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Waitstill Sharp was a minister in the Unitarian church in Wellesley, Massachusetts, and his wife Martha a noted social worker. In 1939, the Sharps accepted an invitation by the Unitarian Service Committee to help members of the Unitarian church in Czechoslovakia. Arriving in Prague in February 1939, the Sharps also aided a number of Jews to leave the country, which had come under Nazi control ...
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Waitstill Sharp was born in 1902, and graduated from Harvard Law School in 1926. Martha Ingham Dickie was born in 1905, and studied social work at Northwestern University. She trained at Jane Addams’ famous Hull House settlement. The couple met in 1927 and married a year later. Waitstill returned to Harvard, where he graduated from the Divinity Sch...
The Nazis seized power in Germany in 1933. Soon after, Germany demanded the “return” of the ethnic German population of Czechoslovakia—and the land on which it lived—to the German Reich. In late summer of 1938, Hitler insisted upon the annexation of the Sudetenland, a border area between Germany and Czechoslovakia. This area contained a majority et...
The AUA raised more than $40,000 to support the newly formed “Commission for Service in Czechoslovakia.” The AUA leadership asked Waitstill and Martha Sharp to travel to Prague to assist refugees. Motivated by their faith and their moral outrage, the Sharps made the difficult decision to accept the charge. They left their two small children in the ...
In May 1940, Frederick May Eliot, president of the AUA, asked Waitstill and Martha Sharp to return to Europe. This time, they were sent to France as the Unitarian Service Committee's “ambassadors extraordinary.” But before they could arrive in Paris to set up an office, the Germans occupied the city. The Sharps opened an office in Lisbon instead. T...
While Waitstill Sharp spent most of his time in Lisbon, Martha Sharp worked at a new Unitarian Service Committee office in Marseille. The French city was the primary port in unoccupied Vichy France from which refugees could escape. During this time, the Unitarian Service Committee worked closely with Varian Fry. An American, Fry had been sent to Eu...
During the war, Martha gave numerous speeches on behalf of the Unitarian Service Committee. Both Martha and Waitstill advocated for the American Relief for Czechoslovakia organization. In 1944, Waitstill Sharp was appointed to a United Nations Relief and Rehabilitation Administration(UNRRA) position in Cairo. Martha returned to Spain and Portugal, ...
In 1963, Yad Vashem established the title of Righteous Among the Nations to honor non-Jews who risked their lives to save Jews during the Holocaust. In 2006, Martha and Waitstill Sharp were the second and third US citizens, after Varian Fry, to receive this designation.
The task was formidable: by November 16, Dexter and Wood sent back a preliminary report estimating that of the 200,000 refugees from the Sudetenland now crowded into Prague, between 22,000 to 26,000 needed immediate emigration assistance. February 4, 1939: Rev. Waitstill and Martha Sharp depart for their mission to Czechoslovakia.
- Emily Mace
Waitstill Hastings Sharp (1 May 1902– 25 February 1983) was a Unitarian minister who was involved in humanitarian and relief work in Czechoslovakia and Southern Europe during World War II. In 2005, Sharp and his first wife Martha were named by Yad Vashem as Righteous among the Nations , the second and third of five Americans to receive this ...
May 2, 2013 · Martha was, by training, a social worker, having been trained at Hull House in Chicago. The couple’s son, Hastings, was six years old and their daughter, Martha, two years old when the Sharps were asked to go to Europe to provide direct aid to the largest Unitarian congregation in the world, the Unitarian Church of Prague.
t. e. Martha Ingham Dickie Sharp Cogan (April 25, 1905 – December 6, 1999) was an American Unitarian who was involved in humanitarian and social justice work with her first husband, a Unitarian minister, Waitstill Sharp, and others of her denomination, and so helped hundreds of Jews to escape Nazi persecution, through relocation and other ...
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Waitstill and Martha’s story began in 1939, when Waitstill was serving as pastor of the Wellesley ...
