(Jewish Telegraphic Agency)
Two Ukrainians were arrested by the Paris police yesterday in connection with the attempt on the life of Peretz Stein, a Ukrainian Jew who was to appear as a witness in the trial of Sholom Schwartzbard who killed Semion Petlura.
The suspects lived in the same Jewish Shelter House as did Stein. Many Russian refugees, non-Jews, are living in the Jewish Shelter House maintained for the refugees.
Stein’s condition is still serious, physicians declared. He has requested M. Henri Torres, Schwartzbard’s counsel, to act as his attorney.
More details concerning the life of Peretz Stein were obtained today. He arrived in Paris a short time ago with his eight year old son, David. When Sholom Schwartzbard shot Petlura, Stein went immediately to attorney Torres, offering to testify. He spoke freely about Schwartzbard’s act with his fellow refugees in the Shelter House, being continually under the strain of his recollections of the pogroms. Soon he received a number of anonymous letters threatening him with death if he testified for Schwartzbard.
Stein, who is a tailor by trade, was born in Rostov Don. After the pogroms in the Ukraine he left for Poland, from where he later emigrated to the Argentine with his son and two daughters. Several months ago he left the Argentine, intending to proceed to Palestine, but because of lack of funds he remained in Paris, having left his two daughters in the Jewish Shelter for refugees in Buenos Aires.
David, his eight year old son, testified to the police yesterday that the two men who fired at his father shouted to him in Russia, “You Jew, Schwartzbard’s defender, take this.”
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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.
