Martha Sharp

Martha Ingham Dickie Sharp Cogan (April 25, 1905 – December 6, 1999) was an American Unitarian who was involved in humanitarian and social justice work with her first husband, a Unitarian minister, Waitstill Sharp, and others of her denomination, and so helped hundreds of refugees, including Jews, to escape Nazi persecution, through relocation and other efforts. In September 2005, Martha and Waitstill Sharp were named by the Yad Vashem organization as "Righteous Among the Nations", the second and third of five Americans to receive this honor. The subsequent ceremony involved the presentation of a medal and certificate of honor to the Sharps' daughter, Martha Sharp Joukowsky, amidst a large audience that included one of the children that her parents had helped get out of France, Eva Esther Feigl.

Martha Ingham Dickie Sharp Cogan (April 25, 1905 – December 6, 1999) was an American Unitarian who was involved in humanitarian and social justice work with her first husband, a Unitarian minister, Waitstill Sharp, and others of her denomination, and so helped hundreds of refugees, including Jews, to escape Nazi persecution, through relocation and other efforts. In September 2005, Martha and Waitstill Sharp were named by the Yad Vashem organization as "Righteous Among the Nations", the second and third of five Americans to receive this honor. The subsequent ceremony involved the presentation of a medal and certificate of honor to the Sharps' daughter, Martha Sharp Joukowsky, amidst a large audience that included one of the children that her parents had helped get out of France, Eva Esther Feigl. ==Career== ===Lisbon, 1940=== In May 1940, the president of the AUA, Frederick Eliot, and the USC's director, Robert Dexter, asked Martha and Waitstill to go to France as their "ambassadors extraordinary," to which the Sharps agreed. The plan for a Paris office was canceled because France surrendered to the Nazis that spring. Instead, the Sharps set up an office in neutral Portugal. From their base in Lisbon, Martha and Waitstill were able to help a number of Jewish children and several prominent intellectuals to escape Vichy France, including the German-Jewish novelist Lion Feuchtwanger. Working with Donald and Helen Lowrie of the YMCA, Martha also provided assistance to the families of Czech soldiers who were stranded in France and were hoping to use a sea route for escape. At the end of her 1940 posting in Europe, Martha escorted 27 children and 10 adults to America. ===Post-Lisbon and World War II=== In 1943, Martha founded "Children to Palestine," with support from the Jewish women's organization Hadassah. In this new role, Martha raised money for orphaned Jewish youth in Europe to start new lives in Palestine. In 1944, Martha returned to Lisbon, assuming the position of Associate European Director of the Unitarian Service Committee. In that capacity, she successfully negotiated the release of a number of Spanish refugees imprisoned in Portugal. In 1946 she ran for congress, losing to incumbent Joe Martin, who would later become Speaker of the House. During the campaign, he called her a "little girl", although she was 41 years old. She lost in a landslide with 36.4% of the vote. In 1950, Martha accepted a position in the National Security Resources Board, which would mobilize resources in the event of a Soviet attack. She resigned as President Dwight Eisenhower was inaugurated, and moved back to New York. By then, her marriage with Waitstill had degraded, and the two separated, believing the hardships they had endured during World War II were just too much. She remarried, and took the name Cogan. ===Foreign honors=== : Knight of the Order of the White Lion (1946)

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