Sascha Schapiro

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</image> <group> <label>Aliases</label> <label>Relatives</label> <label>Affiliation</label> </group> <group> <header>Biographical information</header> <label>Marital status</label> <label>Date of birth</label> <label>Place of birth</label> <label>Date of death</label> <label>Place of death</label> </group> <group> <header>Physical description</header> <label>Species</label> <label>Gender</label> <label>Height</label> <label>Weight</label> <label>Eye color</label> </group> </infobox>Alexander "Sascha" Schapiro (1890 - 1942) was an anarchist and soldier in the Russian Revolution and Spanish Civil War.

Life

Childhood

Born into a family of Hasidic Jews in the border town of Novozybkov. He began to identify more with the working class and peasantry of Russia than his own wealthy family. Leaving the town at 14 to join an insurrectionist anarchist group similar to the Chernoe Znamia. The group was repressed by police in 1905, after the failed Russian Revolution and an attempt to assassinate Tsar Nicholas II.

Arrest

The rest of the group was executed, but Sascha was sentenced to life in prison on account of his youth and he was placed in a Moscow dungeon. However, the influence of a friend managed to secure a position in the nicer Yaroslavl prison. His left arm was shot while trying to escape, resulting in its amputation.After an attempted suicide, he spent the year 1914 in solitary confinement.

Release and Russian Revolution

Sascha was released from prison in 1917, with the collapse of the Czarist regime and new Provisional Government led by Alexander Kerensky. Hailed as a hero across the country, he became an outspoken critic of the new regime. Befriending the anarchist revolutionaries Lev Chernyi and Maria Nikiforova, and joining the Black Army. He married a woman named Rachel, and had a son, Dodek. However, repression of the anarchists by the Bolsheviks led him to flee to Minsk, where he met Alexander Berkman. He escaped Russia through the Polish border in 1921, using forged papers.

Life in Europe

By 1922, Schapiro had reached Berlin, where he remained except for a few travels to Paris and Belgium until 1924. He befriended other anarchists there, such as Francisco Ascaso, Buenaventura Durruti, Francesco Ghezzi and Theodor Plievier. He remained in contact with Nestor Makhno and members of the Dielo Truda. Along with Sébastien Faure, Ugo Fedeli and Henryk Walecki he founded the Paris-section of the International Works of Anarchist Editions, run by Severin Ferandel. He met Hanka Grothendieck while working as a street photographer, and they had a son, Alexander.

Spanish Civil War

Forced to flee Germany after the rise to power of Adolf Hitler, and intent on fighting in the coming Spanish Civil War, the couple sent Alexander to live with the Heydorns, a middle-class family with anarchist sympathies, in 1933. He worked as a soldier in Spain, fighting until the bitter end of the war, where he fled to France, being interned at Camp Vernet.

Nazi Germany

Sascha lived in Nazi-Occupied Paris, active in the underground anarchist movement, but was soon arrested and deported to Auschwitz concentration camp in 1942, where he was killed.

See Also

• Alexander Schapiro