The Man Who Killed
Semyon Petlyura
S
ixty-seven years ago
this week, on May 26,
1926, Shalom Schwart-
zbard took out a gun
and shot Semyon Petlyura
to death.
It was the culmination of
a set of curious circum-
stances that brought togeth-
er these two very different
men on the streets of Paris.
Schwartzbard was born in
1886 in Bessarbia.
Petlyura was born in 1879
in the Ukraine.
Petlyura hoped to become
a priest, then took a job as
an insurance company book-
keeper. Obsessed with the
causes of socialism and
Ukrainian nationalism, he
became active in the
Ukrainian Social Demo-
cratic Workers Party.
During the 1917 Russian
Revolution, he organized
Ukrainian soldiers into
nationalist battalions.
After the Bolsheviks top-
pled the Kerensky govern-
ment, Russia was plunged
into a civil war between
communists and czarists. In
January 1918, the Ukrain-
ians proclaimed indepen-
dence. Three months later,
Germany and Austria
backed an overthrow of the
Rada (the Ukrainian provi-
sional government) and
installed wealthy landowner
Pavlo Skoropadsky as het-
man, ruler of the Ukraine.
Together with fellow
nationalist Volodimir Vinni-
chenko, Petlyura began to
mobilize his countrymen
into an army to topple
Skoropadsky. With the end
of World War I in 1918, the
German-sponsored puppet
government was replaced by
the Ukrainian Directory,
headed by Vinnichenko and
Petlyura.
Petlyura was a man of
action, but pompous and
pretentious, whose appeal
mainly was to the uneducat-
ed and power hungry. He
proved to be an exceptional-
ly inept ruler. Under his
leadership, prices soared out
of control; counterfeit money
was widespread; people suf-
fered from hunger and cold.
Atamans, local war lords,
began to set up petty tyran-
nies throughout the Uk-
raine. Though the atamans
fought each other as much
as they did Russians, they
all had one thing in com-
mon: They despised Jews.
In February 1919, Kiev
was occupied by the Red
Army. Petlyura fled to a
strip of Galician territory
still held by Ukrainian
nationalist forces. He
became sole leader of both
the Directory and the
Ukrainian army, where his
forces engaged in one of the
oldest forms of Ukrainian
sport: pogroms. Petlyura did
nothing to stop them.
Among those who escaped
the Petlyura pogroms were
Manuel Rice and Benjamin
Lemberg, who fled to the
United States. The family of
Shalom Schwartzbard had a
different fate.
During the first decade of
the 1900s, Shalom Schwart-
zbard settled in Paris, where
he worked as a watchmaker
and wrote Yiddish poetry,
including a volume called
Dreams and Truth, pub-
lished in 1920.
Schwartzbard fought with
the French Foreign Legion
and was decorated for his
service, during World War I.
He returned to Russia in
1917, serving with the Red
Guard against Petlyura's
forces. Fifteen members of
Schwartzbard's family were
murdered in Petlyura's
pogroms.
Petlyura, meanwhile, left
for Paris in 1924, where he
headed Ukrainian and anti-
Soviet organizations.
Schwartzbard returned in
1920 to Paris.
In 1927, Schwartzbard
was acquitted for the mur-
der of Semyon Petlyura, in
large part because of the elo-
quent address given by his
attorney, Henri Torres.
(Torres later published a
book on his defense of
Schwartzbard. Following the
Nazi invasion of France, he
fled to the United States,
returning home after the
war. He served in the
French Senate, as vice presi-
dent of the High Court of
Justice and as president of
the French Broadcasting
Authority. He died in 1966.)
Schwartzbard's autobiog-
raphy was published in
1934. He died in Cape Town,
South Africa, in 1938.0
"Women and children
began to wail. Old men, to
pray. But their supplica-
tion and prayer was soon
interrupted by the shots of
the soldiers and by the
groans of the wounded.
"I don't know how long
the firing lasted. To me it
seemed like a century. All
through this siege I sat in
a corner with a 3-year-old
girl huddled to me in my
lap. When the firing final-
ly ceased, we were ordered
out of the cellar. I carried
the child out in my arms.
She was dead, although
her body was still warm.
A bullet had pierced her
heart."
More than 120 died in
the pogrom. As Manuel
Rice left his hiding place,
he noticed that "mutilated
corpses of men, women
and children were strewn
everywhere." Later, the
bodies would be put on
display, Petlyura's way of
instilling fear among the
local population.
In nearby Satanov,
Manuel's cousin Ben-
jamin Lemberg had heard
much of Petlyura's atroci-
ties. The Jewish commu-
nity watched and waited.
When Ukrainian forces
arrived, "we knew what
we were up against."
Among the earliest pris-
oners was a boy named
Benjamin Lemberg.
Benjamin was soon to
discover that his captor
was not Semyon Petlyura
but ataman (Cossack
chief) Semosenko, who
insisted the villagers
bring him 1,5 0 0,0 0 0
Ukrainian rubles, sugar,
shoes and other supplies,
threatening to stage a
pogrom in Satanov if they
did not.
"We asked time for con-
sultation," Lemberg con-
tinued. "We had heard
rumors that some ataman
The site of the former Weitzman Hardware, the corner of Gratiot and Brewster, today.
had revolted against Gen.
Petlyura and was now
carrying on pogroms inde-
pendently. The affair here
seemed to corroborate
these rumors. We decided
to take advantage of this
situation."
The men managed to
send word to Petlyura. By
chance, ataman Semo-
senko proved to be
Petyulra's enemy. Petl-
yura quickly sent forces
to Satanov, that "drove
out Semosenko and were
about to stage a pogrom
of their own, when they in
turn were expelled by
Soviet troops."
After he was drafted
into the Red Army,
Benjamin Lemberg left
the Ukraine in 1920. He
escaped by walking across
a frozen river into what is
now Poland. His brother
went with him, but
returned when he got
homesick. Benjamin lived