[Jewish] Artemis Joukowsky at JCA

[Noam Hurvitz-Prinz]

This event is happening at JCA this friday. If you are interested,  
but need a ride contact Liza Neal and she will try to organize a van  
depending on how many people are interested.

Thanks, Noam

So here's the deal. This Friday at 7:30 p.m. in the Sanctuary of the  
Jewish Community of Amherst Artemis Joukowsky, Hampshire alumnus and  
trustee emeritus, and Rosemarie Feigl will speak about the work of  
Artemis's grandparents Waitstill and Martha Sharp, who founded the  
Unitarian Universalist Service Committee, an organization that saved  
many thousands of Jews and religious liberals from the Nazis. Ms.  
Feigl is one of them. In June the Sharps will be honored in Jerusalem  
as the second and third Americans to be named to the "Righteous Among  
Nations" at the Yad Vashem.

MORE DETAILS:

Dr. Mordecai Paldiel, Director of the Righteous Among the Nations  
Department of Yad Vashem, announced that two former Wellesley  
residents, Martha and Rev. Waitstill Sharp, will be honored this week  
as only the second and third Americans recognized for humanitarian  
efforts in rescuing Jews during Hitler’s reign of terror.

The Yad Vashem organization, “The Holocaust Martyrs’ and Heroes’  
Remembrance Authority,” recently announced that Waitstill and Martha  
Sharp have been awarded the title of “Righteous Among the Nations.”  
The Sharps, only the second and third Americans to be so recognized,  
are being honored posthumously for “help rendered to Jewish persons  
during the period of the Holocaust, at considerable risk to themselves.”

Waitsill and Martha Sharp’s names will be added to the Righteous  
Honor Wall at Yad Vashem memorial* *in Jerusalem on June 12, 2006.  
Honored guests for the medal ceremony will be the Sharps’ children  
(Hastings Sharp and Martha Sharp Joukowsky), son-in-law, (Artemis  
A.W. Joukowsky II), grandchildren (Nina Joukowsky Köprülü, Artemis  
A.W. Joukowsky III and Michael W. Joukowsky), as well as their great- 
grandchildren.

Yad Vashem was established in 1963 by the state of Israel to  
commemorate and perpetuate the memory of the six million Jewish  
victims of the Holocaust. An additional stipulation in its  
constitution requires that Yad Vashem honor "The Righteous Among the  
Nations,” Gentiles who risked their lives to save Jews. To date, some  
21,000 people/ /have been so recognized.

Before the outbreak of World War II, Waitstill Sharp (1902-1984) was  
a Unitarian minister in Wellesley Hills, Massachusetts. He and his  
wife, Martha Dickie Sharp (1905-1999) were called to leave their  
parish in February, 1939 to travel to Czechoslovakia on behalf of the  
American Unitarian Association to assist the Unitarian Church in  
Prague, a city flooded with refugees. Even after German forces  
occupied all of Czechoslovakia a month later, the Sharps stayed on,  
continuing their humanitarian work. “In Prague,” reports the Sharps’  
grandson Artemis, “my grandparents found themselves in the middle of  
a refugee crisis. Under the banner of the Unitarian Church, they  
provided ecumenical relief efforts to hundreds of German, Austrian  
and Russian refugees. In addition, they aided thousands of desperate  
people seeking to flee or escape the Germans.” Waitstill Sharp left  
Prague on August 9^th , 1939 after the Gestapo had closed down their  
operation. Days later, the Gestapo issued a warrant for Martha’s  
arrest. Fortunately, Martha left Czechoslovakia August 16^th , just  
one day before her scheduled arrest. **

The Unitarian Service Committee was formally established in May,  
1940. The Sharps were asked to return to Europe to help set up  
illegal means for endangered refugees who had escaped to Vichy  
France. They would establish escape routes from southern France,  
often over the Pyrenees, through Spain to Portugal and, from there,  
to safe destinations. The Sharps continued working in refugee camps,  
but they also became experts at securing visas for refugees from the  
often reluctant Vichy regime, the U.S. State Department and other  
governments around the world. If the refugees didn’t have passports,  
the Sharps helped them obtain temporary travel affidavits and other  
documents necessary to cross borders. They bribed border guards and  
provided rail, air, or sea transportation for the refugees. On  
occasion, they personally escorted high-profile refugees out of  
France. Martha and Waitstill Sharp used their wartime rescue  
experience to instruct and collaborate closely with Varian Fry, who  
was in Europe under the auspices of the newly formed Emergency Rescue  
Committee. Fry was the only other American to have been recognized as  
“Righteous Among the Nations” by Yad Vashem before the recent  
announcement of the honor bestowed on the Sharps.

They also worked with Fry to organize the escape of Heinrich Mann and  
Golo Mann, brother and son of Thomas, Franz Werfel and wife, he being  
best known as the author of /The Song of Bernadette/, and Nobel-prize  
winning scientist Otto Meyerhof and wife./ /Perhaps the greatest and  
most dangerous rescue mission that the Sharps orchestrated was that  
of the celebrated anti-Nazi author Lion Feuchtwanger and his wife  
Marta. In a letter that Marta Feuchtwanger wrote to Waitstill in 1978  
she said, “Varian Fry told me personally that we would endanger the  
others if we were intercepted.” Fry then asked the Sharps to escort  
the Feuchtwangers to safety. They accepted this perilous task. Martha  
found a small access tunnel through which they could avoid the  
guarded train station at Marseille and successfully board the train  
to the Spanish border. From 1939 to 1945, the Sharps helped hundreds  
of refugees reach a safe haven.

Charlie Clements, President of the Unitarian Universalist Service  
Committee has said, “We are deeply gratified that the Sharps’ heroic  
efforts -- risking their lives to help others -- have been recognized  
in this very meaningful way. Their story and this honor inspire in us  
a renewed dedication to joining with oppressed people in the United  
States and around the world in their struggles for their basic human  
rights.” Clements is currently on a fact-finding mission in Chad  
investigating the conditions of refugees displaced by the genocide in  
Darfur, Sudan.

“As a child, I knew that my parents were engaged in work that was of  
the utmost importance and attended by both mystery and danger,” said  
Martha Sharp Joukowsky, professor emerita at Brown University’s  
Institute for Archaeology and the Ancient World. “This high honor and  
the documentation that supported their candidacy have helped me  
understand how much can be accomplished by people of conscience and  
conviction even in the face of powerful evil forces.”

Artemis Joukowsky, III has expressed his gratitude to the people who  
did the research that made this award possible. They include:  
Professor Lawrence Benaquist and William Sullivan of Keene State  
College, University of New Hampshire, who have spent the past five  
years collating the personal papers of Martha Sharp and conducting  
their extensive research in this country as well as in Europe. Thanks  
also goes to Ghanda Di Figlia who had done the initial research for  
her monograph on Martha Sharp, as well as Professor Thomas Durnford  
of Keene State College who has conducted research in France and  
provided translation of French documents. Artemis Joukowsky, III  
worked closely his brother, Michael for his partnership in testifying  
and submission to Yad Vashem. “This process was a family affair,”  
Michael said, “to make this whole process possible! I am so proud!”

Joukowsky is writing a book and a film on the Sharps’ experience  
during the war. Joukowsky serves as Executive Producer on the film  
project that is being produced by Professors Benaquist and Sullivan.  
They are the producers of the nationally acclaimed film on the life  
of slain civil rights worker Jonathan Daniels, /Here Am I, Send Me:  
The Journey of Jonathan Daniels. / Joukowsky says of these projects,  
“We are all inspired by my grandparents’ story and the humility with  
which they regarded their heroic deeds. I hope that by telling my  
grandparents’ extraordinary story our children and others will be  
inspired to take action when there is a wrong that needs to be righted.”