Jacques Szafman

"Pray and hope for the best that nothing bad should happen to you."

Name at birth

Jacques Szafman

Date of birth

02/18/1932

Where were you born?

Brussels, Belgium

Where did you grow up?

Brussels, Belgium

Name of father, occupation

Abraham Usher, Tailor

Maiden name of mother, occupation

Fajga Steinberg, Homemaker and helped father

Immediate family (names, birth order)

Parents and me

How many in entire extended family?

We had a large family

Who survived the Holocaust?

I did

In 1942, my mother hid me with a gentile family in the province of Antwerp. I was 10 years old. It was a home that had a lot of kids living in it. I was there until the end of the war. The couple that lived there was nice to me. There were about twenty kids living there. I was lucky that the Germans never came to the home looking for Jewish children.

I worried about my parents. I was a boy. I missed my parents a lot. I played with the other kids and that helped me.

I never saw my parents again. They were murdered at Auschwitz.

Where were you in hiding?

In a home in Antwerp, Belgium

Where did you go after being liberated?

Toronto, Ontario, Canada. I had relatives in Toronto who were looking for me and they found me.

When did you come to the United States?

1945 to Toronto

How is it that you came to Michigan?

I met a girl in Toronto who was from Detroit. We got married and I later moved to Detroit.

Occupation after the war

Tailor