The Assassination of Symon Petliura and the Trial of Scholem Schwarzbard 1926–1927

In 1926, a Jewish emigré from Ukraine in Paris, Scholem Schwarzbard, shot and killed the former president of the Ukrainian National Republic, Symon Petliura, whom he blamed for pogroms that killed tens of thousands of Ukrainian Jews in 1919. The assassination and the trial, which ended 1927 with Schwarzbard’s acquittal, had a lasting influence on relations between Jews and Ukrainians, Europe's largest stateless minorities. The volume presents 76 documents, many newly discovered, in French, German, Ukrainian, Yiddish, Hebrew, Polish, and English. The critical edition is accompanied by a detailed introduction, commentaries and translations which illuminate the events and their significance for different groups from different perspectives.In May 1926, in Paris, a Jewish emigré watchmaker from Ukraine named Scholem Schwarzbard shot and killed the former president of the Ukrainian National Republic, Symon Petliura. Seventeen months later Schwarzbard was exonerated by a Paris court, even though he confessed to the crime and pleaded no mitigating circumstances. The assassination and trial, in which the murders of many thousands of Jews in Ukraine in 1919 became a central issue, riveted public attention in France and around the world and sent the relations between Jews and Ukrainians, Europe’s two largest stateless national minorities, into highly fraught new directions.The volume presents newly-discovered archival documents in eight languages, along with articles from the contemporary French, German, Ukrainian, Russian, Hebrew, Yiddish, and American presses, in order to illuminate this episode from multiple points of view. An extensive introduction and copious explanatory notes place a complicated and multifaceted story in historical perspective, helping readers understand why the events unfolded as they did and what they meant to the different groups that had a vital stake in them.