Sholem Schwartzbard, soldier in the French Foreign Legion, veteran of the regular French army in the World War, volunteer in the Russian army under Kerensky; guerilla chief in the fight against the Ukrainian pogrom bands who called themselves “armies”, and who dramatized for the world the sufferings of the Ukrainian Jews by killing the bandit Petlura, is now an insurance agent in Paris where he lives with his family.
In an interview he gave to the Jewish Daily Bulletin, at the Hotel Pennsylvania, where he is stopping during his visit in the United States, Mr. Schwartzbard declared that he lives only for one thing, the organization of Jewish self-defense organizations all over the world. Mr. Schwartzbard is organizer and president of the “Union Universelle de la Selfdefense Juive.”
He sat in his comfortable chair in the hotel, a short, blond little man who spoke a fine and fluent Yiddish and diffidently called attention to his volumes of verse and to his memoirs in Yiddish and Hebrew. It was difficult to realize that this gentle, shy, little man was a war veteran with six years of war and death behind him, that he had been wounded three times, decorated by the French government for bravery and that as he phrased it “my rifle never once left my hand during those six years.”
HAS LONG SINCE FORGOTTEN
Hesitatingly, the reporter broached the question of the killing of Petlura and the dramatic trial that followed, but Mr. Schwartzbard waved the question aside: “I have long since forgotten about it,” he said. “But the memory of those three horrible years in the Ukraine, when the streets of every village ran red with the blood of Jewish victims, how can I ever forget it. I live in it constantly, {SPAN}###{/SPAN} of the blood is still in my nostrils.
“The war was nothing in comparison to the three years spent in Southern Russia. True, I was wounded in the trenches, I was in danger, but I love danger, it is the breath of life to me. But the horror of the Ukraine, our helplessness, our pitiful attempts to protect the Jews, the massacres of men women and children, can that ever leave me, can I ever forget it?
“Let me tell you of a few incidents that occurred. Once during the course of the fighting, we succeeded in driving a pogrom band from a Jewish village which they had just looted and where they had killed all the Jews they could find. You know their procedure was simple. Whenever they captured prisoners, or entered a town, they would cry: All Jews step out! And these would be killed without another word being said. A few Jews were left in the town and these emerged from hiding. We left hurriedly for another town which the pogrom bands were approaching. No sooner were we gone when still another band entered the town we had just left and massacred the pitiful remnant of the Jews whom we had rescued.
THE HOPE OF RESCUE
“Another time I was in command of a small battalion made up of Austrian and German war prisoners still in uniform, former Russian soldiers and a few French soldiers, all Jews. We were fighting on a thirty-mile front against Denikin’s pogrom bands. We entered a small town which we had captured from them and found the place desolate and bare. Finally a few terror-stricken Jews emerged from the cellars where they had been hiding and seeing our uniforms and recognizing us for Jews, they ran to us demanding to know whether we were Americans. Somehow the rumor had spread over Russia, that fully equipped battalions of American Jewish soldiers were coming to rescue them and this pitiful, silly hope had given them courage to go on, through the sea of blood.
“I cannot rest,” said Mr. Schwartzbard, “I feel that I have done nothing for my people. My own personality and sufferings are nothing. I live only to defend the Jewish honor and am still ready to do so.
“See what is happening today, the war is long since ended, the peoples of the world have found a measure of peace. Only for the Jews there is no peace. There is absolutely no difference between the physical pogroms against the Ukrainian Jews and the economic pogrom against the Jews of Germany.”
DESCRIBES LIFE IN PARIS
The man who killed Petlura described his life in Paris his work as an insurance agent and laughed at himself for being a poor business man. But when Mr. Schwartzbard was asked whether the Petlurists and Russian reactionaries ever bothered him his eyes flashed and he shook his fist under the reporter’s nose as he declared: “I am not afraid of them, they are afraid of me. Do you know that Petlura’s men complained to the French government that they fear for their lives and that I am constantly fomenting plots against them?” And looking at him, the reporter found it very easy to believe and decided that if he should ever choose an enemy it would not be the slayer of Petlura.
As the talk went on, a clear picture of the man emerged, modest, self-effacing, sincere, idealistic to the point of fanaticism. Above all, one who wanted to forget his deed and go on to new things, new adventures, new causes.
But he could not; the world would not let him, for he would always be the man who killed Petlura.
The Archive of the Jewish Telegraphic Agency includes articles published from 1923 to 2008. Archive stories reflect the journalistic standards and practices of the time they were published.
