Martha Sharp: The American Social Worker Who Helped Refugees Escape Wartime Europe.

Martha Sharp: The American Social Worker Who Helped Refugees Escape Wartime Europe

Continuing with the courageous people who risked their own safety to help others during the Second World War.

Could you leave your young children behind and travel towards danger to rescue complete strangers? Today I want to find out a little about Martha Sharp, who did just that.

 She was an American social worker and humanitarian who helped Jewish people, political refugees and endangered children escape persecution in Europe.

Martha Alice Dickie was born on the 25th of April 1905 in Providence, Rhode Island. She studied at Pembroke College before training in social work at Northwestern University. While completing her training, she worked at Hull House in Chicago, where she helped to organise activities and support for hundreds of girls.

In 1928, Martha married Waitstill Sharp, who later became a Unitarian minister. The couple had two children, Hastings and Martha.

By the late 1930s, the increasing persecution of Jewish people and political opponents in Europe could no longer be ignored. Following the Munich Agreement and Germany’s occupation of the Sudetenland, the American Unitarian Association began searching for people willing to assist refugees in Czechoslovakia.

Martha and Waitstill accepted the dangerous assignment.

Leaving their two young children with trusted friends, they set sail for Europe on the 4th of February 1939 and arrived in Prague later that month. Their work involved helping refugees get travel documents, find safe destinations and secure permission to leave the country.

When German forces occupied the remaining Czech lands in March 1939, the Sharps bravely chose to stay. Martha worked with relief organisations and sympathetic officials to help people escape to Britain and other safer countries.

On one journey, she escorted a group of 35 refugees to Britain. They reportedly included political figures, endangered adults and children whose families had been torn apart by persecution.

The danger surrounding Martha continued to increase. German authorities eventually closed the Sharps’ office, but she carried on helping people until she learned that she could soon be arrested. She finally left Prague during August 1939.

Martha and Waitstill returned to Europe in 1940. France had fallen, so they established a relief office in Lisbon, Portugal, which had become an important escape route for refugees hoping to cross the Atlantic.

From there, they helped Jewish families, political refugees and well-known writers escape from German-controlled or Vichy territory. Among those they assisted was the German-Jewish novelist Lion Feuchtwanger.

At the end of her mission, Martha also overcame considerable bureaucracy to secure the documents needed for 29 children and ten adults to escape to the United States. She travelled with the first members of the group, while the others followed on a second voyage.

Martha returned to Europe again in 1944 and continued working for the Unitarian Service Committee. Her humanitarian work did not end with the war, and she remained involved with charitable organisations for many years.

Martha died on the 6th of December 1999, at the age of 94.

In 2006, Martha and Waitstill Sharp were recognised by Yad Vashem as Righteous Among the Nations for risking their safety to help Jewish people escape persecution.

Martha left her children and the security of her own home because she believed that watching from a distance was not enough.

Would you have possessed the courage to make the same decision?