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.

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