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Title: Petliura’s Assassination Author: May Picqueray Language: en Topics: propaganda of the deed, anti-fascism, antisemitism, Jewish anarchism, Ukraine Source: Retrieved on 10th September 2021 from https://forgottenanarchism.wordpress.com/2015/03/22/petliouras-assassination-may-picqueray/
Emma Goldman and Alexander Berkmann sent me a telegramm. They were
arriving in Paris to stay a while and they strongly wished to meet me
there. At their demand, I book a room for Emma, on the Sorbonne square,
and for Alexander (who we all call Sacha), rue Royer-Collard near the
Luxemburg.
Emma will only be staying for 48 hours, people are waiting for her in
England for a series of conferences. Sacha has a lot of work. He wishes
me to help him for a few days with the writing of his Memoirs. I feel
very comfortable around this, good, generous man, who carries with him
the stigmata of the fourteen years he spent in prison.
Contrary to what I have read about him afterwards, on his pessimism
which would have led him to suicide, Sacha was very jovial, very easy to
get along with. We often had our meals in either restaurant opposite his
hotel, one was Russian, the other Polish. Musicians and singers
performed there, which livened up our meals. And Sacha hummed the old
tunes they played.
He received the visit of a young Russo-American blouse-maker who was
going on holidays in Israel. It was an occasion to reunite a few
comrades around a bortch, in a restaurant of the rue Racine; Mollie,
Senya, and Schwartzbard, who held a small shop as a jeweller-clockmaker
on the boulevard de Belleville, joined us.
We were discussing merrily while having lunch, when a group of men
entered the restaurant with a lot of noise; the outbursts of their
voices attarcted the consumers’ attention. Suddenly, Schwartzbard turned
livid, he had just recognised in this group the former ataman of the
Ukraine, Petlioura, the author of many bloody pogroms against Jewish
people, who became famous for his uncountable murders, rapes, and acts
of looting. Fifteen members of Schwartzbard’s family had been hanged on
Petlioura’s orders.
He came back to the restaurant the next day, armed this time; that is
how on May, 25^(th), Petlioura fell under Schwartzbard’s shots, who had
come to avenge his people.
Gravely injured, Petlioura was taken to the Charité hospital, where he
died upon arrival.
Schwartzbard was sent to trial in Paris, on October 18^(th), 1925, his
trial lasted for a week. Mr. Heni Torrès defended him brilliantly. It
was one of the most famous legal cases of that period.
Many famous people testified in his favour, such as SĂ©verine, the
countess of Noailles, Maxime Gorki, Joseph Kessel, Professor Langevin,
Vicor Margueritte, who all put on trial the pogroms and Petlioura the
murderer.
Schwartzbard then declared at his trial:
“I am happy I did what I did, I avenged my people, I killed a murderer!”
He was discharged.