Martha Sharp; her son Waitstill, Jr.;
husband Rev. Waitstill Sharp; and daughter Martha after their return from Nazi
occupied Europe. In 1939 the Unitarian minister
and his wife left their church and children to aid and rescue Jews and intellectuals
in Prague, Czechoslovakia in a daring mission under the noses of the
Nazis. They returned to Europe to rescue
Jews from occupied France. Photo from Two Who Dared: The Sharps Story.
Two
Who Dared: The Sharps Story, a documentary film about the Unitarian
couple who rescued Jews in Prague and France during World
War II will be shown on Zoom this Thursday, November
18 at 6:30 pm by the Tree of Life Unitarian Universalist
Congregation in McHenry, Illinois. The film will be introduced by the
congregation’s interim Minister, Rev. Jenn Gracen who has preached
about the couple’s dangerous missions and will be available after the
showing to answer questions and facilitate discussion.
In
1939 Rev. Waitstill Sharp, minister of the Unitarian Church
of Wellesley Hills in Wellesley, Massachusetts responded
to an urgent plea to go as quickly as possible to Prague, Czechoslovakia
to help endangered writers, artists, intellectuals, and
Jews out of the country before the Nazis occupied the city. Dozens of other ministers had already turned
down the dangerous assignment. Not only did Waitstill agree but his young
wife Martha determined to join her husband. Not only did they leave their church,
but they had to leave their 8-year old son and 3-year old daughter in
the care of friends.
They
arrived in Prague weeks for German troops to occupy the
city. Despite this as neutral
Americans they established a refugee aid office and began work. Waitstill navigated the Nazi bureaucracy
to try to arrange travel documents and when he couldn’t obtain
them lied to the authorities and had forged documents
created. Martha often played a cloak
and dagger role dodging police to deliver documents and move endangered
individuals to safe house locations.
Eventually she escorted 35 refugees—journalists, political
leaders, and orphaned children—to England crossing occupied
Poland and Germany in a sealed railway car. Waitstill left Prague for Switzerland
a few weeks later. The couple returned
to the U.S.
After
a reunion with their children and a short respite, they accepted a new
assignment to France as the newly established Unitarian Service
Committee’s “ambassadors extraordinary.” But before they could
arrive in Paris to set up an office, the Germans occupied the city.
Instead, the Sharps opened an office in Lisbon, since thousands of
refugees were escaping to neutral Portugal, hoping to find safety
and a ship to take them to the United States or other destinations
outside of Europe. Martha Sharp worked
at a new Unitarian Service Committee office in Marseilles, which was the
primary port in unoccupied Vichy France from which refugees could
escape where she distributed milk and food to those crowding the
port. She doggedly battled numerous
bureaucracies to secure exit visas, transit permits, and identity
papers for 29 children and 10 adults then led them on a perilous trek by
foot across the Pyrenees Mountains into Franco’s Spain and
from there to Lisbon from which they sailed to New York.
For
these lifesaving services both Waitstill and Martha were honored
as The Righteous Among Nations by Yad Vashem, Israel’s Holocaust
memorial, for risking their lives to aid Jews during the Holocaust. They were the second and third Americans so
honored.
In
1944, Waitstill was appointed to a United Nations Relief and
Rehabilitation Administration (UNRRA) position in Cairo.
Martha returned to Spain and Portugal, assisting refugees, mainly Spanish Republicans,
to emigrate to South America.
In 1946, Martha ran for Congress, but lost, in part
because of accusations that the USC was a leftist or communist-supporting
organization.
Although
the couple divorced after the war, due to the strains of prolonged
separations, both continued to serve. Marth continued to advocate for refugees and
was a strong supporter of Israel.
Waitstill returned to parish ministry before retiring. He
died at age 80 in 1983. Martha was 94
when she died in 2099.
Two
Who Dared: The Sharps Story was a years-long effort of the Sharp’s grandson
Artemis Joukowsky who never knew anything about their war-time
accomplishments until he literally stumbled on them while researching
a class project in high school.
Neither grandparent had ever mentioned it. He conducted hours of interviews, especially
with Martha, and uncovered various troves of documents and family
photos. Eventually he interviewed
some of those who they saved and other witnesses. He directed and co-wrote the documentary
which was released in 2012.
The
film so impressed Ken Burns that he signed on as a producer and co-director
of an expanded version aired on PBS in 2016 as Defying the
Nazis: Sharps’ War. The main difference
between the two versions was the addition of Tom Hanks as the voice
of Waitstill. Tree of Life will be
sharing the original version.
The
showing is free to the public but free-will donations can be made
to the Unitarian Universalist Service Committee (UUSC), the continuation
of the Unitarian Service Committee. It partners
with local grass roots organizations around the world and in the US on social
justice projects including refugee emergencies and immigration
justice.
To
join the Zoom program log into.
For
more information contact Tree of Life at https://treeoflifeuu.org/ or visit the Facebook event.
Back in February Rev. Jenn Gracen preached on
the Sharps. Her sermon and my
work at the time on with The Coalition to End the ICE Contract in McHenry
County moved me to once again commit poetry.
Martha Sharp, far right, and twenty seven children she shepherded from France to New York in 1940. Most would otherwise not have survived the war.
Meditation on Saving
Terror Targets
Inspired by Rev. Waitstill
and Martha Sharp
and Rev. Jenn Gracen
Sermon
Those very nice New
Englanders heeded a call
ignored by many
and left children and comfort
for Prague on the edge of doom.
Before they quite knew
what had happened
they were doing un-Unitarian things—
lying to authorities, forging
documents,
laundering money,
consorting with outcasts,
playing cloak and
dagger on dark rainy streets.
He did most of the
paper work and keeping accounts,
spending money, working the phone
and playing shell games with the
Gestapo.
The demure Mrs. was
the secret agent
making rendezvous, shaking tails,
using code names and passing notes
in invisible ink.
At the very last
possible moment
she, using documents faked and
fudged by him
got thirty-seven marked men on a
train
out of Prague on a train that
had to cross Germany
to get to France
batting her pretty, innocent
eyelashes
at Nazi agents.
Back in America by the
skin of their teeth
they played with the children
who hardly knew them
and then were sent back to Europe at
war.
They made their way to
Vichy France
and she came out with twenty-seven
Jewish girls,
leading them on foot across the
Pyrenees
neutral but hostile Spain
and eventually to New
York
on an ocean liner that
narrowly avoided
being sunk by a
U-boat.
That’s the tale we’ve
been told.
We wonder if we could have done it.
we wonder if we even should—
their own children, after all,
were scarred
and their marriage shattered.
There is still plenty
of horror in the world
yet who is dashing off to Kurdistan
to defy Syrians and Turks,
to bloody Yemen where our drones
rain death,
or to a dozen other would-be
holocausts
in the making.
What if we didn’t even
need to leave the county,
our own warm beds,
the bosoms of our families?
What if we sheltered
the undocumented
and despised,
confronted ICE raids,
freed children from cages,
brick by brick
and bar by bar
tore down that
concentration camp
just down the street?
What if….
—Patrick Murfin
