Milwaukee lost a treasure last month when Holocaust survivor, speaker and author Edith Shafer, passed away. Shafer was 83.
Shafer died on Sept. 9 after suffering from dementia and Alzheimer’s over the last several years, her family said. She wrote “Shanghai Deliverance” about her parents and grandfather, who escaped Nazi Germany and lived in a Chinese slum, where she was born before her family came to America.
She also spoke about her family’s experience, as a participant of the Nathan and Esther Pelz Holocaust Education Resource Center Speaker’s Bureau for the last 15 years.
“She made what happened to her more approachable and more understandable for people who maybe have never heard about it, or very little about it, or may have some misunderstandings about it,” said her son Joel Altman-Shafer, who described her as a terrific mother, grandmother and great grandmother. “She always tried her very best, she was genuine, not pretentious and she was inspirational to everyone around her.”
Shafer was “pure joy, pure life,” said Sara Sillars, the marketing manager at HERC, who helped her with her book. “She believed in taking care of people. She spent a lot of time sitting by the bedside of people who were ill.”
She leaves behind 10 grandchildren and two great-grandchildren. Her daughter Debbie Jackson said Shafer was a sweet soul who put everyone first, before herself.
“She was kind to everybody. She was everybody’s biggest fan,” she said. “She listened to friends and family and took everyone’s call and tried to help everyone that she loved.”
Her story began well before she was born. In November of 1938, during Kristallnacht, her father Manfred Oelsner and her grandfather Max were two of the thousands of Jewish men taken into custody by the Nazis. They were taken to the Sachsenhausen concentration camp where they spent the next couple of months in Nazi captivity under brutal conditions.
In February of 1939, Oeslner was released and told by the Nazis that he had three months to leave the country with Shafer’s mother Gerda. On May 10, 1939, the couple along with her grandfather left Europe on a ship bound for Shanghai, China.
On Jan. 30, 1941, Edie was born in Shanghai, where her father and grandfather rented a small tobacco shop, which became the family’s livelihood and residence in the Shanghai ghetto. The family lived in a seven-square-foot living space.
“The first two years of my life, my parents had me either in the crib or in their arms, for the floor was unsafe for a child to walk on. Given the conditions I once spent over three weeks in the hospital. My father had to donate blood in exchange for my stay,” she once said in an interview for Jewish Museum Milwaukee.
Seven years later after surviving the horrid conditions, Shafer and her parents immigrated to the United States. Their first stop was Hawaii, where for the first time in her life she stepped on grass with her bare feet.
“It was just this miraculous feeling,” Sillars said. “That (was) Edie’s spirit. In all that had happened, she embraced that … this beauty in something. She carried that with her throughout her entire life. She was just kind and warm … a remarkable woman.”
They arrived in San Francisco before settling in Milwaukee where Shafer and her family made a life for themselves. Her father worked at a tannery and her mother at the Shorewood Village Bakery. She went to college and became a teacher and met Neil Shafer, her husband of 59 years before his death in August of 2023.
About 15 years ago, decades after coming to Milwaukee, she began telling her and her family’s story at schools. At first, she was reluctant, but it was her courage and fortitude that helped her stand in front of thousands over time and share her story.
This was “an incredible transformation in this woman,” her son Dan Shafer said. “From someone who was quiet and almost kind of embarrassed about her upbringing, to someone powerful and resilient and strong and wanting to share it … the transformation was absolutely astounding.”
In honor of Edie’s enduring legacy, her family has established the Edie Shafer Endowment Fund of the Holocaust Education Resource Center.
“My life has been far from simple, but I am endlessly grateful. I am truly the lucky one,” she told Jewish Museum Milwaukee.
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Family has established the Edie Shafer Endowment Fund of the Nathan and Esther Pelz Holocaust Education Resource Center. This fund will support HERC’s speakers bureau and related educational initiatives. Donations can be made at MilwaukeeJewish.org/fundgift/ selecting “HERC/Edie Shafer Endowment Fund.”