Schwartzbard trial

TheSchwartzbard trialwas a sensational 1927 French murder trial in whichSamuel "Sholem" Schwartzbardwas accused of murdering theUkrainianimmigrant and head of the Ukrainian government-in-exileSymon Petliura.The trial quickly began to revolve around Petliura's responsibility for the1919-1920 pogroms in Ukraine,during which Schwartzbard had lost all 15 members of his family. During the trial, prosecution alleged that Schwartzbard was aSovietagent and assassinated Petliura on Soviet orders. This view is still widely held, especially in Ukraine, but is far from universal.Schwartzbard was acquitted of all charges.

Schwartzbard trial

Sholem Schwartzbard'sspeech the court. Below him,Henri Torrès,his attorney. Oct. 1927
Native name	Процес Шварцбарда
Date	October 18–26, 1927(1927-10-18–1927-10-26)
Location	Paris,France
Type	Trial
Cause	AssassinationofSymon Petliura
Motive	Revengeforantisemitic pogromsinUkraine
Casualties
Symon Petliura
Accused	Sholem Schwarzbard
Charges	Murder
Verdict	Acquittal

Assassination

In 1919, fighting in southern Ukraine as part of the Bolshevik Revolutionary Insurgent Army of Ukraine (RIAU), led byGrigori Kotovsky,Schwartzbard was told that he had lost 15 members of his family inpogromsthat had taken place inOdesa,Ukraine that year. He heldSymon Petliura,who was the head of the Directorate of theUkrainian National Republic,responsible for their deaths.

According to his autobiography, after hearing the news that Petliura had relocated toParisin 1924, Schwartzbard became distraught and started plotting Petliura's assassination. A picture of Petliura withJózef Piłsudskiwas published inEncyclopédie Larousseand enabled Schwartzbard to recognize him.

On 25 May 1926, at 14:12, by theGibertbookstore, he approached Petliura, who was walking on the Rue Racine nearboulevard Saint-Michelin theLatin Quarter, Paris,and asked him in Ukrainian, "Are you Mr. Petliura?" Petliura did not answer but raised his cane. Schwartzbard pulled out a gun and shot him five times and, after Petliura fell to the pavement, shot him twice more. When the police came and asked if he had done the deed, he reportedly said, "I have killed a great assassin."

It is reportedthat he had planned to assassinate Petliura at a gathering of Ukrainian emigrants marking Petliura's birthday, but the attempt was foiled by theanarchistNestor Makhno,who was also at the function. Schwartzbard had told Makhno that he was terminally sick, was about to die and would take Petliura with him.(Schwartzbard died eleven years after the trial.)

The French secret service had been monitoring Schwartzbard since his arrival in Paris, and noted his meetings with known Bolsheviks. During the trial, the German special services also alleged to their French counterparts that Schwartzbard had assassinated Petliura on the orders of an emissary of the Union of Ukrainian Citizens, an intermediary forChristian Rakovsky,an ethnic Bulgarian, aSoviet ambassador to France(1925–27), a former revolutionary leader from Romania, and a former prime minister of the Ukrainian SSR. The act was according to the prosecution consolidated byMikhail Volodin,who arrived in France on 8 August 1925 and who had been in close contact with Schwartzbard.

The trial

Schwartzbard turned himself in to a nearby gendarme and was arrested at the site of the assassination. LawyersCésar CampinchiandHenri Torresled the prosecution and the defense, respectively. After only 35 minutes of deliberation, the jury acquitted Schwartzbard.

The lawyers

For the defense, Henri Torres, grandson ofIsaiah Levaillant,the man who founded the "League for the Defense of Human and Civil Rights" during theDreyfus Affair. Torres was a renowned French left-wing jurist who had previously defended anarchists such asBuenaventura DurrutiandErnesto Bonominiand also represented the Soviet consulate in France.

For the prosecution there was the Public Court Commission that was preparing the claim. It was consisting of several Ukrainian statesmen such asOleksander Shulhyn(formerMinister of Foreign Affairs,at that time professor at theUkrainian Free University), M. Shulhina,Vyacheslav Prokopovych,М. Shumytsky, І. Tokarzhevsky, and L. Chykalenko. The Commission gathered around 70 witness reports including L. Martyniuk, Lieutenant Colonel Butakov, M. Shadrin, Colonels Dekhtiarov and Zorenko, and many others. Explanation letters were sent by GeneralsMykhailo Omelianovych-Pavlenko,Vsevolod Petrovand A. Cherniavsky.

The French people were represented by public prosecutor Reynaud. In the civil suit Madame Olga Petliura (neeBilska) and her brother-in-law Oskar were represented byAlbert WilmandCesare Campinchi(who was the chief prosecution lawyer). Assisting them wasCzeslaw Poznansky,an attorney from Poland.

Schwartzbard

Schwartzbard was charged with violations of Articles 295, 296, 297, 298 and 302 of theFrench Penal Code(all of which pertained to premeditated murder and provided for thedeath penalty). The defendant pleaded not guilty to the charges.

Questioned by the prosecutor, Schwartzbard started his testimony poorly. He lied and gave confusing answers to why he had been previously imprisoned in Russia (1906), Vienna (1908) and Budapest (1909). He lied about his age, place of birth and the fact that he had been charged with burglary in Austria twice. He also lied about his service in theRed Army,stating that he fought on the side ofAlexander Kerenskyrather than have led a battalion under Kotovsky.

Witnesses

A notable witness for the defense wasHaia Greenberg(aged 29) who survived theProskurivpogroms where she had worked as a nurse for the DanishRed Cross.She never said Petliura personally participated in the event, but named other soldiers, who said they were directed by Petliura. Torres, however, decided not to call on most of the other 80 witnesses he had prepared for Schwartzbard's defense. Instead, he took a calculated risk and delivered only a short speech, invoking theFrench Revolution.

I demand a full acquittal for my client. I demand it in the name of the French Revolution, in the name of our nation who died in the World War; in the name of humanity and of the prestige of France, at whom the whole world is looking. The French Revolution first gave emancipation to the Jewish people. The Jews have always been grateful to France. Don't darken those feelings. Not only the fate of Schwartzbard, but the prestige of France rests with you, gentlemen of the jury. "

Torres later remarked that had Schwartzbard been found guilty, France would have lost all meaning:

"If I had not been heard, France would have been no longer France and Paris would have been no longer Paris."

Outcome

The jury deliberated for only 35 minutes before acquitting Schwartzbard, whom they viewed as innocent "before God and their conscience." Following the verdict, someone in the courtroom chanted "Vive la France," and the entire courtroom started chanting the same.Not only was Schwartzbard acquitted, but Petliura's family was ordered to pay for the costs of the trial. The jury rewarded one franc in compensation to Petliura's widow and brother. Schwartzbard became seen by fellow Jews as a heroic avenger of the victims of the pogroms.

Timereported that the outcome of the trial gripped all Europe and was regarded by the Jews as establishing proof of the horrors perpetrated against their co-religionists in Ukraine under the dictatorship of Simon Petliura; radical opinion rejoiced, but the conservatives saw justice flouted and the decorum of the French courts immeasurably impaired.

French press

The French press published detailed accounts and comments relating to the court proceedings. Divergent assessments of the assassination committed by Schwartzbard coincided with the political sympathies and antipathies of the particular newspapers, which fell into three groups:

1. Those that approved of Schwartzbard stressed the pogroms of the Jewish population and, from the very outset, treated the victim of the assassination as a defendant (the most conspicuous example being the communist newspaperL'Humanité)
2. Papers restricted themselves to an exact observation of the court trial but refused to print commentaries or did so very cautiously (Le Temps,L'Ere NouvelleorLe Petit Parisien)
3. Papers portrayed Schwartzbard's crime in an unambiguously negative light and treated the assassin predominantly as a Bolshevik agent (also centrist publications but especially the right-wingL'Intransigeant,L'Écho de ParisandL'Action Française). The French governing circles, headed byQuai d'Orsay,were not interested in granting the case further publicity, which could cause the already-tense relations with the Soviet Union to deteriorate, which the latter threatened to sever.

Aftermath

According to a defected KGB operativePeter Deriabin,the assassination of Petliura was a special operation by theGPU,and Schwartzbard was anNKVDagent and acted on the order from a former chairman of the Soviet Ukrainian government and then-Soviet Ambassador to France,Christian Rakovsky.Mykola Riabchukwrote: "In fact, the trial turned into an ostentatious demonstration of retribution against Ukraine's demonized 'nationalism and separatism'; noLubiankacould ever have come up with anything better. "

After the Schwartzbard trial,Henri Torreswas recognized as one of France's leading trial lawyers and remained active in political affairs.

After his acquittal in 1928, Schwartzbard decided to immigrate to theBritish Mandate of Palestine.The British authorities, however, refused him a visa. In 1933, he traveled the United States where he re-enacted his role in the murder on film. In 1937, Schwartzbard traveled toSouth Africa,where he died in Cape Town on 3 March 1938. In 1967, his remains were disinterred and transported to Israel, where he was reinterred.

See also

• Soghomon Tehlirian,an Armenian who in 1921 assassinated the former Ottoman Grand Vizier and was acquitted on very similar grounds.

Sources

• Friedman, Saul S.(1976).Pogromchik: The Assassination of Simon Petlura.New York:Hart Publishing.ISBN0805511628.
• Encyclopedia of Ukraine
  • Vol 6, pp. 2029–30. Paris–New York 1970.
  • Vol. 3, 4. "Petliura, Symon", "Schwartzbard Trial", "Pogroms". Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1993.
• Symon Petliura; et al. (2006).Симон Петлюра: Статті, листи, документи[Symon Petliura: Articles, Letters and Documents]. Vol. 4. Ukrainian Free Academy in the United States. p. 704.ISBN966-2911-00-6.
• Dokument Sudovoyi Pomylky (Paris:Natsionalistychne Vydavnytstvo v Evropi,1958); "L'Assassinat de l'Hetman Petlioura."OCLC822228432
• "L'Assassinat de l" Hetman Petlioura ",Le Figaro,May 26, May 27, June 3, 1926.
• Timemagazine coverage

Further reading

• Dean, Carolyn J. (2019).The Moral Witness: Trials and Testimony after Genocide.Cornell University Press.ISBN978-1-5017-3508-0.
• Engel, David (2016).The Assassination of Symon Petliura and the Trial of Scholem Schwarzbard 1926–1927: A Selection of Documents.Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht.doi:10.13109/9783666310270.ISBN978-3-666-31027-0.
• Palij, Michael (1995).The Ukrainian-Polish Defensive Alliance, 1919-1921: An Aspect of the Ukrainian Revolution.CIUS Press.ISBN978-1-895571-05-9.