The Assassination of Symon Petliura and the Trial of Scholem Schwarzbard 1926–1927 a Selection of Documents
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THE ASSASSINATION OF SYMON PETLIURA AND THE TRIAL OF SHOLEM SCHWARZBARD 1926–1927 A Selection of Documents Edited by David Engel The Assassination of Symon Petliura and the Trial of Sholem Schwarzbard 1926–1927 Schwarzbard of Sholem the Trial and Petliura of Symon Assassination The archiv jüdischer geschichte und kultur Band 2 David Engel 978-3-525-30195-1_Eber.indd 1 19.09.2018 14:52:56 Archiv jüdischer Geschichte und Kultur Archive of Jewish History and Culture Band/Volume 2 Im Auftrag der Sächsischen Akademie der Wissenschaften zu Leipzig On behalf of the Saxonian Academy of Sciences and Humanities at Leipzig herausgegeben/edited von/by Dan Diner Redaktion/editorial staff Frauke von Rohden Stefan Hofmann Markus Kirchhoff Ulrike Kramme Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht The Assassination of Symon Petliura and the Trial of Scholem Schwarzbard 1926–1927 A Selection of Documents Selected, translated, annotated, and introduced by David Engel The “Archive of Jewish History and Culture” is part of the research project “European Traditions – Encyclopedia of Jewish Cultures” at the Saxonian Academy of Sciences and Humanities at Leipzig. It is sponsored by the Academy program of the Federal Republic of Germany and the Free State of Saxony. The Academy program is coordinated by the Union of the German Academies of Sciences and Humanities. Bibliographic information published by the Deutsche Nationalbibliothek The Deutsche Nationalbibliothek lists this publication in the Deutsche Nationalbibliografie; detailed bibliographic data available online: https://dnb.de © 2016, Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht GmbH & Co. KG, Theaterstraße 13, D37073 Göttingen Typesetting: Dörlemann Satz, Lemförde Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht Verlage | www.vandenhoeck-ruprecht-verlage.com ISSN 2566-6673 ISBN (Print) 978-3-525-31027-4 ISBN (PDF) 978-3-666-31027-0 https://doi.org/10.13109/9783666310270 This publication is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution – Non Commercial – No Derivatives 4.0 International license, at DOI 10.13109/9783666310270. For a copy of this license go to https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/. Any use in cases other than those permitted by this license requires the prior written permission from the publisher. Contents Abbreviations . 6 I. Introduction 1. The Events . 7 2. French Contexts . 10 3. Schwarzbard between Left and Right . 15 4. International Implications . 22 5. Petliura’s Assassination and Ukrainian Politics . 25 6. Shaping a Ukrainian Narrative . 35 7. The Assassination and Trial in Jewish Politics: Historical Background . 53 8. Defending Schwarzbard . 72 9. Outcomes . 89 10. On the Documents in this Edition . 95 11. Acknowledgments . 98 12. List of Documents . 99 II. Documents Transcription Conventions . 104 1. The Background . 105 2. First Responses . 151 3. Preparations, Negotiations, Confrontations . 201 4. The Trial . 343 5. Aftermath . 407 Biographical Notes . 445 Bibliography . 453 Index . 466 Abbreviations AAIU Archives de l’Alliance israélite universelle, Paris AJA American Jewish Archives, Cincinnati AJC Archives of the American Jewish Committee, Blaustein Library, New York AJHS American Jewish Historical Society, New York AMAE Archives du Ministère des Affaires Étrangères, Paris AN Archives Nationales, Paris APP Archives de la Préfecture de Police, Paris CAHJP Central Archives for the History of the Jewish People, Jerusalem DAKO State Archive of the Kiev Province, Kiev HURI Harvard Ukrainian Research Institute, Cambridge, Mass. LNA Archives of the League of Nations, Geneva NYPL New York Public Library, New York PRO Public Record Office, London (National Archives of the United Kingdom) TT Trial Transcript (YIVO, RG85/486–502) YIVO Archives of the YIVO Institute for Jewish Research, New York I. Introduction 1. The Events On 25 May 1926, at approximately 2:15 in the afternoon, on the corner of rue Racine and boulevard Saint-Michel in the Latin Quarter of Paris, a nat- uralized immigrant Jewish watchmaker of Ukrainian origin named Scholem Schwarzbard (1886–1938) shot and killed a prominent emigré Ukrainian journalist, poet, and political leader, Symon Vasylyovych Petliura (1879– 1926). The assassin was immediately taken into custody and confessed to his crime. Indeed, he could hardly have done otherwise, for dozens of on- lookers had witnessed the deed. He expressed no remorse for his action, nor did he plead diminished capacity. Yet although at first glance his culpabil- ity appeared beyond doubt, the examining magistrate to whom the case was assigned investigated for a full seventeen months before binding the assas- sin over for trial.1 And when the trial, which lasted for eight days, from 18 through 26 October 1927, came to a close, the French jury pronounced the defendant not guilty.2 1 In the system of criminal procedure in force in France at the time, the facts of a criminal case were determined in advance of trial by an examining magistrate (juge d’instruction). The examining magistrate was charged with gathering the available evidence; taking depositions from the defendant, from witnesses, and from others possessing knowledge potentially bearing on the case; and preparing a dossier of his findings for the presiding trial judge. The magistrate had the power to dismiss charges upon investigation. He was required to bind a defendant over for trial only if he believed sufficient evidence for conviction existed. See Roberto Ferrari, The Pro- cedure in the “Cour d’Assises” of Paris, in: Columbia Law Review 18 (1918), 43–62, here 43 f., 56 f. 2 There are two full-length studies of the trial, one by a legal scholar, the other by a historian: Me’ir Kotik, Mishpat Shvarzbard. Rezah nakam al reka ha-pogromim be- Ukrainah [The Schwarzbard Trial. A Revenge Murder against the Background of the Pogroms in Ukraine], Hadera 1972; Saul S. Friedman, Pogromchik. The Assassina- tion of Simon Petlura, New York 1976. Selections from some of the testimonies of- fered at the trial were published by Schwarzbard’s chief defense counsel: Henry Tor- rès, Le procès des pogromes. Plaidoire. Suivie des témoignages, Paris 1928. Partisans of the opposing sides published several pamphlets in the wake of the trial, describing 8 I. Introduction The assassination, the investigation, the trial, and the acquittal all ex- ercised the hearts and the minds of diverse segments of European society. Their reverberations even echoed well beyond the European continent. One of France’s most celebrated criminal attorneys, Henri Torrès (1891–1966), took up the assassin’s defense, while another, César Campinchi (1882–1941), became one of his chief accusers. When the case finally came to court, up- wards of 400 spectators packed the auditorium at the massive Palais de Justice on Paris’s Ile de la Cité3 – a crowd so large and impassioned that the presiding judge, Georges Flory, requested additional police protection for the duration of the hearings.4 According to one eyewitness account the audience included “quite a large number of press correspondents from virtually every one of the world’s major newspapers.”5 French envoys in distant lands reported keen interest in the proceedings and sharp reactions to the verdict.6 The events touched Jews and Ukrainians in particular, largely because of the identity of the victim. At the time of his death Petliura was arguably the best-known Ukrainian public figure beyond the borders of his homeland. A founding father of the short-lived Ukrainian National Republic (Ukrains’ka Narodnia Respublika – UNR), one of the losing contenders for hegemony in it from their perspective. The most widely-circulated account by a Ukrainian was A[ndriy] Yakovliv, Paryz’ka trahediia. 25 travnia 1926 roku [The Tragedy in Paris. 25 May 1926], Prague 1930. Among accounts by exponents of Schwarzbard’s case are Zalman Rosenthal, Der Shvartsbard-protses [The Schwarzbard Trial], Paris 1927; Anonymous, Procesul Schwartzbart. O dramă in faţa istoriei. Adevărul asupra po- gromurilor lui Petliura [The Schwarzbard Trial. A Drama in the Face of History. The Truth about the Pogroms of Petliura], Bucharest 1927; Sh. Weiss, Der shos oyf Petlyu- ran (Shvartsbard-protses) [The Shot at Petliura (Schwarzbard Trial)], Warsaw 1933. For a contemporary Soviet interpretation, see Anonymous, Protses Shvartsbarda v parizhskom sude [The Schwarzbard Trial in the Parisian Court], Leningrad 1928. See also Serhii Lytvyn, Symon Petliura u 1917–1926 rokach. Istoriografiia ta dzherela [Symon Petliura in the Years 1917–1926. Historiography and Sources], Kiev 2000, 368–397. 3 Anonymous, France. Petlura Trial, in: Time. The Weekly Newsmagazine, 7 November 1927, 13–14 (Document 74). 4 Flory to Director of Judicial Police, 13 October 1927, APP, C.3.173. Cf. the list of the police guards assigned to the trial: Leroy, Principal Inspector, Judicial Police, “Rap- port,” 18 October 1927, ibid. 5 Anonymous, Der Shvartsbard-protses in Pariz [The Schwarzbard-Trial in Paris], in: Haynt, 20 October 1927. 6 See, for example, J. Tripier, French chargé d’affaires, Warsaw, to French Foreign Min- ister, 2 November 1927 (no. 343: “Impression provoquée par le procès Schwarzbard”), AN, Ministère de la Justice, 1583A 1926 (Document 73). The Events 9 Ukraine during the Russian civil war of 1917 to 1922, he had begun both his political and literary careers in the tsarist empire during the decade preceding the 1905 revolution, working within the framework of the Revolutionary Party of Ukraine (Revoliutsiina Partiia Ukrainy). Arrested briefly in 1903 for his work on the party’s behalf, he had edited several