Martha
and Waitstill Sharp leave Wellesley church for Europe
On February 4, 1939, Martha and Waitstill Sharp set sail
for Europe. Stopping several times en route to Prague,
Czechoslovakia, the Sharps set up a network of
volunteers and agencies that assisted them over the next
six months as they traveled in and out of Prague
registering refugees, bringing applicants to the
attention of embassies, finding the scholarships or
employment necessary for emigration, securing releases
from prisons, and arranging travel to safer destinations
in London, Paris, or Geneva. They faced enormous
bureaucratic hurdles at every step.
Rosemarie Feigl escapes Nazi war machine
When the Unitarian Universalist Service Committee
celebrates the work of Martha and Waitstill Sharp, Rosemarie Feigl will be present to bear witness. Feigl, who was 14
years old at the time, was one of 29 children provided with
exit visas, transit permits, and identity papers by the
Sharps as the Nazi war machine was marching across Europe.
Martha Sharp sailed from Lisbon with two of the children and
four adults in early December 1940; the others, including
Feigl, followed on a second voyage.
Feigl vividly remembers Martha Sharp greeting her at the
dock on the ship’s arrival in New York City.
It
was “a day I will never forget,” she said.
Keeping one
step ahead of the Gestapo
When the Nazis entered
Prague on
March 15, 1939, the Sharps burned their notes and kept no
further records. While the German army was marching into the
city, Martha secretly guided an anti-Nazi leader to asylum
at the British Embassy, while her husband, Waitstill, also
helped an important anti-Nazi activist escape that day.
Their personal peril increased when the Gestapo closed down
their office at the end of July, but the Sharps were
committed to completing their mission. Waitstill left
Prague in
early August for a conference in
Switzerland and
was prevented from returning to
Czechoslovakia.
Martha departed from Prague alone a week later, learning
afterward that she had escaped capture by the Gestapo by one
day.
Establishing a safe haven for refugees in Lisbon
In 1940, the Sharps planned to establish an office in Paris,
but before they could implement the plan, the city fell to
the Nazis. The Sharps then set up the first Unitarian
Service Committee office in Lisbon, Portugal, a neutral safe
haven for refugees, which remained open for the rest of the
war.
Among
the hundreds of others the Sharps directly helped escape was
the internationally known German Jewish novelist Lion
Feuchtwanger. Waitstill Sharp himself sailed with
Feuchtwanger and his wife, Marta, to New York — a trip
ultimately made possible when Martha Sharp gave up her
ticket to ensure passage for Feuchtwanger.
