Charging that anti-Semitism had considerable to do with his conviction but too exhausted to discuss details, Corporal Robert Osman, who at the second trial recently on the charges of being a spy in the Canal Zone was acquitted, arrived yesterday on the government transport Chateau Thierry and proceeded to the home of his parents at 995 Clarkson street, Brooklyn, for a rest.
An hour after arriving here he was honorably discharged from the U. S. Army and received $450 in back pay. His discharge papers bore the notation “character very good.” Great jubilation prevailed in the welcoming party as prior to the second trial Osman had commenced to serve the original sentence of twenty years at hard labor.
Osman is twenty-four years of age and enlisted in the army in 1930. His friendship with a girl named Frema Karry, said to be a Communist, was among the principal reasons for suspicion against him. The whole case was characterized by him yesterday as “a frame-up,” with the testimony “stupid, transparent, contradictory.”
While Osman was recounting the tale of his trying experiences to his parents, Mr. and Mrs. Joseph Osman, Louis Waldman, his counsel in the second trial and once a Socialist candidate for governor of New York, who himself arrived from Cristobal, Canal Zone, on Monday, was engaged in telling the dramatic inside story of the case at a luncheon given to celebrate the attorney’s achievement, held at the Plaza Hall, 111 Second avenue, under the auspices of the Jewish Daily Forward, several labor unions and other organizations. Through appeals printed in its columns. The Forward succeeded in raising funds for financing Waldman’s trip to Panama. Mrs. Waidman attended the luncheon.
B. C. Vladeck, general manager of The Forward, who presided at the luncheon, sounded his conviction that Waldman’s conduct of defense, which won unstinting praise from the military court, ranked with some of the best trials participated in by Clarence Darrow and Samuel Untermyer.
Abraham Cahar, editor of The Forward and the only other speaker, said that in subtleties and complexities the Osman case ranked with the most interesting on record.
As Waldman himself arose to recount his experiences at the trial, he won the interest of about 200 persons present at the outset and held it through his narrative which was reminiscent of an exciting thriller of international intrigue, with a military background, secret service and everything else that goes with it.
The Jewish angle of the affair was not insignificant, for at the second trial Waldman established that Col. Buchanan, who headed the Military Intelligence Department in Canal Zone and whose testimony was the most damaging to Osman, was prejudiced against the accused because of his Jewish ancestry.
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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.
