Hundreds of thousands tried to flee Europe in the late 1930s and early 1940s. In 1939, during their initial six-month stay in Czechoslovakia, Martha and Waitstill Sharp opened case files for nearly 3,000 refugees — eventually helping about 300 to escape. The immigration process required extensive paperwork. The Sharps worked to find jobs and secure visas for the refugees, but not everyone could be helped. Whether deported to concentration camps or separated through emigration, families were frequently torn apart and individuals were forced to rebuild their lives. During their second trip abroad in 1940, Waitstill worked with American journalist Varian Fry and the Emergency Rescue Committee (ERC) to identify intellectuals and political dissidents under the Nazi’s regime and help them escape. Among others, they successfully relocated writers Lion Feuchtwanger, Franz Werfel, Heinrich Mann, and Nobel Prize winning biochemist Otto Meyerhof, along with their families.
On exhibit : Karel Berger | Hugo Fischer | Richard & Otto Herrmann | Aloys Skoumal & Hana Skoumalova | Lion Feuchtwanger
Martha and Waitstill Sharp, in conjunction with the Unitarian Service Committee and other service agencies, undertook a mission to bring children and their family members to safety in 1940. The Sharps risked arrest to secure permits for 27 European children to escape the perils of wartime and travel to New York in hopes of a better future. Many traveled without their parents, who feared enough for their children that they were willing to send them across the ocean alone. In 2005, Eva Feigl, one of nine Jewish children who made this particular journey, attended the Sharps’ awards ceremony at Yad Vashem, the World Holocaust Remembrance Center, and gave a speech recognizing the Sharps for her rescue.
On exhibit : Eva Feigl | Nicolas Okounieff | Hans Peter Frank | Pierre Garai | Clement & Mercedes Brown | Gerard Fuchs | Wolfgang Fleischmann
LISTEN! This clip provided by Facing History and Ourselves features Eva Feigl, one of the children rescued from France as a child, describing how she became a part of Martha Sharp’s group and the journey to the United States.