Shapiro, Arthur
“We slept in trains. I remember we were really packed in those trains… sometimes we would walk on roads.”
Born:
Brussels, Belgium
August 6, 1936
Arthur Shapiro was born in 1936 in Brussels, Belgium where his parents, immigrants from Poland, owned a raincoat store.
Shapiro was four years old when Germany invaded Belgium in May 1940. The family fled to France where Shapiro’s father was drafted into the Polish army and was evacuated to Great Britain. Arthur and his mother went to the south of France and tried to take a boat to England, but missed the ship. Shapiro’s mother fell very ill and had to have an operation so he was placed in an orphanage for about a year. When his mother recovered from the operation, she was taken in by a woman named Madame Boufice. Meanwhile, Arthur was able to enroll in a Catholic school. He remembered that as a child he did not realize he was not Catholic.
After World War II ended in 1945, Shapiro and his mother rejoined his father and moved back to Belgium. He attended a Jewish school and became a Belgium citizen at the age of 16. In 1955, Arthur left for Montreal, Canada where he started university in 1956. He married in 1960 and in 1983 he and his wife left for Jakarta, Indonesia. They lived there until December 1991 when they immigrated to the United States.
Parents:
Sidney Shapiro, survived
Mother Gottlieb Shapiro, survived