Near the beginning of August, Latifa and Colin Woodhouse returned to the island of Lesbos, Greece, with one of their adult daughters on a humanitarian mission to help refugees who are crossing from the Middle East and elsewhere into Europe in search of safety.
They had been to Lesbos in January and February with another daughter, the Woodhouses told The Blade at the general assembly of the Unitarian Universalist Association, held in Columbus in June. The Woodhouses are members of the Unitarian Universalist Congregation at Shelter Rock, in Manhasset, N.Y.
“What we saw and what we experienced, it was the best religion one could ever have,” Mrs. Woodhouse said. “To really look in the eye of those desperate, despaired people and to reach out to them and to support them — financially, physically, with hugs, kisses, and exchanging stories. It was an incredible experience for me.
“The situation is getting worse for the refugees in the world,” Mrs. Woodhouse added. Those fleeing from Syria and other places would take small boats from Turkey to Greece, reaching Europe. Volunteers would wait with thermal blankets and fires to relieve the hypothermia, she said.
“I saw a little girl from Badakhshan [Province], Afghanistan, and she said she was totally numb,” Mrs. Woodhouse said. “We had a doctor with us. … [The girl] was lying down, a big coat on, and she said, ‘Tell the doctor not to get close to me. But you speak my language,’ ” she told Mrs. Woodhouse, who is originally from Afghanistan. “‘So come here, khala’ — means Auntie — ‘I want to talk to you.’
“She says, ‘You remember they teach us in the books about what hell is? I have never seen hell. Tonight was hell.’ ”
Mrs. Woodhouse said the woman had not seen an ocean before, and was one of 80 people in a dinghy meant for 25.
Mr. Woodhouse said, “She’s sure the doctor was going to tell her she was dead.”
“There are more and more stories, and real losses,” Mrs. Woodhouse added. “But it’s humanity; it’s people like you and me, and when you give them that support and that hug, it’s just everything.”
“Volunteers were flooding to the shore to receive them,” Mr. Woodhouse said. He saw volunteers using Google and social media to learn where people would arrive on shore, then they would “put them into the tea tent; give them warm clothes.”
The Woodhouses’ humanitarian work was inspired by the Rev. Waitstill Sharp and his wife, Martha Sharp, they said.
The Sharps’ story will be told in Defying the Nazis: The Sharps’ War, a PBS film by Ken Burns and Artemis Joukowsky. Mr Joukowsky is a grandson of the Sharps. The film is scheduled to air nationally at 9 p.m. Sept. 20; check the listings for WGTE-TV, Channel 30. Mr. Joukowsky also wrote a companion book with the same title, published by Beacon Press. He is a member of First Parish in Sherborn, Mass., Unitarian Universalist Area Church.
The Sharps had worked to rescue European refugees before and during World War II, on behalf of the American Unitarian Association and during the formation of what is now known as the Unitarian Universalist Service Committee. Some whom they got to safety were prominent figures opposing the Nazis; others were children sent by parents who would be left behind — and possibly killed.
The Sharps, the 18th Unitarian minister-and-wife couple asked to go to Europe and the only ones who went — the first 17 families said no — left their young children behind and sailed to Europe in 1939 to take part in the “first intervention against evil by the denomination,” a Unitarian official had said. They were in partnership with the Quakers and other religious entities in dangerous, life-saving work. They also funneled supplies to the Salvation Army to feed the hungry.
In response to the Sharps’ largely successful efforts to save Jews, they were named Righteous Among the Nations by Israel’s Yad Vashem national museum of the Holocaust, in 2006. That recognition was based, in large part, on the research of Naomi Twining of Toledo, who developed an interest in the Sharps based on Rev. Sharp’s brief service as a visiting minister in 1947 at First Unitarian Church of Toledo and their involvement with northwest Ohio’s chapter of the American Civil Liberties Union.
Ms. Twining “was the first person who contacted … Yad Vashem,” Mr. Joukowsky said, and is acknowledged in the film’s credits, as are the Woodhouses.
The Woodhouses are the 2016 recipients of the Sharp Rescuer Award from the Joukowsky Family Foundation, which promotes humanitarian involvement in the spirit of the Sharps.
“They have been not only my partners and supporters of the [film] project,” Mr. Joukowsky said, “but have been talking about how do we take this mission into the real world. They decided with their family to create an effort to go to Lesbos and help, and raise money.”
“This is very personal, this whole refugee thing,” Mrs. Woodhouse, 63, said. Though she came to the U.S. at age 23 on a Fulbright scholarship, after having met Mr. Woodhouse, now 68, when he served in the Peace Corps in Afghanistan, her family came to the U.S. in the 1980s as refugees during the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan.
“When we met Artemis about 10 years ago and he was telling us the [Sharps’] story,” Mrs. Woodhouse said, “then I had seen the movie, I thought, oh, my God, Martha Sharp and Waitstill Sharp are our heroes, and they are the heroes for the religion and they are the heroes for the country. We’ve got to do something.”
“I think everything they experienced, the Sharps experienced,” Mr. Joukowsky, 55, said. “Colin is very much like Waitstill; he was the money launderer, the organizer.” Mr. Woodhouse is a financial adviser; Mrs. Woodhouse is a retired teacher. “And Latifa is the person like Martha, who was there getting milk for the kids, advocating, saying why isn’t this child being cared for.”
Even in the brief time since their first trip to Lesbos, Mr. Woodhouse said, “It’s changed in so many ways.” He said that the refugee situation is “not only a humanitarian disaster, but it’s a human rights crisis.”
Their current work can be followed on the Facebook page Humanitarian Mission to Greece to Help Refugees.
Editor’s note: TK Barger, a Unitarian Universalist minister, participated in the general assembly in Columbus.
Contact TK Barger at tkbarger@theblade.com, 419-724-6278 or on Twitter @TK_Barger.
First Published August 13, 2016, 4:00 a.m.
