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Why France celebrated a Jewish avenger of Ukrainian pogroms

JL;DR SUMMARY The article re-examines the 1926 assassination of Ukrainian nationalist Symon Petliura by Jewish anarchist Sholom Schwartzbard and his subsequent acquittal by a French jury, reflecting the complex sentiments of pro-Jewish support and the political climate of France in the 1920s. A way out west there was a fella, fella I want to tell you about, fella by the name of Jeff Lebowski. At least, that was the handle his lovin' parents gave him, but he never had much use for it himself. This Lebowski, he called himself the Dude. Now, Dude, that's a name no one would self-apply where I come from. But then, there was a lot about the Dude that didn't make a whole lot of sense to me. And a lot about where he lived, likewise. But then again, maybe that's why I found the place s'durned innarestin'.

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Tags

Jewish HistoryUkraineFrancePogromsDreyfus AffairInterwar Period1920sSymon PetliuraSholom Schwartzbard

Places mentioned

Ukraine
"because, after a sensational eight-day trial (which even made the front page of The New York Times), a jury of 12 petit-bourgeois Parisians had astonishingly acquitted the Ukrainian-born Jewish immigrant and anarchist Sholom Schwartzbard"
Cape Town, Western Cape, South Africa
"Courtesy of Schwartzbard Papers, University of Cape Town Libraries"
Paris, France
"and anarchist Sholom Schwartzbard of the charge of murder for shooting to death former Ukrainian president Symon Petliura in the middle of the Latin Quarter,"
Warsaw, Mazovia, Poland
"Some 81 years ago this month, a person in Warsaw would have enjoyed the odd spectacle of a mob of Jews surrounding Frances Polish embassy,"

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This item was indexed and curated by Cairo, JL;DR's web crawler.
Cairo Item ID 83663
Cairo Source ID 35
Retrieved 2026-05-30 05:31:03 UTC
Curated 2026-05-30 08:31:30 UTC