The Couple Who Fought Genocide

"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 Sheckler-Feder, 79.

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.

Sheckler-Feder was 12. She was one of three Jewish sisters, nearly identical triplets who had fled with their parents from Vienna, a bare step ahead of the Nazis.

Marseilles was the end of the road, the end of hope -- until 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 anti-Semitism, to let the children and 10 adults into the United States.

Sheckler-Feder and her sisters traveled by train to Lisbon and sailed in December 1940 aboard the Excambion, a ship stripped of all furnishings except sleeping bags, blankets and pillows to accommodate as many passengers as possible. Their parents eventually followed.

Sheckler-Feder has no doubt that were it not for Martha Sharp, her family would have perished: "What she did is outstanding, it will never be forgotten."

"Can I imagine leaving my children behind to save others? Yes -- if I know they're in good hands," she said.

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Martha Sharp Joukowsky, who was 2 when her parents first departed for Europe, has a fuzzy but enduring memory of Marion Niles. It, too, is sun-dappled.

Niles was a member of Waitstill Sharp's Unitarian congregation in Wellesley Hills, Mass., one of several parishioners who took little Martha in for nearly eight months during her parents' first trip. The wealthy, matronly Niles loved to garden, and that is one of Sharp Joukowsky's earliest memories: not her parents, but "Aunt" Marion's garden.

Her strongest childhood memory, however, is of a sick doll, said Sharp-Joukowsky, 70, a retired professor of archaeology at Brown University who now divides her time between Providence, R.I., and excavations in Petra, Jordan.

When an infection led to pneumonia during her parents' second long trip to Europe, which lasted much of 1940, Aunt Marion said her doll was very sick and needed to go into the hospital.