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[Congressional Bills 109th Congress]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office]
[S. Res. 562 Agreed to Senate (ATS)]

109th CONGRESS
  2d Session
S. RES. 562

  Paying tribute to the Reverend Waitstill Sharp and Martha Sharp for 
  their recognition by the Yad Vashem Holocaust Martyrs' and Heroes' 
 Remembrance Authority as Righteous Among the Nations for their heroic 
               efforts to save Jews during the Holocaust.

_______________________________________________________________________

                   IN THE SENATE OF THE UNITED STATES

                           September 8, 2006

    Mr. Chafee (for himself, Mr. Reed, Mr. Kerry, and Mr. Kennedy) 
 submitted the following resolution; which was considered and agreed to

_______________________________________________________________________

                               RESOLUTION

 
  Paying tribute to the Reverend Waitstill Sharp and Martha Sharp for 
  their recognition by the Yad Vashem Holocaust Martyrs' and Heroes' 
 Remembrance Authority as Righteous Among the Nations for their heroic 
               efforts to save Jews during the Holocaust.

Whereas on June 13, 2006, the Yad Vashem Holocaust Martyrs' and Heroes' 
        Remembrance Authority in Israel, an organization dedicated to preserving 
        the memory of Holocaust victims, honored the Reverend Waitstill Sharp, 
        and his wife, Martha Sharp, posthumously as ``Righteous Among the 
        Nations'' for risking their lives to save Jews during the Holocaust;
Whereas the Sharps had to leave their 2-year-old daughter and 6-year-old son in 
        the care of family and congregants in Wellesley, Massachusetts to answer 
        a call from leaders of the American Unitarian Association to go to 
        Czechoslovakia in February 1939 to provide humanitarian assistance for 
        the tens of thousands of refugees crowding into Prague;
Whereas Martha Sharp was a social worker trained at the Jane Addams Hull House, 
        a community service organization in Chicago, Illinois, and the Reverend 
        Waitstill Sharp was a Harvard-educated lawyer and a Sunday school 
        teacher who was inspired to become a Unitarian minister;
Whereas after their arrival in Czechoslovakia the Sharps immediately grasped 
        that they needed not only to help feed refugees, but also to assist Jews 
        and opponents of the Nazi regime escape to safety elsewhere in Europe;
Whereas the Sharps refused to leave Prague when, in March 1939, a month after 
        the Sharps' arrival, the Nazis occupied Czechoslovakia, making the 
        Sharps' work more urgent, more complicated, and more dangerous;
Whereas the Sharps insisted on continuing their life-saving mission by working 
        out of private residences even after April 1939, when the Nazis 
        ransacked the office of the Unitarian mission in Prague and threw the 
        furniture into the street;
Whereas the Sharps repeatedly risked their own safety to exit and re-enter Nazi-
        occupied Czechoslovakia, crisscrossed Europe to obtain the travel 
        documents necessary to help Jews and opponents of the Nazi regime escape 
        Czechoslovakia, and even escorted some refugees by train through Germany 
        to the United Kingdom;
Whereas the Sharps were determined to complete their 6-month mission, even after 
        warnings that the Gestapo was searching for them;
Whereas the Sharps stayed in Czechoslovakia until August 30, 1939, 1 day before 
        Gestapo agents came to arrest Martha Sharp, who had become known for her 
        boldness at evading Nazi rules restricting travel;
Whereas upon the Sharps' return in 1940 to their family and the Wellesley Hills 
        Unitarian Church in Massachusetts, their report to the American 
        Unitarian Association about the imminent danger posed by the Nazis to 
        refugees across Europe led to the Sharps being asked to establish a 
        similar operation in France under the newly founded Unitarian Service 
        Committee;
Whereas the Sharps returned to Europe in 1940 fully aware of the Nazi terror 
        they would face;
Whereas the Sharps had a special interest in saving refugee children, as well as 
        artists, intellectuals, and political dissidents, and the Sharps and the 
        Unitarian colleagues who followed in their footsteps set up systems and 
        escape routes that functioned throughout World War II to assist 
        approximately 2,000 men, women, and children to gain freedom;
Whereas the famous Jewish novelist, Lion Feuchtwanger, who was one of the first 
        Germans to have his citizenship revoked after Hitler came to power and 
        whose name topped the Gestapo's ``Surrender on Demand'' list, was one of 
        the first people the Sharps helped in a dramatic and dangerous escape 
        from France;
Whereas Eva Rosemarie Feigl, who was 14 in December 1940 when Martha Sharp 
        helped her and 28 other children reach safety in the United States, 
        provided eye-witness testimony that enabled the Yad Vashem Holocaust 
        Martyrs' and Heroes' Remembrance Authority in Jerusalem, Israel, to 
        honor the Sharps as Righteous Among the Nations;
Whereas when the Sharps' plans to set up the first office of the newly formed 
        Unitarian Service Committee in Paris, France failed as a result of the 
        Nazi occupation of France, the Sharps instead established an operation 
        in neutral Portugal, where throughout World War II Lisbon remained the 
        last hope for refugees seeking safe passage out of Nazi-occupied 
        territory;
Whereas the Sharps recognized that they were dependent upon a much larger circle 
        of friends and colleagues who made their heroism possible, such as the 
        people who cared for the Sharps' children, the members of the 
        congregation in Wellesley, Massachusetts who maintained the Wellesley 
        Hills Unitarian Church in the Sharps' absence, ordinary Unitarians who 
        financed their cause, ministers across the United States who urged their 
        congregations to become sponsors for refugees, and secretaries who 
        volunteered in Europe and the United States to maintain thousands of 
        case files for refugees;
Whereas the Sharps' efforts resulted not only in the rescue of thousands of 
        people, but in the creation of what is now known as the Unitarian 
        Universalist Service Committee, an institution that multiplied the 
        number of rescues a thousand-fold in the years that followed;
Whereas at the Yad Vashem ceremony that honored the Sharps as Righteous Among 
        the Nations on June 13, 2006, in Israel, officials specifically 
        recognized the Sharps' courage in going into the heart of Europe when 
        World War II was unfolding and many people were fleeing;
Whereas Martha Sharp was the first American woman to be named Righteous Among 
        the Nations, and the Reverend Waitstill Sharp and Martha Sharp were only 
        the second and third individuals named Righteous Among the Nations who 
        were United States citizens at the time they performed the deeds for 
        which they were honored;
Whereas the Sharps' daughter, Martha Sharp Joukowsky, accepted the Yad Vashem 
        honor on behalf of her parents and remarked that they were ``modest and 
        ordinary people, who responded to the suffering and needs around them 
        ... as they would have expected everyone to do in a similar situation'';
Whereas Martha Sharp Joukowsky added that the honor given to her parents is also 
        about ``the unseen efforts of a much wider circle of people who made 
        their work possible'' and that it ``is the kind of network that is 
        needed again today to stop the slow genocide in Darfur'';
Whereas Martha Sharp Joukowsky concluded her remarks by saying, ``Let this 
        celebration about my parents stand as a call to action'';
Whereas September 9, 2006, marks the second anniversary of the United States 
        Government declaring the violence in Darfur, Sudan to be genocide; and
Whereas the Sharps deserve honor for their example and for helping to found an 
        institution, the Unitarian Universalist Service Committee, that today 
        carries on their work in distant corners of the world and asks for the 
        Righteous Among the Nations to help save Darfur now: Now, therefore, be 
        it
    Resolved, That the Senate--
            (1) recognizes the Reverend Waitstill Sharp and Martha 
        Sharp as genuine American heroes;
            (2) pays tribute to the Reverend Waitstill Sharp and Martha 
        Sharp as their names are added to the Wall of Rescuers in the 
        permanent exhibition of the United States Holocaust Memorial 
        Museum on September 14, 2006;
            (3) commends the organization founded to support the 
        Sharps' work, the Unitarian Universalist Service Committee, for 
        its efforts to rescue Jews and opponents of the Nazi regime in 
        Europe from 1939 to 1945 and for carrying on the Sharps' legacy 
        by working to save the lives of the people of Darfur, Sudan and 
        to protect human rights worldwide; and
            (4) requests the Secretary of the Senate to transmit an 
        enrolled copy of this resolution to the Joukowsky family of 
        Providence, Rhode Island, the direct descendants of the 
        Reverend Waitstill Sharp and Martha Sharp, and to the Unitarian 
        Universalist Service Committee of Cambridge, Massachusetts.
                                 <all>
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