Fifty-six persons went on trial in District Court today on charges growing out of riots on March 9 in the town of Przytyk, central Poland, in which two Jews and a Gentile were killed and scores of Jews injured. Their counsel pleaded them not guilty.
Twenty attorneys, including well-known Nationalist leaders, appeared for the 42 Christian defendants. The 14 Jewish accused are being represented by a committee of five attorneys, two of them non-Jews. The Jewish and Gentile defendants occupied separate benches.
A number of the Gentile defendants had previous sentences. None of the Jews had previous convictions.
With more than 400 witnesses already scheduled to be called, the court refused the demands of both sides to call new witnesses.
The official indictment was read in court. It divides the defendants into three groups according to the charges against them. A number are charged with manslaughter. Three Christians are charged specifically with the murder of Joseph Minkowski and his wife during the riots.
The indictment says the disorders grew out of an incident at the town’s market day. Anti-Semites used the excitement which resulted when police tried to arrest a person preventing Christians from entering a Jewish shop to organize attacks on Jewish stores and homes.
Jews and peasants clashed, the indictment says, and the enraged mob stormed Jewish homes and shops, plundering many of them and injuring scores of Jews.
Three Christians were wounded by a revolver allegedly fired by a Jew. One of them subsequently died. The indictment says a Jew, Sholem Lesko, admitted to examining judges that he fired the gun into the air to frighten off peasants attacking his father’s shop.
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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.
