UU Church of Burlington, November 27, 2005
Charlie Clements, President, Unitarian Universalist Service Committee

I want to thank Gary and Roddy for the invitation to share their pulpit this morning. When I was hired as president of UUSC a little over two years ago, this was one of the first congregations that asked me to speak, and that gesture of welcome meant a lot. I should also mention that we at UUSC are grateful for the leadership that the congressional delegation from Vermont provides this nation in a time of great need for voices with genuine moral authority.

There is much for us to be thankful about this Thanksgiving. I am grateful that I was able to spend the holiday here in Burlington, a community that has opened its arms to refugees from many parts of the world, but Somalia and Sudan in particular. I am grateful that my wife and children and in-laws are with us this morning and that we all enjoy good health and spirits. I am grateful for the generosity of this and other congregations, as well as individuals who have given and given…and given to our emergency relief funds for the December 2004 tsunami, then for hurricanes Katrina and then Rita, and as well for the South Asia earthquake fund. I’m thankful that we as a nation have such abundance that we can share it with others in these tragic moments. But this Thanksgiving, in particular, I am grateful for the heritage of this institution I have the privilege of leading. I have some news that will make all Unitarian Universalists proud, but I’ll save that until later.

We do not have the sermon that the Reverend Waitstill Sharp preached for the Thanksgiving service at the Unitarian Church in Wellesley Hills in 1939. It must have been interesting. He and his wife, Martha, were thankful to be alive and back in Massachusetts. In February of that year the American Unitarian Association in Boston had sent them to Czechoslovakia to assist with refugees who were fleeing the Nazis.

The liberal Unitaria church in Prague, led by the Reverend Norbert Capek and his wife, Maja, was a beacon of hope to Jews and anti-Nazi political dissidents, who were the focus of the Sharps’ mission. Fifty years later, Waitstill Sharp recalled, “If we were to serve even a fraction of the most acute human need, we were duty bound to carry on two lines of work: first, emergency relief measures, chiefly refugee feeding in Prague; second, emigration case work with those individuals who could escape in time to save their lives and souls in a foreign land.” The Sharps helped people obtain travel documents. They sought releases for some who had been imprisoned. Either employment or acceptance at a university was required by many European governments to grant visas, so the Sharps traveled to Geneva, Paris, and London to seeking commitments for their clients.

Even after the Nazis invaded Czechoslovakia they stayed. When the Nazis closed their office and threw the furniture in the streets, they didn’t leave. Finally, it became too dangerous, and they returned home having helped hundreds of desperate people to leave Czechoslovakia and having helped feed thousands more. They arrived about a month before the Nazis and stayed another five months.

The Sharps had left their two-year-old daughter and six-year-old son in the care of families in the Wellesley Hills congregation. Arriving back in the United States that fall, they must have had a lot to be thankful for. I’m sure they anguished about the many people whom they were unable to help … including the Reverend Norbert Capek, who was soon arrested by the Gestapo, shipped to Germany for a trial, and sentenced to Dachau, where he perished in 1942.

Waitstill and Martha Sharp were a really remarkable couple, because six months after they got back to the their family and their church, the president of the American Unitarian Association, Frederick May Eliot, would write to Waitstill, saying, “We are calling the first meeting of the [newly formed Unitarian Service Committee] for Friday, May 16th [1940], and I most earnestly hope that the first act of the Committee will be to invite you and Martha to go to France as our ambassadors extraordinary. Then you will have to face a momentous decision. My personal hope is that you will decide to go. There just aren’t words to express my feelings of admiration and deep respect for what you two people have done and for what you are. My dream for the USC centers on you, and it is a very big dream.”

When you undergo unpleasant and perhaps dangerous medical procedures, you doctor is required to explain the details and risks of what you are about to undertake. It is called “informed consent”; but how many of you really know what you are in for? I didn’t when I volunteered to serve in Vietnam as a young man. But imagine: the Sharps did know what they were in for…they had experienced the Nazi terror up close…and they returned to Europe.

They had intended to set up the first office of the newly formed Unitarian Service Committee in Paris, but France fell before they could do so. Instead, they established an office in neutral Portugal, where throughout the war Lisbon would remain the last hope for refugees trying to find passage to safer ports. After learning overland routes through the Pyrenees into Spain, they set up an office in unoccupied (Vichy) France. At that time, Marseilles was choking with refugees, and the Sharps worked closely there with another American, Varian Fry. The paperwork to get a refugee from France to anywhere was staggering.

The first requirement was a passport, which many refugees did not have. They could be bought from corrupt consuls or forged on the black market. Then one had to have a visa from the country of final destination. Often one had to demonstrate a booking on a ship or the Pan American Clipper that flew out of Lisbon. Then one had to get a transit visa for Spain and Portugal. If all of that was in hand, then France would reluctantly issue an exit visa. Though some refugees had money and foreign visas, most had neither, having had most of their assets seized before they fled.

The Sharps and other Unitarians – there are five we consider our founders – focused on political dissidents, whom other organizations were reluctant to help, because the first to stand up to the Nazis were often socialists, communists, or trade unionists. It was easiest to obtain visas for prominent professionals or people with distinguished careers, but the Unitarians also helped some who were merely walk-ins.

A report filed in Boston by the Unitarian staff reflects their belief in the worth and dignity of every person: “We attach great importance to establishing a human relationship with the persons whom we are assisting, instead of the all-too-prevalent attitude of self-complacent benevolence or reluctantly doled-out charity. For this reason, we try to keep in touch with the refugees regularly aided by us. We pay them an occasional visit or write them a friendly letter from time to time, if we are unable to call upon them. We have found over and over that the refugees appreciate this personal interest in their welfare as much as the material help they receive.”

The Sharps were not only battling the Nazis, but sadly they were battling our own State Department, which after the U.S. entry into the war considered Jewish refugees from Germany as part of a “fifth column” of spies in the United States. In the first five years after Hitler’s ascent to power, an estimated 150,000 refugees from Germany emigrated to North and South America, eastern and western Europe, Asia, and the Middle East. Between Pearl Harbor and the end of World War II, however, only 21,000 refugees were allowed into the United States, which was less than 10 percent of the quota for those years. The Sharps and their Unitarian colleagues would struggle mightily against their own governments’ stonewalling, as they understood that each delay would be paid for in human lives.

If the refugees had good documents, they would travel by train. Increasingly, the Sharps began to send people over the border on foot using smugglers’ paths, occasionally escorting the refugees personally. Once Waitstill had a famous writer sought by the Nazis carry a briefcase marked with the Red Cross symbol as diguise.

The work of the Unitarian Service Committee between 1939 and 1945 was always divided between emigration services and humanitarian services. The Service Committee staff fled to Switzerland just a few car lengths ahead of the Nazis, who chased them to the border when all of France came under German occupation. Anticipating this development, the Unitarians had already sought work permits and established an office in Geneva.

Our logo originated in this period, when the Unitarian Service Committee adopted the flaming chalice as its official seal on Apri1 1st, 1941. It was commissioned from Hans Deutsch, a refugee and Jewish artist from Paris who worked in the Lisbon office of the USC for several months before emigrating to the United States. When the Unitarian and Universalist denominations merged in 1961, the flaming chalice became the symbol of Unitarian Universalism.

It is difficult to estimate precisely how many people the Service Committee rescued. Our staff worked with many agencies, sometimes one organization securing visas, another providing travel stipends, perhaps a third escorting the refugees. There were several hundred in the USC files that don’t appear in other organizations’ documentation, and several thousand were assisted in some fashion. If one were to put pins into a map to show where the Service Committee was working between 1944 and 1946, the cluster would include Paris, Geneva, Lisbon, Toulouse, Marseilles, Lyon, Prague, Warsaw, Munich, Vienna, Budapest, and Madrid.

The Sharps and other Unitarians were modest and courageous people. They left for Europe armed only with their faith and determination. They never published their memoirs…as did Varian Fry, the American with whom they worked closely. They are now all deceased, but many of the people they helped rescue are alive today.

And this brings me to the celebration of what I am so thankful about this Thanksgiving.

The authority in Israel established to document and preserve the history of the Jewish people during the Holocaust is called the Yad Vashem. It was established by the Knesset in 1953. A decade later, the Yad Vashem embarked upon a worldwide project to identify non-Jews who risked their lives to save Jews from the Holocaust and grant them the title “Righteous Among the Nations.” The concept of “Righteous Among the Nations” has become a universal concept and an important symbol. Each case requires vigorous documentation, including the requirement of a living witness, and is heard by a retired Supreme Court Justice. To date, more than 21,000 people around the world have been accorded this honor, but only one of them, Varian Fry, has been from the United States.

Sometime in the next two weeks you will read in the New York Times that the Yad Vashem Memorial in Israel will name Waitstill and Martha Sharp as the second and third U.S. citizens honored as “Righteous Among the Nations.” On June 12th next year, their names will be enshrined in the Garden of the Righteous at the Yad Vashem memorial in Israel.

Before they or the world knew there was a Holocaust, Waitstill and Martha Sharp saw human suffering and knew that people were in danger. Inspired by their faith, they rose to the occasion. They didn’t ask, “Will we succeed?” or “What will we accomplish?” They ignored risks to their own safety and their very lives and did what they could in the face of overwhelming odds, living out their belief in the worth and dignity of every person.

They are “Righteous Among the Nations,” and today we celebrate their memory.

These are questions that we must each answer in our own way. As the Sharps’ grandchildren celebrate their grandparents’ faith and courage today, how will our grandchildren celebrate ours tomorrow?

Let us be thankful today for the legacy that the Sharps and their colleagues of the Unitarian Service Committee have left us. Their actions spoke their faith loudly then, and soon their actions will speak our faith loudly to the world when they are honored as “Righteous Among the Nations.”

Let the recognition of their heroism stand as a call to action. Let us ask ourselves, “Who are the Righteous Among the Nations today? Who will take risks on behalf of unknown others now? We cannot all take physical risks, but who will take the risk of speaking out? Who will take the risk of bearing witness to the inhumanity of this era?”