{"id":21371,"date":"2016-09-30T00:21:00","date_gmt":"2016-09-30T07:21:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/?p=21371"},"modified":"2016-09-28T12:34:14","modified_gmt":"2016-09-28T19:34:14","slug":"pbs-doc-on-the-sharps","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/index.php\/2016\/09\/30\/pbs-doc-on-the-sharps\/","title":{"rendered":"PBS doc on the Sharps"},"content":{"rendered":"

Martha and Waitstill Sharp at home in Wellesley, Mass., in 1938. (photo from Sharp Family Archives via pbs.org)<\/em><\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n

At a time when many Americans embraced isolationism, the leaders of the American Unitarian Association were focused on the refugees clamoring to get out of Czechoslovakia. The AUA impelled Unitarian minister Waitstill Sharp to go with his wife Martha to Europe in 1938, leaving their young children in the care of others, and get as many people out as possible with documents and cunning.<\/p>\n

Yad Vashem posthumously acknowledged the Sharps as Righteous Among the Nations in 2006. The couple\u2019s saga, and that of several of the Jews they rescued, is recounted in Artemis Joukowsky and Ken Burns\u2019 feature-length documentary Defying the Nazis: The Sharps\u2019 War<\/em>, which aired earlier this month on PBS.<\/p>\n

For those who have seen a film or three about the various efforts to extricate Jews from the deathtrap of Nazi-occupied Europe, Defying the Nazis<\/em> breaks no new ground. But there are always new generations who aren\u2019t familiar with the Holocaust or cognizant of the courage of ordinary people who saved friends and neighbors or, in the case of the Sharps, complete strangers.<\/p>\n

Joukowsky is the Sharps\u2019 grandson, and the curator and guardian of their legacy. Burns, of course, brings household-name recognition and brand-name confidence to a PBS audience, as well as a uniformly high standard of craft and polish. If his name attracts viewers who otherwise wouldn\u2019t tune in, it\u2019s all for the good.<\/p>\n

Defying the Nazis<\/em> arrives at an especially ugly time when refugees and immigrants are being demonized and conflated with terrorists. Not that xenophobia is a new phenomenon, as Jewish readers are especially aware. But I find the film more valuable and inspiring as a reminder that there are highly moral individuals who will put themselves in mortal danger to do the right thing \u2013 even if they have no personal stake or connection to the beneficiaries.<\/p>\n

Waitstill Sharp was a trained lawyer while Martha had the self-confidence and determination to attend college in a day and age when some families \u2013 including hers \u2013 disavowed their daughters for not getting a job to augment the household income. That is to say, the Sharps were adept at thinking on their feet, delivering persuasive and succinct arguments and hiding their emotions. Whether counseling desperate applicants in Prague, raising money in London or Paris (like Waitstill did) or accompanying refugees by train across Germany to a safe border (like Martha and Waitstill did, separately), these were essential skills.<\/p>\n

The couple was based in the Czech capital for six treacherous months beginning just before the Nazi invasion in March 1939. They were dispatched again the following summer, this time to Lisbon.<\/p>\n

As compelling as the Sharps\u2019 activities were, they were relatively brief in duration. There\u2019s only so much to tell, so the filmmakers augment the rescuers\u2019 point of view with context from Holocaust historian Deb\u00f3rah Dwork and the firsthand recollections of several survivors whom the Sharps aided.<\/p>\n

Viewers who are fascinated by the ways in which parental choices affect children will enjoy watching and interpreting the passages with the Sharps\u2019 daughter. Martha Jr. admits to being (understandably) upset when her parents took off for Europe, not once but twice, but she touts the remarkable results they achieved rather than channeling a petulant child.<\/p>\n

The Sharps may have alienated their daughter, at least for brief periods of her adolescence. They definitely paid a price in their marriage, which didn\u2019t last a decade after the war.<\/p>\n

Defying the Nazis<\/em> doesn\u2019t address it, but I highly doubt the couple had any regrets about embarking on their life-saving refugee work. Consider Waitstill\u2019s succinct reply when the German-Jewish author Lion Feuchtwanger asked why he was taking such an immense risk to help him: \u201cI don\u2019t like to see guys get pushed around,\u201d Sharp said.<\/p>\n

Defying the Nazis: The Sharps\u2019 War<\/em> is available for viewing (at no charge) at pbs.org\/kenburns\/defying-the-nazis-the-sharps-war\/home<\/a> until Oct. 6.<\/p>\n

Michael Fox<\/strong> is a writer and film critic living in San Francisco.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Martha and Waitstill Sharp at home in Wellesley, Mass., in 1938. (photo from Sharp Family Archives via pbs.org) At a time when many Americans embraced isolationism, the leaders of the American Unitarian Association were focused on the refugees clamoring to get out of Czechoslovakia. The AUA impelled Unitarian minister Waitstill Sharp to go with his […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":21353,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[787],"tags":[6437,6438,53,2038,6436,1793],"class_list":["post-21371","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-tv-film","tag-aua","tag-czechoslovakia","tag-holocaust","tag-nazis","tag-sharps","tag-unitarian-church"],"blocksy_meta":{"styles_descriptor":{"styles":{"desktop":"","tablet":"","mobile":""},"google_fonts":[],"version":8}},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21371","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=21371"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21371\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/21353"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=21371"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=21371"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=21371"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}