Remarks by Ambassador Jones
“Righteous Among the Nations”
Yad Vashem
Tuesday, June 13, 11:00 a.m.

Good morning.  It is a great honor for me to be here today representing the United States as Yad Vashem honors the memory of two American citizens, the Reverend Waitstill Sharp and his wife Martha, as “Righteous Among the Nations.”  As we have heard, the Sharps truly were righteous.  They are only the second and third Americans to receive this international distinction and Martha Sharp is the first woman from the United States to be so honored. I am proud to be standing here with their daughter and her distinguished family.

Eva Feigel addresses the audience during Righteous Among the Nations Ceremony at Yad Vashem to posthumously honor two U.S. citizens, the Reverend Waitstill and Martha Sharp. Seated, Stanlee Stahl, Executive Vice President, The Jewish Foundation for the Righteous, Justice Jacob Turkel, Chairman, Commission for the Designation of the Righteous, Avner Shalev, Chairman, Yad Vashem Directorate, Ambassador Richard H. Jones, US Ambassador to Israel, Artemis Joukowsky (Yossi Ben David/Yad Vashem)

Ambassador Richard H. Jones, US Ambassador to Israel, addresses the audience during the Righteous Among the Nations Ceremony honoring the late Martha and Waitstill Sharp at Yad Vashem. (Yossi Ben David/Yad Vashem)

As a parent who has sometimes had to leave my children behind in the service of my country, I have some appreciation for how difficult it must have been for Reverend Sharp and Martha, an experienced social worker, to set aside their personal concerns, leaving their two children, and departing for Europe in 1939, arriving in Prague a month before the German occupation.  Ironically, I can also relate to their experiences in Prague; my father-in-law was living there at the time.

 

Braving their own fears, and without regard to their own personal safety, they began their rescue work, focusing on intellectuals and anti-Nazi political leaders as well as children.  Over the next two years, the Sharps helped secure food, shelter, visas, and freedom for hundreds of Jews and non-Jews.

I understand that the refugees whom the Sharps helped to save included Nobel laureate physicist Otto Meyerhoff and writers Heinrich Mann, Franz Werfel and Lion Feuchtwanger.  As we have heard, Feuchtwanger’s rescue from Marseille was particularly dangerous because his name had been included on the Nazis’ “most wanted” list.  However, with the aid of Red Cross officials, the Sharps worked with another American citizen, Varian Fry, who was head of the Emergency Rescue Committee, and later became the first American to be honored as a member of the Righteous Among the Nations, to smuggle Feuchtwanger out of Europe to the United States.

Their story, together with those of the over 20,000 Righteous Among the Nations honorees, leaves us all humbled.  Their dedication in the face of adversity and determination to rescue and provide relief to so many, often at great personal risk, fills us all with pride and admiration. It serves as a source of inspiration to us all.

We are also inspired by the presence of one of the survivors, Rosemary Feigl with us today.

We are all intensely aware, perhaps more so today than ever before, that evil did not die with those who launched the Holocaust, the Shoah.  It remains with us today.  And whether it takes the form of terrorism, hate crimes, murder or official repression, evil still operates around the world, using ancient hatreds and twisted modern ideologies to poison peoples’ minds and turn them against their fellow men.

In an attempt to combat some of this hatred, in May, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice named the first special envoy for monitoring and combating anti-Semitism around the world.  He will work to integrate concern for the issue of anti-Semitism into every bilateral or multilateral arrangement the U.S. enters into wherever it is relevant.

Let me join today in saluting you, Martha Sharp Joukowsky.  You are here today to represent your parents’ heroism (and they were heroes even if they were modest about their courage) which is so powerfully memorialized on this site.

I would also like to salute all those heroes whose stories of courage in the face of unspeakable adversity continues to inspire us.

In time, even if Rosemary does live to be 120, there will be no first-hand witnesses to recount the events of the Nazi era.  The education of future generations about the Shoah depends on our success in remembering and documenting those events now.

Yad Vashem’s work of memorializing the martyrs, commemorating the heroes, and educating future generations will help to prevent evil from transpiring and assure that today’s terrorists and murderers will never achieve their goals.

God bless you all.