Jacob Shafran-A Post for Memorial Day
Around the time when my grandfather left Poland (app. 1920), three of his uncles made their way to Palestine, eventually settling there. A number of years later, his grandparents also immigrated to Palestine. With the exception of a brother who came with him to America, his parents and the rest of his family were killed in the Shoah. Decades before he left for America and his uncles for Palestine, another uncle came to America.
Simcha Yaakov (Jacob) Shafran was born in 1888. He apparently had a bit of revolutionary fervor in him, enough for a number of influential town leaders to try and channel his energies in other directions. All seemed to be going well until he received his draft notice for the Russian army. Attempts by his father to somehow get him an exemption failed. Simcha Yaakov decided to head for America. He already knew some English and thought that there he would find freedom. I am not sure when he arrived in America, what I do know is that his love and patriotism for his new country was great enough that he volunteered to serve in the army. He fought in the American intervention in Mexico in 1913 and then went on to fight in World War I. On October 3, 1918, as a First Lieutenant, U.S. Army, 23rd Infantry Regiment, 2nd Division, he was killed in France and is buried in the Meuse-Argonne American Cemetery, Romagne, France. He was apparently killed during the Meuse-Argonne offensive, the last allied offensive of World War I.
I do not think that anybody in my family knows much about his life in America from the time that he arrived here until the time that he died. He apparently never married, leaving no family here in the United States. Hopefully at some point in the future I will be able to fill in some of the missing years of his life, trying to find out just a little bit more about the man who arrived on these shores fleeing from the army of an oppressor and eventually gave his life to defend his new country.