Bluma Erenkranc Shapiro, a survivor of five concentration camps who spoke frequently to local audiences about her experiences during the Holocaust, passed away Mar. 10. She was 97.
A native of the northeastern Polish town of Bialystok, Shapiro, the youngest of five children, and her family were forced to live in the Bialystok Ghetto after the German invasion of Poland. In February of 1943, she and her family went into hiding.
A few weeks later, Shapiro was captured by the Nazis and sent to the Majdanek and Bliżyn concentration camps. The following February, she was sent to Auschwitz.
In January of 1945, with the advancement of Allied forces, Shapiro was among the Auschwitz prisoners forced by the Nazis on a death march. The survivors were liberated by the Allies during the march.
Shapiro returned to Bialystok, to discover that only one member of her immediate family survived the war. While there, she met Fivel Philip Shapiro, whom she married in 1946. The couple lived in a displaced persons camp in Wels, Austria, until immigrating to the United States in 1949.
The Shapiros initially lived in New York and then relocated to Lakewood, New Jersey, where they worked on a farm. In 1950, they moved to Baltimore and operated a kosher grocery store.
Several years later, the couple sold the business and Bluma Shapiro worked for Jewish Family Services. During the late 1970s, she began speaking publicly about her wartime experiences after the publication of a Holocaust denier’s article.
“I said, ‘Look at me; I’m here, I lost my whole family, I went to Auschwitz, and he is telling me it never happened?’’” Shapiro said in a 2020 profile published by Country Meadows Retirement Communities in York, Pennsylvania, where she resided in recent years.
For many years, Shapiro was a member of the Baltimore Jewish Council’s Holocaust Remembrance Committee Speakers’ Bureau.
“I look around and see people always fighting,” she said. “I think, ‘Maybe if I talk about [the Holocaust], maybe people will come closer to one another and see that we are the same people.’ We want peace, good work and the chance to have our children grow up in a better world. … When I was in camp, perfect strangers helped us. We didn’t know them from anything, and for strangers to help me … I believe in humanity.”
In December, Jeanette Parmigiani, the BJC’s former director of Holocaust programs, told Jmore about visiting Mercy High School with Shapiro several years ago and the profound impact her talk had on students.
“Afterward, one girl kept talking to Mrs. Shapiro for about 20 minutes while all the other students had gone off to their next classes,” Parmigiani recalled. “The teachers said this student was somewhat of a troublemaker, but she kept talking on and on to Bluma. It’s just incredible to see how students are so moved by these survivors.”
Among the other schools where Shapiro spoke regularly was The John Carroll School in Bel Air. In a recent message to colleagues, Louise Geczy, special project coordinator and coordinator of external Holocaust programs at John Carroll, wrote, “Bluma was passionate about sharing the painful story of her experience at Auschwitz with the 100s of John Carroll students with whom she interacted over the past many years. She was a principal in a movie a few years ago that was filmed in part at JC and featured her & Leo Bretholz & Meredith O’Connell, one of our grads.
“Even after she was no longer up to sharing her story in a group setting, her dedication to keeping the truth of the Holocaust and its lessons alive was so strong that she still volunteered to let Susan Strawbridge drive to York to her assisted living facility and bring her to JC so she could visit, lunch and share her wisdom with seniors. I am a better human than I might otherwise have been because our life journeys intersected and so are the JC students with whom she shared her story.”
Shapiro is survived by her son, Barry (Carol) Shapiro; grandchildren, Marjorie (Matthew) Horwitz, Aaron (Amy) Shapiro, Matthew (Leigh) Shapiro, and Scott (Kellie) Shapiro; and great-grandchildren, Jacob and Noah Horwitz, Ryan and Dylan Shapiro, Jackson Oduor, and Liam Shapiro.
She was predeceased by her husband, Fivel Philip Shapiro; her parents, Baruch and Sarah Erenkranc; her siblings who perished in the Holocaust, Joseph (Phela) Erenkranc, Aaron (Gitle) Erenkranc, Fanny (Chaim) Levin, and Mose (Chia) Erenkranc; and her nieces and nephews who also died in the Holocaust, Rose, Ben, Rachel, and Pinchas Erenkranc.
A private funeral will be held for Shapiro on Friday, Mar. 12, at 11 a.m. Contributions in her memory can be made online or to NA’AMAT USA, 6320 Canoga Avenue, Suite 270, Woodland Hills, California 91367 or Jewish Community Foundation of Central Pennsylvania, Never Again Education Fund, 3211 North Front St., Harrisburg, Pennsylvania 17110.
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