On Feb. 17, Phyllis Fela Faiga Shapiro (née Szpira) of Baltimore at 96. She is survived by sons Robert (Rena) Shapiro, Arthur (Audrey) Shapiro, John Shapiro and Willy Shapiro and granddaughter Simone Shapiro. She was predeceased by husband Sender Shapiro; parents and sisters who were also victims of the Holocaust; and brother, who survived to fight in Israel and died in 2004. She was born into a traditional Polish Jewish family who operated a grocery store. When the Germans invaded in 1939, her formal education ended as she became a forced laborer in various German factories. She was a prisoner in several concentration camps, including Flossenberg and Bergen Belsen, where British liberators arrived in April 1945. Except for one brother, all her siblings and her parents and most of her childhood friends were murdered by the Nazi Germans. After marrying and bearing a first child named after her husband’s father and her father, her new family immigrated to America under the DP Act of 1948, becoming a chicken farmer in Vineland, N.J. and then a grocer near Lafayette Market in Baltimore.
Contributions may be sent to Ahavas Yisroel Charity Fund, or U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum, or Maryland Food Bank.
