Shafran, Jacob (Jack)

Jacob Joseph (Jack) Shafran was born on December 25, 1917. His stepfather Philip was a carpenter and his mother Mary was a worker in the garment industry and an active union member. During Shafran's early childhood the family moved from Williamsburg, Brooklyn, to Union County, New Jersey, before settling on the Lower East Side of New York City. The young Shafran receive his earliest political education walking picket lines with his mother, and through his Aunt Eva, an Eastern European immigrant with strong ties to the Communist Party. He became a member of the Young Pioneers (a children's Communist Party organization), and advanced through the Young Communist League, before joining the Communist Party in 1933. After attending James Monroe High School, Shafran labored as a sheet metal worker and a carpenter, and was an organizer for the Department Store Employees Union, Local 1250. During a strike, he was arrested, convicted of assault, and sentenced to 60 days on Rikers Island.

With the outbreak of war in Spain, Shafran and ten other members of Local 1250 including Harry Fisher, Gerald (Jerry) Cook, and Norman Berkowitz volunteered to join the International Brigades to fight for the Spanish Republic. Shafran departed for Spain on the S.S. Beregaria on July 3, 1937. On his arrival he trained as a new recruit with the MacKenzie-Papineau Battalion before transferring to the Abraham Lincoln Battalion. He served in Spain from July 1937 until October 1938 participating in the battles of Quinto, Belchite, Fuentos del Ebro, and the Ebro offensive. He was hospitalized on two occasions, once with typhoid late in 1937 and again in August 1938 after sustaining an injury to his hand while carrying a stretcher in the Sierra Pandols during the International Brigades' final month of combat. With the withdrawal of the International Brigades from Spain, the 21-year-old Shafran returned to New York on the S.S. Paris on December 15, 1938.

Financial assistance from the Friends of the Abraham Lincoln Brigade enabled Shafran to have reconstructive surgery on his wounded hand. (The operation was performed by plastic surgeon Dr. Arthur J. Barsky, brother of Edward Barsky who led the 15th International Brigade's medical unit in Spain). For the next year Shafran worked as chauffeur and handyman to the legendary burlesque star Gypsy Rose Lee. In 1941 he enlist in the United States Army, was stationed at Fort Dix, New Jersey and later served in Europe. He was discharged in October 1945 and found work in construction. In 1947, while attending a course at the New School, he met Mary Zunk -- a college graduate from Dearborn, Michigan, -- and soon after the couple wed. They adopted three children and settled on Long Island where Shafran established himself as a contractor. He returned to Spain for the first time in 1986, returned again in 1987 for the 50th anniversary of the creation of the International Brigades, and ten years later for the 60th anniversary. In 2003, the 86-year-old Shafran traveled to the barren hills of the Sierra Pandols in the company of his grandchildren to mark the 65th anniversary of the Lincoln Brigade's final offensive.