[The purpose of the Digest is informative: Preference is given to papers not generally accessible to our readers. Quotation does not indicate approval.-Editor.]
The assertion that there was no racial motive in the assassination of Semion Petlura by Schwartzberg, is ### made in a letter to the New York “Herald-Tribune” from Prof. And### Mykytiak, former Secretary of Pe###lura’s State Directory of the Ukraine.Prof. Mykytiak contends that Petlu### took measures, when he was chief the Ukrainian government to suppress### the pogroms against the Jews.
“Nobody of the Ukrainians believes. Prof. Mykytiak says, “that the revenge had a racial motive, the source of the fanaticism of the assassin must is sought elsewhere. It will be the tast of the trial to bring out the circum stances that thrust the murderous### weapon into the hand of the avenger.
“It is officially evidenced that the la### general in chief, while ruler of the Ukraine, ordered the infliction of the most severe penalties of the law on all those found guilty of any oppression of the Jews. On the other hand, he was not responsible for the sporadic pogrom committed by the irregular combatan### whose activities he suppressed all the time.
“In the Daily Order by the Supreme Commander to the troops on Auguest 26, 1919, Petlura stated as follows: “The sinister men of the ‘Black Hundred and the ‘Red Hundred’ are but one band They are assiduously weaving the spider’s web, provoking pogroms of the Jewish population. They thus succeed in defiling our struggle and compromise our national cause…. This population has lived with us for centuries and shares our pleasures and our sorrows… The chivalrous troops who bring fraternity, equality and liberty to all the nationalities of Ukraine must not listen to the invaders and prevaricators who hunger for human blood.'”
Revelations that will shock the world of facts regarding the Jewish sufferings under Petlura’s regime that have hither to been kept from the general public in all countries, are expected by the “Jewish Daily News” to result from the trial of Sholom Schwartzbard.
“It is certain,” the paper writes. “that in the course of Schwartzbard’s defense all the facts known to Jews regarding pogroms under Petlura’s regime will be revealed. We say ‘known to Jews’ because the world at large does not or does not care to know. The things that happened to the Jews following the war were deliberately ignored by the press of the world. There were certain parties that were interested to keep the news of the pogroms from reaching the world-and they succeeded in their purpose.”
The paper blames the Allied governments at the time, who were backing Petlura and others like him, for this situation. “We do not know of any other example in history,” the paper writes “to equal this in the narrowness, and viciousness of politics under such circumstances. All this will no doubt be disclosed at Schwartzbard’s trial. It will be in a measure an indictment against the Allies, against the bankrupt conscience of Europe, it will be a revelation of a chapter in the history of Jewish martyrdom, that was deliberately ignored for political purposes which resulted eventually in nothing, for all the efforts of Petlura and Denikin, et al, was futile and wasted, despite the blood that was shed so profusely.”
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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.
