Issue of the French daily newspaper Le Matin, whose feature article is the trial of Schalom Schwarzbard for the assasination of Simon Petyura. * With: Signed photograph of Shalom Schwarzbard, inscribed in Yiddish.

Though embraced by Ukrainian nationalists as an historic leader, Simon Petlyura (1879-1926) is infamous among Jews for his participation in the savage pogroms that decimated the Jewish population of Zhitomir, Proskurov and elsewhere in the winter of 1919. When a Yiddish poet by the name of Shalom Schwarzbard (1886-1938) discovered that Petlyura was living in Paris in exile, he stalked the former commander of the Ukrainian army, gunning him down in the street. The ensuing trial brought broad awareness of the enormity of Petlyura’s crimes. After a most dramatic trial, Schwarzbard was acquitted of all charges. See EJ, Vol. XIII, cols. 340-1; Vol. XIV, col. 1027