Remarks delivered by Holocaust survivor Rosemarie Feigl,, December 12, 2005, at a ceremony in honor of the selection of Waitstill and Martha Sharp as Righteous Among the Nations, Wellesley, Mass.

My name is Eva Rosemarie Feigl and Martha Sharp saved my life. This is my story.

I was born on July 2, 1926, in Vienna, Austria. Most of my family had been living in Vienna for hundreds of years. My father was a lawyer, as was his father, and my mother was a housewife. My maternal grandfather had a wholesale linen business. My family was Jewish. My father read Hebrew. I bear witness to the fact that we were respectable people. I was raised not to hate anyone.

After the Nazis invaded Austria in March 1938, life became increasingly difficult for Jews in Vienna. They were no longer allowed to work. Many Jews were dragged off the streets to disappear forever. In July 1938 we learned that the Nazis were looking for my father, so he left the country.

My father’s brother was working for the Austrian consulate in Genoa, Italy. This gave my father a place to go and a reason to go there on a “business trip” to Genoa. My mother followed my father to Italy that September.

Since traveling was very dangerous for Jews, my mother left me with my paternal grandparents. But in December 1938, after the “Night of the Broken Glass” in December of 1938, I was sent to Italy to join my parents, because no Jew was safe in Vienna.

The Fascists tried very hard to evict us. We needed to leave Italy, and our chances would be better if we got to France. My father bought us forged visas to Belgium with transit visas through France. Instead we ended up in Marseilles in the summer of 1939, again in the hope of getting visas to the United States.

We stayed in Marseilles for over a year and I went to school there. Since my parents could not work legally, my father spent his time trying his best to do various jobs to get us money to live. My mother got a job sewing in a household.

My family was now desperate to get out of France. My father went from consulate to consulate, organization to organization, trying to get travel documents and visas to get to the United States. This is how he met Martha and Waitstill Sharp, of the Unitarian Service Committee.

Mrs. Sharp was working with Vichy officials trying to get a group of children to the United States. I had no idea until later how hard she had worked to get permission to allow us to travel. She managed to get permission from Vichy authorities for exit visas for 29 children, a number of whom were Jewish. I was one of those lucky children. She also obtained exit visas for seven adults. To get exit visas from France, one had to have a passport or other travel documents, a transit visa from Spain, a transit visa from Portugal, and a confirmed passage with a ticket on one of the very few and crowded ships leaving Lisbon.

Mrs. Sharp escorted us on the train from Marseilles to Lisbon on November 26, 1940. She left from Lisbon on December 6 with a small group, and my group, including 26 children, followed a few days later. Mrs. Sharp met us at the dock in New York City. It was a day that I will never forget. Fortunately, my parents were able to come to the United States a year and a half later.

The Unitarian Service Committee paid for all our expenses and made all the arrangements for my travel and sponsorship in the United States.

Mrs. Sharp’s grandsons have shared with me her letters to her husband and others, but I knew even as a child that her motivations were purely humanitarian — a desire to help people. She didn’t do it for money or to become famous, but just to be a good human being.

Mrs. Sharp could have said, “It’s not my problem.” Until war broke out, she was safe in America. She had a comfortable life with her husband and two small children. Instead she chose to risk her life for strangers.

I am proud that my testimony helped the Sharps become Righteous Among the Nations, because I know that Mrs. Sharp’s actions in rescuing me and the other Jewish children in 1940 most surely kept us from being killed. Most of my relatives and neighbors from Vienna perished in the Holocaust.

I stand before you today as one of the children whom she rescued. Someone asked me the other day if I consider myself an American. I surely do! And I am glad that I have lived the life I was able to as an American.

God bless you.