Waitstill and Martha Sharp
Martha and Waitstill Sharp of Wellesley, Massachusetts , have been named Righteous Among the Nations by Yad Vashem , the Memorial to the Martyrs and Heroes of the State of Israel in the Holocaust . During the Second World War, they helped hundreds of people to flee from the National Socialists .
Services
Activity in Prague
As a result of the Munich Agreement of September 1938 Hitler by Britain , France and Italy areas of Czechoslovakia , the so-called Sudetenland conceded that the refugee stream consisting of dissidents , Jews and other refugees from Germany and Austria , have increased. Waitstill Sharp (1902–1984), a pastor of the Unitarian denomination , and his wife Martha (1905–1999), an experienced social worker, set out on February 4, 1939 to meet Prague Unitarians , but also many other people to support the escape to London , Paris or Geneva . Their decision to travel to Europe was not an easy one; eventually they had to leave their two young children in the care of friends or the community.
When they arrived in Prague, they registered refugees, stayed in contact with diplomatic embassies , found scholarships and jobs abroad for them and, despite many bureaucratic hurdles, organized the escape of many people. In one case Martha accompanied 35 refugees, including journalists, political leaders and two children whose parents had committed suicide, to England. In another case, in cooperation with the British organization “Movement for the Care of Children from Germany”, she was able to enable children to flee.
On the night of March 14-15, 1939, shortly before the German Wehrmacht occupied Prague, the Sharps destroyed all documents and fled. Waitstill Sharp used a conference in Switzerland to flee, and Martha Sharp fled to Paris a week later, just one day before her arrest planned by the Gestapo , from where the two returned to their homeland.
Activity in Lisbon
In their homeland, the Sharp couple found the immigration policy of the United States incomprehensible. Between 1940 and 1945, when the need was greatest, only 35,000 visas were issued for Jews ; between 1933 and 1940 90,000 had emigrated to the USA. Reasons for this behavior were immigration restrictions in the USA, travel bans on the part of the Germans and problems during the war to transport so many people to the USA.
In May 1940 the couple was asked by the Unitarian Church to set up a branch in Paris. The German invasion of France, however, preceded them; so they set up their office in Lisbon . In cooperation with many people and organizations, for example another office of the Unitarian Church in the unoccupied Marseille , they made it possible for thousands of people to flee during this time, especially political refugees who opposed National Socialism in Germany or the Franco dictatorship in Spain as well as academics, scientists and intellectuals. For example, the escape of the German writer Lion Feuchtwanger , the Nobel Prize for Medicine Otto Meyerhof and the Austrian writer Franz Werfel succeeded .
Award as Righteous Among the Nations
The title “ Righteous Among the Nations ” was brought into being by the State of Israel, represented by the Yad Vashem Memorial , in 1963 to honor non-Jews who risked their lives during the Shoah (Nazi extermination of Jews) to destroy Jews from their sphere of influence of the Nazi regime. In 2006 the couple received this title in recognition of their achievements. Martha Sharp is the first woman from the United States to receive this title. Besides the Sharp couple, only one other American, Varian Fry , has received this award.
Documentary film
- Ken Burns , Artemis Joukowsky (Director): Defying the Nazis: The Sharps' War . USA, 2016
literature
- Artemis Joukowsky, Ken Burns (preface): Defying the Nazis: The Sharps' War . ISBN 9780807071823