Born April 18, 1904   |   Warsaw, Poland 

Died January 23, 1984   |   Edmonton, Canada

Fela was a warm, vibrant, positive and beautiful matriarch who believed that family is everything.

Fela, the daughter of Shoshana and Yehoshua Leib, met her husband Israel Szapiro while vacationing in Brest-Litovsk, Poland. They had two sons, Heniek and Sevek. The windows of the family’s café were smashed during a violent pogrom in 1937 and again in 1938. After the 1939 German invasion of Poland, Fela successfully insisted that the family flee to Pinsk, which soon fell under Soviet rule. When Germany broke the Hitler-Stalin Pact, the Szapiros managed to escape on a lumber raft while Nazi bombs exploded around them. While on the run, Fela lost her mother, who had escaped with them, and was widowed when Israel died of malaria. Although she and her sons contracted typhus and malaria, they made it to Samarkand, Uzbekistan, where hundreds lay dead in the streets. Fela placed her sons in a school for Polish refugee children while she lived in a mud hut.

After the war, Fela met survivor Herman Zoberman on a train to Poland, where she learned that all of her remaining family had been murdered. Fela, Herman and Heniek later lived in several places, including Displaced Persons camps in Germany. Sevek immigrated to Israel. At the pleading of Fela’s siblings, who had settled in Montreal before the war, Member of Parliament Leon Crestohl obtained an order in council and secured immigration papers for Fela, Herman and Heniek. In 1950, they arrived in Montreal, where Fela worked in a hat factory. They soon reunited with Fela’s brother Morris in Edmonton, where Herman and Fela bought Jasper Food Basket and later invested in other properties. Active in Jewish organizations, especially Mizrachi Canada, Fela was an incredible baker and cook who enjoyed hosting holiday celebrations. She was devastated by the premature passing of Heniek (Harry Shapiro). Her legacy includes five grandchildren, 13 great-grandchildren and 11 great-great grandchildren.