by Dr. Mordecai Paldiel

A Rescue Mission
A ceremony posthumously honoring Martha and Waitstill Sharp of the United States as Righteous Among the Nations was held in Yad Vashem’s Garden of the Righteous on 13 June, in the presence of US Ambassador to Israel Richard H. Jones, Chairman of the Commission for the Designation of the Righteous Justice Yaakov Türkel, Chairman of the Yad Vashem Directorate Avner Shalev, and Executive Vice President of the Jewish Foundation for the Righteous Stanlee J. Stahl. Martha and Waitstill’s daughter, Mrs. Martha Sharp Joukowsky, received the certificate and medal on her parents’ behalf. Also present were Eva Esther Feigl—whom the Sharps helped escape Europe—family and friends. The Sharps are the second and third Americans, after Varian Fry, to receive the honor.
In 1939, Waitstill Sharp, a minister in the Unitarian church in Wellesley, Massachusetts, and his wife Martha, a noted social worker, accepted an invitation by the Unitarian Service Committee to aid members of their church in Nazi-controlled Czechoslovakia. After helping a number of Jews leave the country, the Sharps received warnings of their possible arrest by the Gestapo, and left for Portugal. From here they made their way to Vichy-controlled France, where they sought ways to help fugitives from Nazi terror.
While in France they heard of the plight of Lion Feuchtwanger, a world famous German-Jewish author of historical fiction, who was interned in France as a national of an enemy state. After his escape from an internment camp, the Sharps helped the Feuchtwangers leave the country by train by organizing forged identity cards, bribing French border guards, purchasing tickets and disguising themselves. They traveled through fascist Spain and into Portugal, where in September 1940, the Feuchtwangers boarded a ship to New York.
Martha Sharp then returned to France, where she managed to obtain US visas for a group of children—nine of them Jewish, including Eva Esther Feigl and the Diamant triplets from Austria—to leave the country after they too were detained as nationals of an enemy state. After the war, Martha Sharp was involved in many efforts to assist Israel and Jews around the world. She died in 1999 at the age of 94; Waitstill passed away in 1984.

In the Garden of the Righteous Among the Nations: third from left, Elbert Colenbrander; fourth from right, Johan Colenbrander; center, standing, Yitzhak Hulata; third from right, Ben Hulata

Humanity in the Face of Danger
In the summer of 1943, Ben and Yitzhak Monnikendam were living with their parents in Amsterdam. Their older brother Jacob had been deported and killed in Mauthausen two years earlier. As the persecution of the Jews in Amsterdam intensified, 18-year-old Ben and 16-year-old Yitzhak decided to escape the city with the help of their friend Luke, a member of the Dutch underground. Their parents, Barend and Katrina, remained in Amsterdam; they were caught and sent to their deaths in Auschwitz in October 1943.
Following their escape from the city, Ben and Yitzhak hid in a farm in Eastern Holland, until they ran out of money to pay the farmers. They were then moved to the Colenbrander family farm in Varsseveld—a small village near the German border—where Bernard and Hendrika lived with their 11 children and a grandfather. Bernard Colenbrander had just been released from Vught concentration camp where he had been sent for resisting the regime, and on suspicion of hiding Jews. Upon Bernard’s arrest, his 21-year-old son Elbert had hurried to find alternate hiding places for the three Jews being sheltered on the farm. Despite the grave danger, the Colenbranders also agreed to hide the two Monnikendam brothers, along with two British pilots, in a small room above the pigsty, and looked after all their needs. Later on during the war, Elbert brought an additional two Jews to hiding places on the farm.
Towards the end of the war, German soldiers billeted part of the farm for their own use. Nevertheless, the Colenbranders continued to hide the Jews on the property and, despite the added risk, provided food to them all. Ben and Yitzhak Monnikendam remained in their rescuers’ home until they were liberated in April 1945.
On 31 May, a ceremony honoring Bernard and Hendrika Colenbrander and their son Elbert as Righteous Among the Nations was held in Yad Vashem’s Garden of the Righteous. Elbert Colenbrander traveled from Holland to participate in the ceremony, together with his brother Johan, who received the honor on behalf of their late parents. Ben and Yitzhak Hulata (née Monnikendam), now living in Israel, also participated in the ceremony, along with some 45 family members. The medals and certificates were presented by Yad Vashem Director General Nathan Eitan.

The author is Director of the Righteous Among the Nations Department.

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