Hersz Schaffel

Hersz Shaffel left his native Poland in 1928 and settled in Brussels as a watchmaker. He married the Romanian Paula Veiszner in 1937 and the couple set up a leather goods business. Their only child, Betty, was born in Anderlecht in November 1937. Hersz travelled to France in spring 1941 to look for a way of smuggling his family to Switzerland. Along with 4,000 other foreign Jewish men, he was arrested during a large-scale raid in Paris on 14 May 1941 and interned at Pithiviers. Hersz Schaffel (31) was deported from there via Transport 6 to Auschwitz-Birkenau on 17 July 1942. Like all the other men and women on this train, he was assigned to the labour camp on arrival. The number 49652 was tattooed on his arm. He did not survive deportation: Hersz Schaffel was shot dead on 13 August 1942 ‘while attempting to escape’.