Schwartzbard trial

The Schwartzbard trial was a sensational 1927 French murder trial in which Sholom Schwartzbard was accused of murdering the Ukrainian immigrant and head of the Ukrainian government-in-exile Symon Petlura. While the defendant fully admitted to the crime, in the end the trial turned on accusations of Petlura's responsibility for the massive 1919–1920 pogroms in Ukraine during which Schwartzbard had lost all 15 members of his family. Schwartzbard was acquitted.

In 1919, whilst fighting in southern Ukraine as part of the Bolshevik Revolutionary Insurgent Army of Ukraine (RIAU) led by Grigori Kotovsky,Sholom Schwartzbard was told that he had lost 15 members of his family in pogroms that took place in Odessa, Ukraine that year. He held Symon Petlura, who was at that time head of the Directorate of the Ukrainian National Republic, responsible for their deaths.

According to his autobiography, after hearing the news that Petlura had relocated to Paris in 1924, Schwartzbard became distraught and started plotting Petlura's assassination. A picture of Petlura with Józef Piłsudski published in the Encyclopedie Larousse, allowed Schwartzbard to recognize him.

On May 25, 1926, at 14:12, by the Gilbert bookstore, he approached Petliura, who was walking on the Rue Racine near boulevard Saint-Michel in the Latin Quarter, Paris, and asked him in Ukrainian, "Are you Mr. Petlura?" Petliura did not answer but raised his cane. Schwartzbard pulled out a gun shooting him five times and after Petliura fell to the pavement twice more. When the police came and asked if he had done the deed, he reportedly said, "I have killed a great assassin."

It is reported that he had previously planned to assassinate Petlura at a gathering of Ukrainian emigrants marking Petlura's birthday, but the attempt was foiled by anarchist Nestor Makhno who was also at the function. Schwartzbard had told Makhno that he was terminally sick and was about to die, and that he would take Petlura with him.

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Wikipedia