Jun 13, 2006 5:19 pm US/Eastern
Local Couple Honored For Saving Jews From Nazis
JERUSALEM (CBS4) ―
A Boston area couple was honored posthumously Tuesday for saving thousands of lives during the Holocaust.
Martha and Waitstill Sharp were honored in Israel, with their induction into Yad Vashem's Garden of the Righteous in Jerusalem. It is an honor for non-Jews who rescued Jews during the Holocaust.
The Sharp's are credited with saving more than 2,000 Jews from the Nazis.
In 1939, they left their children and their ministry at the Wellesley Hills Unitarian Church and moved to Czechoslovakia. For six years they worked throughout Europe, tirelessly helping refugees escape to London, Paris and Geneva.
The Sharp's grandson Artemis Joukowsky III was in Israel Tuesday morning to receive the award on his grandparents' behalf. "It marks the beginning of the American public and, indeed, the world learning about… the faith and courage that led these two extraordinary people to repeatedly face the Nazi menace in Europe," he said before the ceremony.
The Sharps were nominated by the New York based Jewish Foundation for the Righteous.
Martha Sharp is the first American woman ever inducted into Yad Vashem. She died in 1999. Waitstill Sharp is only the second American man inducted. He died in 1984.
You can read more of their story at the
Unitarian Universalist Service Committee web site or
Yad Vashem web site.
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