Interview: Ken Burns and Artemis Joukowsky on The Sharps’ War

Courtesy of the Sharp Family archives
Martha and Waitstill Sharp

Given its vast scope and its impact on tens of millions of people, it is no surprise that World War II continues to turn out stories that many may not have been aware of — mostly small, human stories, but occasionally a larger one. Defying the Nazis: The Sharps’ War, co-directed by documentary filmmaking legend Ken Burns and Artemis Joukowsky, wonderfully tells a story that encompasses both.

The captivating film follows Waitstill and Martha Sharp, a Unitarian minister and his wife, who left their children behind in the care of their Wellesley, Mass., parish and boldly committed to multiple life-threatening missions in Europe. Over two dangerous years, they helped to save hundreds of imperiled political dissidents and Jewish refugees fleeing the Nazi occupation across Europe.

At a recent press conference, we caught up with Burns and Joukowsky (who is the grandson of the film’s subjects) to get their thoughts on the film, and the incredible personalities featured in it.

Artemis, did you bring the story of your grandparents to Ken’s attention, or had he heard about it and talked to you?
Artemis Joukowsky:
The project started, really, when I was a young person in 9th grade, and I met my grandparents for the first time when I was given an assignment to interview someone of moral courage. I knew nothing about their stories. I’ve been working on this from that time frame. In terms of the filmmaking, we started in the interviews … The first phase of this project was to validate the story, and that was done principally through these interviews that we did. Some of the interviews we filmed them on beta, on tape, and we couldn’t use them anymore, but at least we had the story.

Then, when we started working together, we had the interviews done, we had the structure, but then Ken came in and changed the structure and changed the conversation and reedited it because, as he says, “Every film is made in the editing room.” In that process of working together and him mentoring me and me trying to show him what’s possible because I knew the material, we collaborated together in this wonderful way over about a 3-year period of time.

The film eschews the traditional narrator seen in most documentaries in favor of letting writings of the subjects tell their story [Tom Hanks and Marina Goldman provide the voices of Waitstill and Martha]. What brought about that artistic choice?
Ken Burns:
 One of the things we’ve done is have a very strong third-person narrator, and it only exists here from just the intertitles, of which they’re few and far between. So we allow Waitstill and Martha, but also all the witnesses and the people they saved, to describe it.

There’s no narrator, but this is less a contemporary story than it is a historical story, so we had to really make sure that Waitstill and Martha could carry it. Could they? Yes, they could, and the dynamic between them [is] as two extraordinary human beings way outside their traditional comfort zone, but also a complicated and intertwined marriage. This is about sacrifice, but it’s also the cost of that sacrifice, as you can see. We’re not sugar-coating it in any way to tell you that there’s trouble in that marriage as a result of what they did.

The actions of Waitstill and Martha seemed to stem from their faith, and it was fascinating learning more through the film about the Unitarian desire to better the world. Is that still common in that faith?

Ken: Yeah, they’re taking our film, and they go, “Yes, but we are now in a refugee situation that is second only to the Second World War. Come on, this is a good story, but let’s use it to inspire people to take in a Syrian family or to go and help in Lesbos or other Greek islands where this humanitarian crisis is out of control.”

Artemis: If we have a personal objective for the film, it would be that it would inspire people to be kinder to each other. These are dramatic moments — to leave your family, go to Europe — but it’s really about our communities, our schools, our churches, and how we can be civil and help each other in that sense of selflessness.

Ken: We’re reporting on a dynamic on a world that has succumbed to fear and doubt and the loathing of the “other,” and we’re in a kind of mirror of that right now. I think that the message of this is sort of trying to bring people back together and remind us of the common humanity that we share. I think it’s amazing because the inter-faith nature of this is transcendent, that all of a sudden it’s not, “Well, I can’t do this because you’re a sinner. You’re going to hell because you don’t believe in the same god I do.” You suddenly realize every life is worthwhile.

Artemis: At its core, Unitarianism is a humanism because of the fact that they don’t have the sense of a transcendent, so we’re all God’s children in a sense. It started in this kind of reformed process of the Reformation, and now it’s expressed in a nontrinitarian belief in your own experiences, spirit, your own divinity … more Unitarians are identified in the world than there are in churches because it’s more of a, let’s say a post-modern view of reality.

Artemis, even before she got involved in her life-saving crusade, your grandmother seemed like a very independent woman, when it may not have been common for women to be so at the time. For example, the film shows her defying her family and going to college. Did you know her well, and were you inspired by her?

Artemis: I think what we show really well in the film, and I’m very proud of, is her arc. In her own memoir, she called her story “Church Mouse in the White House.” She goes from this church mouse to being a member of the Truman administration. … [I knew her] very well. In fact, when I met her for that 9th grade assignment, I was just discovering that I had my disease, called SMA [spinal muscular atrophy], and she would come to the hospital and say, “Listen, you’re not going to feel sorry for yourself. Let’s go volunteer at the Boys and Girls Club. Get out of your own self-pity. Focus on others.” That was her kind of mentoring of me — to not be in my own process, but to engage with the world.

Defying the Nazis: The Sharps’ War airs Sept. 20 at 9pm ET on PBS (check local listings).

1 Comment

  1. This was an amazing and admirable story! It was inspiring to learn of their efforts and sacrifices. Thank you for honoring them by sharing their story.

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