85 lines
5.2 KiB
Markdown
85 lines
5.2 KiB
Markdown
**Alexander "Sascha" Schapiro** (Russian: Александр Шапиро;
|
||
<abbr>c.</abbr> 1890 – 1942), also known by the *noms de guerre*
|
||
**Alexander Tanarov**, **Sascha Piotr**, and **Sergei**, was an
|
||
anarchist and father of eminent 20th century mathematician [Alexander
|
||
Grothendieck](Alexander_Grothendieck "wikilink").<sup>\[1\]\[2\]</sup>
|
||
|
||
## Early years and Russian revolutions
|
||
|
||
Born into a Hasidic family in the predominantly Jewish border town of
|
||
Novozybkov, Russia in 1889 or 1890, Alexander Schapiro grew up
|
||
identifying more with the impoverished proletariat than with his own
|
||
well-to-do family.<sup>\[2\]</sup> In 1904 at the age of fourteen he
|
||
left the town and joined an anarchist militant group (akin to the
|
||
Chernoznamentsy) who were rounded up by the authorities in 1905 after an
|
||
unsuccessful attempt to murder Czar Nicholas II.<sup>\[1\]\[2\]</sup>
|
||
All were executed, save Schapiro who was spared on account of his youth,
|
||
sentenced to life imprisonment and sent to rot in a dungeon in Moscow.
|
||
He was spared a lingering death there by the intercession of an
|
||
influential friend who secured his transfer to Yaroslavl, where he
|
||
stayed for twelve years.<sup>\[1\]</sup> It was here that Schapiro was
|
||
shot in his left arm whilst trying to escape, resulting in its
|
||
amputation.<sup>\[2\]</sup> After an attempted suicide, he spent the
|
||
year 1914 in solitary confinement.<sup>\[2\]</sup>
|
||
|
||
With the collapse of the Czarist regime in Russia in 1917, Schapiro was
|
||
released, and hailed as a national hero.<sup>\[1\]</sup> He 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'".<sup>\[3\]</sup> He 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 Black Army.<sup>\[2\]</sup>
|
||
Schapiro lead a tempestuous life in Russia between 1917 and 1921 in an
|
||
atmosphere of increasing repression of anarchists by the Bolshevik
|
||
regime, marrying a Jewish woman named Rachil, with whom he had a son,
|
||
Dodek.<sup>\[2\]</sup> In an attempt to evade the Bolsheviks searching
|
||
for him, he fled in 1921 to Minsk, where he encountered and was
|
||
financially supported by Alexander Berkman.<sup>\[2\]</sup> With the
|
||
assistance of a Jewish woman named Leah, Schapiro then crossed the
|
||
Russian-Polish border using forged papers bearing the name of
|
||
**Alexander Tanarov**.<sup>\[2\]</sup>
|
||
|
||
## Life in Europe, family and death
|
||
|
||
By 1922, Schapiro had reached Berlin, where he remained save for spells
|
||
in Paris and Belgium until 1924.<sup>\[1\]\[2\]</sup> There, he assumed
|
||
the name **Sacha Piotr** and throughout the 1920s was an active
|
||
participant in the anarchist movement, in 1928 becoming friends with
|
||
prominent Spanish anarcho-syndicalists Francisco Ascaso and Buenaventura
|
||
Durruti, Italian anarchist Francesco Ghezzi and German author Theodor
|
||
Plievier, who dedicated his 1927 novel *Stienka Rasin* to
|
||
Schapiro.<sup>\[2\]</sup> In Paris, he was a regular at the artist's
|
||
hangout Café Dome, and befriended journalist and artist Aron Brzezinski,
|
||
who made a bronze bust of him, as well as the novelist Scholem
|
||
Asch.<sup>\[2\]</sup> During this period he was in infrequent contact
|
||
with Makhno and his platformist Dielo Truda group, who were based in
|
||
Paris.<sup>\[2\]</sup> Schapiro was one of the founding members,
|
||
alongside Sébastien Faure, Ugo Fedeli and Henryk Walecki, of the
|
||
Paris-based *Œuvres Internationales Des Editions Anarchistes*
|
||
(*International Works of Anarchist Editions*).<sup>\[2\]</sup> He
|
||
contributed at least two articles to the publication, run at that time
|
||
by the anarchist Severin Ferandel.<sup>\[2\]</sup>
|
||
|
||
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. Due to the increasingly
|
||
anti-Semitic environment in Europe at the time, the couple decided to
|
||
give their son Alexander the surname of Grothendieck's well-established
|
||
Hamburg middle-class family.<sup>\[1\]</sup> Forced to flee Germany
|
||
after the rise to power of Adolf Hitler, and intent on fighting in the
|
||
coming Spanish Civil War, the couple sent Alexander to live with the
|
||
Heydorns, a middle-class family with anarchist sympathies, in
|
||
1933.<sup>\[1\]</sup> In Spain, under the name **Sacha Pietra**,
|
||
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.<sup>\[2\]</sup> The
|
||
Heydorns had cared for Alexander in Berlin for seven years, but decided
|
||
in May 1939, shortly before France entered the Second World War, that it
|
||
had become too dangerous to keep him and he was put on a train to Paris
|
||
to his parents.<sup>\[1\]</sup> In Occupied Paris, Schapiro was free for
|
||
a short time, constantly active in the anarchist movement, until he was
|
||
arrested and deported to [Auschwitz](Auschwitz "wikilink") concentration
|
||
camp in 1942, where he was afterward murdered.<sup>\[2\]\[4\]</sup> |