Mark your calendars. Next Tuesday, September 20 at 9 PM, PBS will broadcast Ken Burns’ new film, the story of Rev. Waitstill and Martha Sharp, Unitarians who travelled to Europe in early 1939 as the drum beat of war intensified and the Nazis began, in earnest, their “final solution.” The Sharps helped hundreds of Jews escape Nazi Europe, including dozens of Jewish children given into the Sharps’ care by their parents, most of whom did not survive.

The story begins when Everett Baker, Vice President of the American Unitarian Association(AUA), called Waitstill Sharp, the Associate Minister at the Wellesly Hills, MA church, and asked him to “undertake the first intervention against evil by the denomination, to be started immediately overseas.”
The AUA had received an urgent request from Rev. Norbert Capek, leader of the Unitarian church in Prague (and the author of the Flower Communion we celebrate every spring) for assistance in helping prominent Jews escape Europe as Germany took control of more and more of its national neighbors. Czechoslovakia was the next target.

Sharp was the 17th minister to be asked but the first to answer “yes.”

I will not spoil the story, which is compelling both at the human level and important for the development of our faith. The Sharp’s work led directly to the creation of the Unitarian Service Committee (now the UUSC). The flaming chalice that is now our faith symbol was created to help the Sharps and other resistance workers identify one another.

This is a Unitarian Universalist story; and that connection is highlighted in the film which is directed by premier U.S. documentary filmmaker Ken Burns, and Artemis Joukousky, a grandson of the Sharps. It has been long in development. When I was UUA President, I had the privilege of supporting Artemis in his early efforts to gather support. And I travelled to Jerusalem in 2006 with Artemis and Charlie Clements, then President of the UUSC, to witness the induction of the Sharps into the Yad Vashem, the holocaust memorial, when they were the 2nd and 3rd Americans to be named “Righteous Among Nations.”

There are many issues raised by the telling of this story. In these current days, when authoritarianism seems to be emerging as a real threat even here in the US, what can we learn about resistance from our own history? What helped the Sharps’ sacrifice lead to institutional change, as the Service Committee was constituted? This is a story of both individual heroism and institutional commitment. What role did privilege play in the Sharps’ ability to take on the task and to be successful?

We are hoping to welcome Tom Andrews, new President of the UUSC, to First Unitarian later this year. His visit can be a time for us to focus on the story of the Sharps: how our faith defied the Nazis, and how we are being called to witness today.

This is a story from which, especially in these times, we can learn.

Blessings,

Bill