Defying the Nazis: The Sharps' War

As part of the Americans and the Holocaust library program the Circle Cinema will be screening Defying the Nazis: The Sharps’ War Monday, May 4th at 7 p.m. followed by a conversation between Sofia Thornblad of the Sherwin Miller Museum and Dr. Nicole Kirk of the All-Souls Unitarian Church.  The event is free but registration will be required - RSVP link coming soon.

Defying the Nazis: The Sharps’ War (2016) [1hr 16 min] is a documentary film directed by Ken Burns and Artemis Joukowsky that tells the story of Waitstill and Martha Sharp, a Massachusetts minister and his wife who risked their lives in 1939 to save hundreds of refugees from Nazi-occupied Europe. The film highlights their clandestine, dangerous, and courageous mission.

Sofia Thornblad is Chief Curator and Director of Holocaust Education at the Sherwin Miller Museum of Jewish Art in Tulsa, OK. She is also an adjunct professor at the University of Tulsa in the Museum Studies department. She holds a BA in Holocaust and Genocide Studies from Keene State College and an MA in Museum Studies from the University of New Hampshire. Sofia is also a Dramaturg and has worked on productions of Fiddler on The Roof and Cabaret. She publishes regularly on Substack, and is the face behind the popular Holocaust education social media account Under The Silent Blue Sky. Previously she was Director of the Horatio Colony House Museum & Nature Preserve in Keene, NH.

Dr. Nicole Kirk is an Associate Professor and holds the Rev. Dr. J. Frank and Alice Schulman Chair of Unitarian Universalist History at Meadville Lombard Theological School in Chicago and serves as Program Minister at All Souls Unitarian Church in Tulsa. A historian of American religion, she earned her PhD from Princeton Theological Seminary and focuses her research and writing on business, religion, and material culture. Nicole is the author of Wanamaker's Temple: The Business of Religion in an Iconic Department Store (NYU Press, 2018, 2023) and has contributed chapters to several edited volumes. Currently, she is completing a second book on American railroad circuses and religion.