Gunden, Lois
In 1941, twenty-six year old Lois Gunden, an American French teacher from Goshen, Indiana, came to work with the Mennonite Central Committee in southern France. Far from her home, she would become the rescuer of children of a different nationality, religion and background.
Gunden joined the Mennonite organization Secours Mennonite aux Enfants in Lyon, and was sent to establish a children’s home in Canet Plage, on the seaside of Mediterranean. The children’s center became a safe haven for Spanish refugee children as well as for Jewish children, smuggled out of the nearby...
Waitstill and Martha Sharp
Waitstill Sharp was a minister in the Unitarian church in Wellesley, Massachusetts, and his wife Martha a noted social worker. In 1939, the Sharps accepted an invitation by the Unitarian Service Committee to help members of the Unitarian church in Czechoslovakia. Arriving in Prague in February 1939, the Sharps also aided a number of Jews to leave the country, which had come under Nazi control on March 15th. The Sharps continued their charitable work until August 1939, leaving Prague when warned of their possible arrest by the Gestapo. On June 20, 1940, Waitstill and Martha...
Varian Fry
According to the armistice agreement signed after the fall of France in June 1940, France was obligated to turn over to the Germans all persons on the Gestapo’s wanted list - a large number of whom were Jewish intellectuals. The refugees from Germany who had sought shelter in France were once again under German control, and the danger to their person was grave. An aid organization – the Emergency Rescue Committee (ERC) – was established in New York with the purpose of helping intellectuals and renowned figures stranded in France, who were in danger of being arrested and turned over to...
Edmonds, Roddie
Master Sergeant Roddie Edmonds (b. 1919) of Knoxville, Tennessee, served in the US Army during World War II. He participated in the landing of the American forces in Europe and was taken prisoner by the Germans. Together with other American POWs, including Jews, he was taken to Stalag IXA, a camp near Ziegenhain, Germany. In line with their anti-Jewish policy, the Germans singled out Jewish POWs, and many of them on the Eastern Front were sent to extermination camps or killed. In some cases in the west Jewish POWs were also separated from the others. Sometime in January 1945 the...