Sholem Schwarzbard | |
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שלום שװאַרצבאָרד | |
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| Born | Shulem Itskovich Shvartsburd (1886-08-18)18 August 1886 |
| Died | 3 March 1938(1938-03-03) (aged 51) |
| Resting place | 32°21′1.44″N34°52′19.56″E / 32.3504000°N 34.8721000°E /32.3504000; 34.8721000 |
| Nationality | Bessarabian Jew |
| Other names | Samuel Schwarzbard |
| Known for | Schwartzbard trial |
| Movement | Anarchism |
| Criminal charge | Assassination ofSymon Petliura |
| Criminal status | Acquitted |
| Spouse | Anna Render |
| Parent(s) | Isaak Shvartsburd Khaye Vaysberger |
| Military career | |
| Allegiance |  French Republic Russian SFSR Ukrainian SSR |
| Service | French Army Red Guards Red Army |
| Years of service | 1914–1919 |
| Unit | French Foreign Legion 363rd Infantry Regiment (France) PetrogradRed Guards Cavalry group of Tiraspol squad International brigade (Red Army, 1919) |
| Battles / wars | |
| Awards | Croix de guerre (1917) |
Samuel "Sholem" Schwarzbard (Russian:Самуил Исаакович Шварцбурд,romanized: Samuil Isaakovich Shvartsburd;Yiddish:שלום שװאַרצבאָרד;French:Samuel 'Sholem' Schwarzbard; 18 August 1886 – 3 March 1938) was a Russian-FrenchYiddishpoet. He served in the French and Soviet military, was acommunist andanarchist, and is known for organising Jewish community defense against pogroms in the pre-First World War era and the Russian Civil War era in Ukraine, and for the assassination of Ukrainian nationalist leaderSymon Petliura in 1926. He wrotepoetry inYiddish under the pen name ofBaal-Khaloymes (English:The Dreamer).
Schwarzbard was born in 1886 inIzmail,Bessarabia Governorate,Russian Empire[1] to the Jewish family of Itskhok Shvartsbard and Khaye Vaysberger. His real given name was Sholem. After the proclamation of an order by the Russian Imperial government for all Jews to move out from the region within 50 versts (33 mi) of the border, his family moved to the town ofBalta, in the southernPodolia region, where he grew up. His three older brothers died as children and his mother died whilst he was a child. In 1900, at an early age of 14 he became an apprentice to a watchmaker, Israel Dik.
During his apprenticeship in 1903, he became interested insocialism and began agitating for a revolutionary group called "Iskra", likely related toLenin'sjournal of the same name. At the time of the firstRussian Revolution in 1905, he was based in Kruti, 30 miles (48 km) north of Balta, where he was employed, in his own words, "fixingCossack watches". A short time after participating in Jewish-run and -mannedparamilitary activity while visiting his father in Balta, he was arrested and served a short stint inProskurov and Balta prisons. He was released with the general amnesty granted as part of post-revolutionary tsarist "leniency".[2] Fearing further arrests, Schwarzbard fled across the border intoAustria-Hungary, where he lived and worked in a number of cities and towns, including the capitals,Vienna andBudapest. There, he was converted to anarchism, a political philosophy, especially the teachings ofPeter Kropotkin, to which he would remain loyal the rest of his life.
In January 1910, at age 23, he settled inParis and found work with a series of watchmakers.[1]
The day before enlisting, he married his girlfriend of three years, Anna Render, a fellow immigrant from Odesa. On 24 August 1914, Schwarzbard and his brother enlisted in theFrench Foreign Legion. As a legionnaire, he was sent to the front in November 1914 and participated in theSecond Battle of Artois, nearArras, in May 1915. On account of his excellent military record, in early 1915, he was moved to the regular French 363rdrégiment d’infanterie and transferred south to the Vosges Forest. While there, he was shot through the left lung, fracturing hisscapula and tearing hisbrachial plexus. The doctors gave him little hope of surviving the wound, but he slowly improved over the next year and a half until he was in good enough shape to return to Russia. His left arm was left virtually useless,[3] and he was awarded theCroix de guerre for his courage in theWorld War.[1]
He was demobilized in August 1917 and in September, traveled with his wife to theRussian Republic, established after theFebruary Revolution. On the French boatMelbourne, he was arrested for communist agitation and was handed over to Russian authorities inArkhangelsk. He later traveled toPetrograd, where he joined and served in the politically mixedRed Guards (1917–1920).[4] Schwarzbard commanded a unit of 90sabers in the brigade ofGrigory Kotovsky.[5]
During the occupation and in the chaos that ensued after the Germans left, Schwarzbard lay low, survived a serious bout oftyphus and worked securing facilities and supplies for the newly formingSoviet school system. He had himself tried to establish independent anarchist schools, but was willing to work with the Bolsheviks as they increasingly centralized the school system.[6] Hearing news of countlesspogroms, Schwarzbard tried to volunteer as a Red Guard soldier. After many delays, he was finally accepted into an "International Brigade" in June 1919 and began his second revolutionary campaign. The next two months were perhaps the worst of his life. His unit suffered defeat from the combined forces of Petliura andDenikin, who were uneasy allies at the time. Schwarzbard was inKyiv when both the Ukrainian andWhite Armies entered the city, his unit having been wiped out and disbanded. It was in this period, July–August 1919 that Schwarzbard witnessed first-hand the ruins and human devastation left by pogrom violence—images that would haunt him for the rest of his life. He again managed to take a train back to Odesa, where he was betrayed by a fellow anarchist to the White forces in control of the city. Before they could catch him, he learned that as a former French soldier, he was entitled to a passage to France. In late December 1919 he boarded theNicholas I and sailed toMarseille viaIstanbul,Beirut andPort Said. He was back in Paris by 21 January 1920.
In the turmoil that transpired in the period of theRussian Civil War, fourteen members of his family perished inantisemitic pogroms, including his most beloved uncle, who was killed inAnaniv. The names of all fourteen were listed for his trial in 1926 and can be found in the YIVO Schwarzbard Archive.
In 1920, disillusioned with the outcome of the revolution,[6] Sholom moved back toParis where he opened a clock-and-watch repair shop. There he was active in the French labor movement as an anarchist, and in 1925 became a French citizen. He was acquainted with prominent anarchist activists who had emigrated from Russia and Ukraine, including such figures asVolin,Alexander Berkman,Emma Goldman, as well asNestor Makhno and his followerPeter Arshinov. In Paris Schwarzbard also became a member of the "Union of Ukrainian citizens". He contributed a number of articles to New York's anarchist dailyFreie Arbeiter Stimme under the pseudonym "Sholem"—his first name, but also Yiddish for "peace", a fact he was quite proud of as an avid fan ofCount Tolstoy.[5]
Symon Petliura, who was head of theDirectorate of theUkrainian National Republic in 1919, had moved to Paris in 1924 and was the head of the government-in-exile of theUkrainian People's Republic. Sholom Schwarzbard, who had lost his family in the 1919 pogroms, held Symon Petliura responsible for them (see the discussion onPetliura's role in the pogroms). According to his autobiography, after hearing the news that Petliura had relocated to Paris, Schwarzbard became distraught and started plotting Petliura's assassination. Schwarzbard recognized Petliura from a picture.[7] In 2006, Russian intelligence specialists stated, in a series of volumes on the Soviet secret services, that Schwarzbard worked as an agent of theJoint State Political Directorate (OGPU) at the time of Petliura’s assassination, and speculated that he may have been carrying out orders for the regime which benefitted from Petliura's death.[8]
On 25 May 1926, at 14:12, by theGibert bookstore, he approached Petliura, who was walking on Rue Racine nearBoulevard Saint-Michel of theLatin Quarter, Paris, and asked him in Ukrainian, "Are you Mr. Petliura?" Petliura did not answer but raised his cane. Schwarzbard immediately pulled out a gun and shot him five times. After Petliura fell to the pavement, he 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."[9] Other sources state that he attempted to fire an eighth shot into Petliura, but his firearm jammed.[10]
Schwarzbard was arrested and was put on trial by the Public Court Committee on 18 October 1927. His defense was led byHenri Torrès,[1] a renowned French jurist who had previously defended anarchists such asBuenaventura Durruti and Ernesto Bonomini and who also represented the Soviet consulate in France.
The core of Schwarzbard's defense was to attempt to show that he was avenging the deaths of victims of pogroms, whereas the prosecution (both criminal and civil) tried to show that Petliura was not responsible for the pogroms and that Schwarzbard was a Soviet agent.
Both sides brought on many witnesses, including several historians. A notable witness for the defence was Haia Greenberg (aged 29), a local nurse who survived thepogroms in Proskurov (now renamedKhmelnytskyi, Ukraine) and testified about the carnage. She never said that Petliura personally participated in the event, but rather some other soldiers who said that they were directed by Petliura. Several former Ukrainian officers testified for the prosecution, including a Red Cross representative who witnessed Semesenko's report to Petliura.[11]
After a trial lasting eight days the jury acquitted Schwarzbard.[9][12]After his acquittal in 1928, Schwartzbard decided to immigrate to the BritishMandate 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 to South 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.
Schwarzbard is the author of numerous books inYiddish published under the pseudonym "Bal Khaloymes" (master of dreams):Troymen un virklekhkeyt (Dreams and Reality, Paris, 1920),In krig mit zikh aleyn (At War with Myself, Chicago, 1933),Inem loyf fun yorn (Over the Year, Chicago, 1934).
Sholom Schwarzbard's papers are archived atYIVO Institute for Jewish Research in New York.[13] They were rescued duringWorld War II and smuggled from France by the historianZosa Szajkowski.
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