Long before the United States entered the Second World War in December 1941, American aid workers were fanning out across territory occupied by the Axis powers, attempting to help Jews escape, as their grip tightened.
A new book on their work underlines the chaos of the time, and the difficult decisions they had to make, knowing that for every person they saved, many more would be killed.
Saints and Liars, by Debórah Dwork, the Director of the Center for the Study of the Holocaust, Genocide, and Crimes Against Humanity at the City University of New York Graduate Center, tells the stories of rescue workers in five key cities as the situation on the ground grew increasingly dire.
At the launch ahead of the International Day of Commemoration in memory of the victims of the Holocaust marked annually on 27 January, Tracey Petersen, the manager of the UN Holocaust Education Outreach Programme , interviewed Debórah Dwork at UN Headquarters, and began by asking her about the book's title.
This interview has been edited for clarity and length
Debórah Dwork: I called it Saints and Liars because that's what these people were. They did amazing things, in a non-religious sense. They did miraculous things. They saved people either by helping them to move on, get to sea, find a safe harbour, or by feeding, clothing and sheltering them.
And at the same time, nearly all of them lied. They broke rules and played fast and loose with the truth in order to accomplish their goals.
Tracey Petersen: Why did you write this book?
Debórah Dwork: I wanted to tell the story of Americans who went to Europe when everyone who was worried about danger was trying to go in the opposite direction. Their first idea was relief activities, but their mandate morphed to trying to effect rescue. I wanted to know who they were and what prompted them.
We start in Prague, 1939, before the war was declared and well before the United States entered the war. What prompted Waitstill and Martha Sharp? They were a pair of married Unitarians sent to Czechoslovakia by their church.
The situation grew worse and worse for political opponents of the Nazi regime and for Jews. And yet the Sharps stayed on to help and began to engage in illegal activities in the hope of saving lives.
