In addition to these film archives, the Sharps’ archives are now digitally housed at the USHMM, as well as at the libraries of Brown University, the Divinity School at Harvard University, and the Cohen Center for Holocaust and Genocide Studies at Keene State College in Keene, New Hampshire. Special thanks to all the archivists (listed on our webpage), but special mention should be made to Brown librarian Harriette Hemmasi and archivist Holly Snyder, who have worked to showcase the collection, as well as to archivists Fran O’Donnell and Jessica Suarez at the Harvard Divinity School library. Beginning with the initial boxes of eight hundred documents in my grandmother’s basement, the archive has grown to more than two hundred thousand digitized documents! Now there are thousands of related items at three institutions, which also includes links to libraries in the city of Pau, in Southern France, and to archives in London and the Czech Republic, where our teams continue to meticulously log, sort, and organize to give a more accurate depiction of the Sharps’ achievements, historical contributions, and legacy.
This project would never have grown without the support of the Unitarian Universalist Service Committee (UUSC) and the leadership of the Dr. Charlie Clements, MD, a human rights activist, and the former president of UUSC, who was a critical supporter of this project from the moment we met, in 2005. He both guided my efforts and became my first co-executive producer. The current president of the UUSC, the Reverend William Schulz, and our partners at the UUA, including President Peter Morales, Carey McDonald, and Paul Twitchell, have played an instrumental role in telling this story and celebrating the founding of the UUSC in 1940.
Marina Goldman not only reads the voice of Martha Sharp in the film but started the Sharp Rescuer Prize, which has been awarded twice. The Sharp Rescuer Prize promotes humanitarian work in the example of Waitstill and Martha Sharp and seeks to empower rescuers today who are risking their lives for others. The first award was given to KaWDA—Katanya Women’s Development Association—to prevent the spread of Ebola in West Africa, and the second went to Latifa, Alexandra, and Colin Woodhouse, who went to Lesvos to assist refugees on that small Greek island as a direct inspiration of the Sharps’ story.
The big break was in 2013 when Ken Burns, America’s leading documentary filmmaker, saw the film and said yes to re-editing it for PBS. Under Ken’s tutelage and mentorship in filmmaking and his aesthetic vision of historical storytelling, we completely edited the film for airing on PBS. Together with producer Matthew Justus, editor Erik Angra, and an extensive team of storytellers, including my daughters Emma and Alexandra, we told the story through the actual journals and interviews that are the basis of both this book and film. Ken brought on renowned actor Tom Hanks to be the voice of Waitstill Sharp. It is safe to say that without Ken’s support of the film and telling this unique American story, you would not be reading this book today. His support made this project happen, and for his mentorship, support, and friendship, I am deeply indebted.
Over the past ten years, I have worked with a number of filmmakers who helped craft this story, including Larry Benaquist, Bill Sullivan, Deborah Shaffer, Steven Wechsler, Coby Atlas, and Kyra Thompson. Together with Florentine Films, including David Blistein, Elle Carriere, Chris Darling, and Kim Klein of the Better Angels Society, we were able to finish the post-production of the film. Working closely with Outpost WGBH, Chris Fournelle, Brandon Kraemer, Beth Golin Lillis and WETA, and PBS, including Dalton Delan, Jim Corbley, and Anne Harrington and advisors Joel Shames and Drew Patrick, we are proud to present the film and book as companions.
This project would not be possible without the support, love, and guidance of my dear family, starting with my inspirations, my mom, Martha Sharp Joukowsky, remarkable teacher and scholar of the prehistory of the Middle East, and my dad, Artemis Joukowsky Volynsky, the “first rescuers” I ever knew. My father and his family company, AIG, had the habit of rescuing employees during times of revolution and war, starting with the evacuation from China in 1938 from the impending Japanese invasion.
I thank my four beautiful daughters with all my heart—Emma Rose, Lydia Elena, Alexandra Sophia, and Natasha Sally. They have all made significant contributions to making this project happen, helping me organizing screenings and becoming my associate producers. They also tolerated work sessions in my home office and countless screenings enough for their entire lifetimes, and each in her own remarkable way has helped to tell this personal family story. Emma Rose worked two years on the making of the film and plays her great-grandmother Martha in the Mr. X scene. Alexandra Sophia helped to find the new Tom Hanks lines after Ken called and said, “We have good news. Tom Hanks has agreed to read the lines. The bad news is you have two weeks to double the size of the film, and remember, Tom Hanks is reading your grandfather, so find the best possible lines”—and Alexandra did! She and Emma both earned the credit of associate producers.
My sister Nina and my brother Misha, along with his wife, Jane, and their families, have also been there for me from the beginning, and I thank them with all my heart. Among the many, many efforts of support, it was Misha’s leadership and initiative that solidified the worldwide importance of this story when we successfully testified together to Yad Vashem. Working closely with Stanlee Stahl of the Jewish Foundation for the Righteous, we were able to make a direct testimony to Dr. Mordecai Paldiel, who at the time was the director of the Righteous Among Nations Program at Yad Vashem. Without their guidance and support, this story would not be known today.
Acknowledgment to Stephen G. Michaud for his vital and much appreciated role in co-creating this book. He helped develop the narrative from thousands of pages of raw research and then helped me to craft both its pace and content.
I would also like to thank Richard Higgins, Chuck Crisafulli, and my original collaborator, Ghanda DiFiglia, for contributing their skills as well.
This book is a wonderful tribute to Livingston Stebbins, who with his wife, Edna (chapter 1), came and took care of my mom and uncle during the first tour in 1939. Livingston Stebbins was, at the time of supporting Martha and Waitstill, the publisher of Beacon Press! So we all think it is fitting that this book found its home where it all started. Words do not express my gratitude and appreciation for my editor, Rachael Marks, who helped me take the final stand to publish this book. Thanks to all the folks at Beacon, including managing editor Susan Lumenello, copy editor Chris Dodge, and, of course, Tom Hallock, marketing director, and Helene Atwan, the director of the press, who made this book possible.
Thanks to my mentors and teachers Dr. Fernando Flores, Russell Redenbaugh, Mickey Lemle, Arnold Slavet, Adele Simmons, Jonathan Lash, Greg Prince, and Vartan Gregorian. Thank you to my funders and supporters for over seventeen years, including Tom Tisch, Jan and Rick Cohen, Jonathan and Jeannie Lavine, the Righteous Persons Foundation, the Seastone Foundation, the Starr Foundation, and the entire Threshold Foundation community.
I could not have done this project without many of my institutional partners (see a complete list on our website). Facing History and Ourselves, our educational curriculum developer, is now being used in thousands of schools, and that is the result of the passion of Marc Skvirsky and Laura Tavares. They have collaborated as true partners in shaping the story as a teachable moment for students today. No Limits Media, our co-production company (with Florentine Films, in association with WETA), also supported us. Larry Rothstein, executive director, and Steve Marx provided much-needed feedback and support throughout the past fifteen years. At Hampshire College, President Jonathan Lash, Clay Ballantine, and Professors Arron Berman and Myrna Breitbart mentored me through the process. The leadership of the US Holocaust Memorial Museum, in particular director Sara Bloomfield and her trusted team of Lorna Miles, Aimee Segel, Dana Marnie, and many others, has enabled this project to grow the research and education of this story. The Anti-Defamation League, J-Street, the Strassler Center at Clark University, Yad Vashem, and the Museum of Tolerance have also been partners.
I would like
to give a shout-out to the “unlimited partners,” the people who helped me day after day to bring this project to fruition, including Michelle Pinage, Anne Harrington, Elizabeth Bolger, Walter Strauss, Mark Ide, Lorenzo Gaines, Joseph Steig, Tom Stoner, Craig Sieben, Deanna Byck, Geralyn Dreyfous, Dewey Wigod, Jody Snider, the D’Arcy family, the Dumar family, Liz Sheehan, David and Catherine Hills, Jodie Evans, Annie Birdy, the Sennott family, Ibrahim AlHusseini, and Dan Cogan (the nephew through marriage to the late Martha Sharp Cogan), and the many other partners and friends who made this book—and related film, archives, and curricula—possible. On every level it has been life changing and affirming!
Finally, one of the most gratifying aspects of making this film and book was getting to know my uncle Hastings, whose imitations of Donald Duck provided comic relief at times when it was most needed.
It seems that after decades of effort, the world is going to learn of Martha and Waitstill Sharp. My deepest gratitude to all who have helped to make this possible.
NOTES
CHAPTER ONE: The Eighteenth Choice
1. Foote, “The Deadly Infection of Anti-Semitism,” 708–9.
2. “Freiwilliger Schutzdienst,” Time, May 23, 1938.
3. Robert Cloutman Dexter, unpublished manuscript, Elizabeth Dexter Papers, Box 37, John Hay Library, Brown University.
4. US Holocaust Memorial Museum, “Kristallnacht: A National Pogrom, November 9–10, 1938,” Holocaust Encyclopedia, http://www.ushmm.org/wlc/en/article.php?ModuleId=10005201.
CHAPTER TWO: Learning the Ropes
1. Parker Marean, AUA treasurer, to Waitstill Sharp, December 4, 1939, Unitarian Universalist Service Committee (UUSC) Records.
2. “Reinhard Heydrich,” Jewish Virtual Library, http://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/jsource/Holocaust/Heydrich.html; Henry, Norbert Fabian Capek, 256–57, 262, 270–71.
CHAPTER THREE: Witnesses to History
1. Cogan, “Church Mouse.”
CHAPTER FOUR: The Dying Republic
1. Wyman, The Abandonment of the Jews, 15.
2. London, Whitehall and the Jews, 146–47.
3. “The Story,” Nicholas Winton: The Power of Good (Ann Arbor, MI: Gelman Education Foundation, 2006, 2009), http://www.powerofgood.net/story.php.
4. In her book Prague Winter, Gerda calls her sister “Anne.” On the application that the Steins left with Martha, it’s Johanna.
5. Mayer, Prague Winter, 33.
6. Emanuel and Gissing, Nicholas Winton and the Rescued Generation, 65.
7. Cogan, “Church Mouse.” This may not be an accurate recollection of the opera. For the record, Martha notes in her datebook that the performance was “Dvorak.” George Kennan, stationed at the American Legation at the time, notes that Dvorak’s opera Rusalka was performed that night.
CHAPTER FIVE: Einmarsch—The Invastion of Czechoslovakia
1. Neville Chamberlain, speech, Birmingham, March 17, 1939, The British War Bluebook, Avalon Project, Yale Law School, http://avalon.law.yale.edu/wwii/blbk09.asp.
2. US Department of State, Publication 1983, Peace and War: United States Foreign Policy, 1931–1941 (Washington, DC: US Government Printing Office, 1943), 453–54.
3. “The Holocaust in Bohemia and Moravia,” Holocaust Encyclopedia, US Holocaust Memorial Museum, http://www.ushmm.org/wlc/en/article.php?ModuleId=10007323.
4. Chadwick, The Rescue of the Prague Refugees, 24.
5. Masaryk, Alice Garrigue Masaryk, 161–63, 179.
CHAPTER SIX: Under the Swastika
1. Kennan, From Prague After Munich.
2. “The Massacre at Lidice,” Holocaust Education and Archive Research Team, 2008, http://www.holocaustresearchproject.org/nazioccupation/lidice.html.
3. De Haan, Daskalova, and Loutfi, Biographical Dictionary of Women’s Movements and Feminisms in Central Europe, 439.
CHAPTER EIGHT: Helping the Kulturträgers
1. Because she and Waitstill had entered Czechoslovakia before the invasion, they possessed exit permits, Ausreise, good until April 30, that allowed them to leave the protectorate and return without having to get permission from Berlin. With no more than the show of a passport and the Ausreise, they were able to leave Prague periodically with the CVs of the professors, journalists, Social Democrats, and other professionals who were their primary clients.
2. Lydia Busch would reincarnate herself in the United States as Lydia St. Clair and appear in a number of dramatic productions on American television. Her only movie credit came in Henry Hathaway’s 1945 black-and-white drama The House on 92nd Street. Her character was Johanna Schmidt, a Nazi spy.
CHAPTER NINE: Money Talks
1. Waitstill Hastings Sharp interview, 1978.
CHAPTER TEN: Last Days in the Protectorate
1. Chadwick, The Rescue of the Prague Refugees.
2. De Haan, Daskalova, and Loutfi, Biographical Dictionary of Women’s Movements and Feminisms in Central Europe, 439
3. Margaret Carroll interview, 2006.
CHAPTER ELEVEN: The First Choice
1. Correspondence concerning the formation of the USC, 1939, bMS 16003/2 (7), Unitarian Universalist Service Committee (UUSC) Records; “Unitarians Propose Further Refugee Work,” Christian Register, November 30, 1939.
2. Elisabeth Dexter and Robert Dexter, report on trip to Europe (January 27–April 29, 1940), Elisabeth Dexter Papers, John Hay Library, Brown University.
3. Eliot letter to Waitstill, UUSC Records.
4. Shirer, The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich, 720–29.
5. “Dunkirk Evacuation, World War II,” Britannica Online Encyclopaedia, http://www.britannica.com/print/topic/970448.
CHAPTER TWELVE: In Lisbon
1. Cogan, “Church Mouse.”
2. Ibid.
3. Sharp and Sharp, Journey to Freedom, 13.
CHAPTER THIRTEEN: Helping Hands
1. Cogan, “Church Mouse.”
CHAPTER FOURTEEN: Reunion in Cerbère
1. Waitstill Hastings Sharp interview, 1978.
2. Sharp and Sharp, Journey to Freedom, 8.
CHAPTER SIXTEEN: The Emergency Rescue Committee
1. Lowrie, The Hunted Children, 102–25.
2. Fry, “Surrender on Demand,” 53–55.
3. Ibid.
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN: The Milk Arrives
1. Report of the International Committee of the Red Cross on Its Activities During the Second World War (September 1, 1939–June 30, 1947), vol. III, Relief Activities (Geneva, May 1948), 373; Commission Mixte de Secours de la Croix-Rouge Internationale, La Contribution de la Commission Mixte de Secours a L’Action D’Entraide en Faveur de L’Enfance des Hébergés Civils et des Civils Nécessiteux de France, 1941–1944 (Geneva, 2 July 1945), 191.
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN: Refugees’ Odyssey
1. Mordecai Paldiel interview, 2006.
2. Deborah Dwork interview, 2006.
3. “Hitler Ridiculed as a Writing Man,” New York Times, February 9, 1933.
4. “Nazis Raid Home of Lion Feuchtwanger,” New York Times, March 18, 1933.
CHAPTER NINETEEN: Escape from Marseille
1. Sharp and Sharp, Journey to Freedom, 11.
2. Marino, The Quiet American, 166–71.
3. Marta Feuchtwanger, An Emigre Life.
4. Ball had worked with Varian’s operation for a little less than two months when he mysteriously disappeared. His compatriots assumed that he was killed, but he seems to have quietly made it back to the United States and lived out a long life. “Leon Ivan ‘Dick’ Ball,” Find a Grave, http://www.findagrave.com/.
CHAPTER TWENTY: The Children’s Journey
1. Yehuda Bauer interview, 2006.
CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR: A Run for Congress
1. FBI file on Martha Sharp.
CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE: Palestine
1. Brita Stendahl, “Fellowship in Israel for Arab-Jewish Youth,” unpublished paper, 1997.
CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX: Civil Rights and Chicago
1.
The Magnetic Tide, Silverstone.
EPILOGUE
1. Mordecai Paldiel interview, 2006.
WORKS CONSULTED
Archives
Elisabeth Dexter Papers, John Hay Library, Brown University, Providence, Rhode Island
Hadassah, the Women’s Zionist Organization, New York City
International Committee for the Red Cross and Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies, Geneva, Switzerland
Martha and Waitstill Sharp Collection, 1905–2005, John Hay Library, Brown University, Providence, Rhode Island
Martha and Waitstill Sharp Collection, ca. 1902–2006, US Holocaust Memorial Museum, Washington, DC
Unitarian Universalist Service Committee (UUSC) Records, ca. 1935–2006, Andover-Harvard Theological Library, Harvard Divinity School, Cambridge, Massachusetts
Books and Articles
Chadwick, William. The Rescue of the Prague Refugees. Leicester, UK: Matador, 2010.
De Haan, Francisca, Krassimira Daskalova, and Anna Loutfi, editors. Biographical Dictionary of Women’s Movements and Feminisms in Central Europe: Central, Eastern, and South Eastern Europe, 19th and 20th Centuries. Budapest: Central European University Press, 2006.
DiFiglia, Ghanda. Roots and Visions: The First Fifty Years of the Unitarian Universalist Service Committee. Boston: Unitarian Universalist Service Committee, 1990.
Emanuel, Muriel, and Vera Gissing. Nicholas Winton and the Rescued Generation: Save One Life, Save the World. London: Vallentine Mitchell, 2002.
Feuchtwanger, Lion. The Devil in France: My Encounter with Him in the Summer of 1940. New ed. Los Angeles: University of Southern California Libraries, Figueroa Press, 2010.
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