Since the Sharps burned most o1 their records to keep them out of Nazi hands. no one knows how many lives they saved. Their grandson. Artemis Joukowsky III of Boston. estimates they helped 3.500 refugees in Prague. though it is unclear how many survived. In Marseilles. they pioneered routes that hundreds used to escape. Marianne ShecklerFeder of Laguna Hills. California. has a fuzzy but enduring memory of Martha Sharp. reinforced by a fading blackandwhite photograph taken on a sundappled street in the French port of Marseilles. "I remember a figure. she was a very. very elegant lady. Kind of serious and very concerned. You looked up to her. she demanded respect." said ShecklerFeder. now Thousands of refugees from across Europe had flocked to Marseilles in hopes of gaining passage abroad. only to be interned in work camps when France surrendered to Germany in 1940 and the Nazis set up a collaborationist government in Vichy. ShecklerFeder was 12. She was one of three Jewish sisters. nearly identical triplets who had fled with their parents from Vienna. a hare step ahead of the Nazis. Marseilles was the end of the road. the end of hopeuntil they met Martha Sharp. She pestered Vichy officials to issue exit visas for 29 children. including nine Jews. With almost as much difficulty. she persuaded the State Department. which was rife with antiSemitism. to let the children and 10 adults into the United States. ShecklerFeder and her sisters traveled by train to Lisbon and sailed in December 1940 EXTENSIONS OF REMARKS.
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refugees visas