[Congressional Record Volume 152, Number 125 (Friday, September 29, 2006)]
[Extensions of Remarks]
[Page E1981]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




 HONORING REV. WAITSTILL AND MARTHA SHARP FOR SAVING LIVES DURING THE 
                               HOLOCAUST

                                 ______
                                 

                         HON. JAMES P. McGOVERN

                            of massachusetts

                    in the house of representatives

                       Friday, September 29, 2006

  Mr. McGOVERN. Mr. Speaker, it is my honor to introduce legislation 
today paying tribute to the Reverend Waitstill and Martha Sharp, the 
couple who fought genocide.
  On September 14, 2006, a ceremony was held at the U.S. Holocaust 
Museum in Washington, D.C. honoring the Reverend Waitstill Sharp and 
his wife, Martha, as they became the second and third Americans to be 
added to the honor roll of 21,000 ``righteous'' gentiles, or non-Jews, 
whose efforts saved countless lives during the Holocaust.
  Also, on September 14, the Washington Post wrote an article about the 
Sharps, calling them ``The Couple Who Fought Genocide,'' and I would 
like to share with my colleagues excerpts from that article:

       As the Nazis marched across Europe in 1939 and 1940, a 
     Unitarian minister from Massachusetts and his wife rushed 
     into the coming Holocaust to save Jews and other refugees, 
     including scores of children. When they set out for Europe in 
     January 1939, Germany had seized the Sudetenland from 
     Czechoslovakia and refugees were flowing across the 
     continent. The American Unitarian Association asked numerous 
     ministers to go to Europe before Waitstill, 37, and his 
     social worker wife, Martha, 33, agreed.
       Prague, Czechoslovakia was home to one of the world's 
     largest Unitarian congregations, which was helping refugees 
     of all stripes--Jews, trade unionists, political dissenters, 
     and others. The Sharps arrived to lend a hand in February 
     1939, and one month later, the city was occupied by the 
     Nazis.
       On March 15, 1939, the day the Germans took Prague, Martha 
     Sharp guided an anti-Nazi leader to asylum at the British 
     Embassy. A few days later, the Reverence Waitstill Sharp 
     arranged for a member of the Czech parliament to be smuggled 
     out of a hospital morgue in a body bag. The Nazis soon closed 
     the Sharps' office and threw their furniture into the street. 
     But the couple stayed another five months and got out just 
     ahead of the Gestapo.
       On their second foray to Europe, in mid-1940, they worked 
     in Marseilles, France and helped smuggle people across the 
     Pyrenees into neutral Portugal. One of their close 
     collaborators was Varian Fry, a 32-year-old New York editor 
     who devoted himself to saving European intellectuals and was 
     the first U.S. citizen placed by Yad Vashem on its 
     ``Righteous Among the Nations'' honor roll, which includes 
     Oskar Schindler and Raoul Wallenberg.
       Since the Sharps burned most of their records to keep them 
     out of Nazi hands, no one knows how many lives they saved. 
     Their grandson, Artemis Joukowsky III of Boston, estimates 
     they helped 3,500 refugees in Prague, though it is unclear 
     how many survived. In Marseilles, they pioneered routes that 
     hundreds used to escape.
       Marianne Sheckler-Feder of Laguna Hills, California, has a 
     fuzzy but enduring memory of Martha Sharp, reinforced by a 
     fading black-and-white photograph taken on a sun-dappled 
     street in the French port of Marseilles. ``I remember a 
     figure, she was a very, very elegant lady. Kind of serious 
     and very concerned. You looked up to her, she demanded 
     respect,'' said Sheckler-Feder, now 79.
       Thousands of refugees from across Europe had flocked to 
     Marseilles in hopes of gaining passage abroad, only to be 
     interned in work camps when France surrendered to Germany in 
     1940 and the Nazis set up a collaborationist government in 
     Vichy. Sheckler-Feder was 12. She was one of three Jewish 
     sisters, nearly identical triplets who had fled with their 
     parents from Vienna, a bare step ahead of the Nazis.
       Marseilles was the end of the road, the end of hope--until 
     they met Martha Sharp. She pestered Vichy officials to issue 
     exit visas for 29 children, including nine Jews. With almost 
     as much difficulty, she persuaded the State Department, which 
     was rife with anti-Semitism, to let the children and 10 
     adults into the United States.
       Sheckler-Feder and her sisters traveled by train to Lisbon 
     and sailed in December 1940 aboard the Excambion, a ship 
     stripped of all furnishings except sleeping bags, blankets 
     and pillows to accommodate as many passengers as possible. 
     Their parents eventually followed.
       Sheckler-Feder has no doubt that were it not for Martha 
     Sharp, her family would have perished: ``What she did is 
     outstanding, it will never be forgotten.''

  Mr. Speaker, this bill is the House companion to S. Res. 562, which 
was introduced in the Senate by Senators Chafee, Reed, Kennedy and 
Kerry. I am very proud to introduce this bill with the esteemed ranking 
member of the House International Relations Committee, Congressman Tom 
Lantos, and the other House members of the U.S. Holocaust Memorial 
Council, Representatives Cannon (UT), Cantor (VA), LaTourette (OH) and 
Waxman (CA), along with the Members of the House congressional 
delegations representing Rhode Island and Massachusetts.
  I urge all my colleagues to cosponsor this resolution paying tribute 
to this courageous husband and wife team and to pass this legislation 
in the coming weeks before the 109th Congress permanently adjourns.

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