Sholom Schwartzbard
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Sholom Schwartzbard (1886-1938) was an anarchist and political assassin, who was acquitted by a French jury of the assassination of Symon Petlura.
In 1926 he assassinated Symon Petlura, the head of the government-in-exile of Ukrainian People's Republic in Paris. He was accused by Ukrainian emigrants of being a Soviet spy. According to Ukrainian historian Michael Palij, a GPU (Soviet secret police) agent named Mikhail Volodin came to Paris that August, and allegedly, they met and, Schwartzbard began stalking Petlura. This account has not been substantiated by other sources.
On 25 May, 1926, while window shopping along a Paris boulevard, he was approached by a man who asked in Ukrainian, "Are you Mr. Petlyura?" When he responded in the affirmative, the man, a Ukrainian-born Jewish anarchist named Sholom Schwartzbard, shouted (according to his later deposition) "Defend yourself, you bandit!" Petlyura raised his cane and Schwartzbard pulled out a gun, shooting him three times, while exclaiming "This, for the pogroms; this for the massacres, this for the victims." When police rushed to him to make their arrest, he reportedly calmly handed over his weapon, saying, "You can arrest me, I've killed a murderer."
Schwartzbald's parents were among fifteen members of his family murdered in the pogroms. The core of his defence was—as presented by noted barrister Henri Torrès—that he was avenging the deaths of victims of the pogroms. This premise found favour with the French jury, who acquitted him.
Schwartzbard had fifteen family members killed in Jewish pogroms, and he himself had survived one such attack in 1905 during the Russian Revolution. In 1910, at age 24, he settled in Paris and found work in a watch factory. During the first World War, he fought with the French Foreign Legion and was wounded at the Front.
In 1917, while travelling to Odessa to join the Red Guard, he reportedly was told of Petlura's responsibility for pogroms in the Ukraine, a widely held belief among Jews at the time. However, historian Henry Abramson, in A Prayer for the Government: Ukrainians and Jews in Revolutionary Times, 1917-1920, rejected the notion that Petlura was directly responsible, or that he had control over an infamous 1919 attack in Proskurov in which 1,500 Jews were killed. He did, however, note that Petlura may have been unable to put a stop to the pogroms for fear of losing the loyalty of the army.
After the assassination of Petlura, Schwartzbard was arrested and his trial began on October 18, 1927. Schwartzbard's defense was led by Henri Torres, a renowned Jewish-French jurist. After a trial lasting eight days, the jury concluded that Schwartzbard was not guilty.
Schwartzbard died in Cape Town on March 3 1938. 29 years later, his remains were buried in Israel, in accordance with his will.