American painter and sculptor who played an important role helping European Jews and intellectuals escape the Holocaust during World War II. Personal life and education Miriam Davenport was born on June 6, 1915 in Boston, Massachusetts. Her parents were steam boat captain Howard Ernest Davenport and Florence L. Sparrow Davenport. In 1920 they lived in Delaware City, Delaware. They also had a son, Howard, who was born about 1926. In 1930, the family of four lived in New Rochelle, New York. Her father died on April 30, 1936. Both of her parents had died with significant debts when Davenport was at Smith College, where she studied architecture and art history. She graduated in 1937 and studied at New York University's Graduate Institute of Fine Arts for one year. Davenport attended the Institut d'Art et d'Archéologie at the Sorbonne in Paris on a Carnegie summer art scholarship. She fell in love with fellow artist, Rudolph Treo, an exile from Yugoslavia. World War II With the June 1940 German occupation of France, Davenport fled Paris with Treo and on the journey their paths split and Davenport went first to the city of Toulouse where she met the poet Walter Mehring and others who were looking to escape to the United States. The port city of Marseille, which although under control of the Vichy Regime, was not yet occupied by the Nazis. Davenport sought ways to coordinate the safe exit from France and met journalist Varian Fry, who invited her to join his staff at the Centre Américain de Secours, or American Relief Center on August 27, 1940. She persuaded him to bring on others, including a new friend and fellow American, Mary Jayne Gold, a wealthy Chicago socialite. Davenport sought out artists and other refugees, interviewed them, and determined who was most in need of help. Davenport rented the Villa Air-Bel in Marseille with Gold and Theodora Bénédite. She invited her clients Victor Serge and André Breton and their families to move into the immense house that also became a "famous last gathering place" of the Surrealists. The Gestapo had identified noted people that they wanted to capture. At enormous risk to themselves, Davenport and the others ran a covert operation helping writers, artists, scientists, and academics Jews escape from France. They arranged for some of these