10 Facts About Sascha Schapiro

Alexander "Sascha" Schapiro, known by the noms de guerre Alexander Tanarov, Sascha Piotr, and Sergei, was a Jewish Ukrainian anarchist who fought in both the Russian Civil War and the Spanish Civil War.

Sascha Schapiro was murdered in the Auschwitz-Birkenau extermination camp in 1942.

All were executed save Sascha Schapiro, who was spared on account of his youth, and was instead sentenced to life imprisonment in Moscow.

Sascha Schapiro escaped lingering death there by the intercession of an influential friend who secured his transfer to Yaroslavl, where he stayed for twelve years.

Sascha Schapiro was one of a number of anarchists who spoke out against the representative system for electing the Constituent Assembly proposed by Alexander Kerensky's Russian Provisional Government, writing that "no parliament can break the path toward liberty, that the good society can be realized only through 'the abolition of all power'".

Sascha Schapiro befriended the anarchist revolutionaries Lev Chernyi and Maria Nikiforova and became a leading figure in a cadre of heavily armed anarchists fighting in Ukraine associated with Nestor Makhno's Insurgent Army.

Sascha Schapiro contributed at least two articles to the publication, run at that time by the anarchist Severin Ferandel.

Sascha Schapiro met anarchist journalist Hanka Grothendieck, who was then married to left wing journalist Alf Raddatz, through the movement in Berlin while working as a street photographer.

In Spain, under the name Sacha Pietra, Sascha Schapiro fought the fascists until the defeat of the Second Spanish Republic, after which he and his wife crossed the French border and he was interned at Camp Vernet with his comrades.

In Occupied Paris, Sascha Schapiro was free for a short time, constantly active in the anarchist movement, until he was arrested and sent to Camp Vernet, then deported to Auschwitz concentration camp in 1942, where he was murdered.