Lecache Reports on His Ukrainian Observations

(Jewish Telegraphic Agency Mail Service)

An account of the pogroms committed by the Petlurist troops in the Ukraine was given here last night by M. Bernard Lccache, who recently made a tour of the Ukraine to investigate the facts with regard to the pogroms.

M. Lecache read his account from a book which he is now writing entitled “When Israel Dies”. “300,000 Jews,” he said, “were massacred in the Ukraine by the chiefs of the Petlurist bands and Western Europe went on with its affairs and took no heed. When some western Europeans were approached and asked to protest against the pogroms they replied: ‘Always you come about your jews’.”

“I am concerned,” M. Lecache said, “not only with the pogroms in the Ukraine, but with the whole system of persecution against the Jews which is being carried on now in many countries, especially in Roumania, Hungary and Poland. The Jewish people had a right to say ‘It has been enough’.

“The persecution of the Jews and the pogroms falls upon the conscience of all humanity and all people carry responsibility for them.”

M. Lechace made a special request that in the course of the discussion which followed, no reference should be made to the particular case of Sholom Schwartzbard, whose trial is to open shortly.

A similar request was conveyed in a letter to the meeting by Schwartzbard’s counsel, M. Henri Torres.

The Chairman, M. Istrati, in the course of his speech, complained of the attitude of the Roumanian Government in regard to the Jews. “The Government is taking no steps,” he said, “to put a stop to the excesses. The worst feature of the situation is that it is the students who were carrying out the excesses, it is not the ordinary ignorant folk, but the flower of Roumanian society.”

M. Georges Pioch, who recently returned from a visit to Roumania, said that what had struck him most about the position in Roumania is that anti-Semitism there has come to be looked upon as the natural state of things.