The End of Semjon Petljura...


After the Russian February Revolution of 1917, Ukraine declares its detachment from the Russian Empire and state independence ...:





Only weeks later, however, German troops occupied the Ukraine and installed a government unter "Hetman" Pawlo Skoropadskij, a puppet government by Kaiser Wilhelm's grace ...:





After the Germans withdrew as a result of their defeat in the First World War in November 1918, the hour of the journalist, writer and politician Semjon Wasyljowytsch Petljura came:



Initially, Petljura becomes one of five members of the Directory of the Ukrainian People's Republic ...



... and military commander in chief, then head of government in 1919 - and increasingly authoritarian ruler.

In the Russian Civil War he fought against both the Bolsheviks and the "whites", as well as against rival Ukrainians under Pawlo Skoropadskij or Nestor Machno and against Poland. His people are commonly called "the Greens" ...



... to border on the other civil war parties - especially in Ukraine, where literally everyone fights against everyone!

On the territory of Ukraine, pogroms against the Jewish population took place under the responsibility of Peljura ...



... where one assumes 35,000 to 50,000 deaths. Most of these pogroms were caused by members of the "Green" militias, which made up part of Petlyura's armed forces.

With the victory of the communists in the civil war in Ukraine in 1919/1920, Petlyura in Ukraine then played out!

He fled to Poland, where he was recognized as the legal head of government of Ukraine and signed a peace agreement with the Polish government in Lublin in March 1920, accepting the Polish conditions for the demarcation of the border in the east (Ukrainian territorial assignment!) In exchange for military aid.

Here he stands between Polish officers of the Pilsudski regime during the so-called "Kiev Offensive" ...:



In the Polish-Soviet war, the Poles and Petljura militias initially succeeded in briefly recapturing the Ukrainian capital Kiev ...



... but then the Red Army drives away the invaders again; the restoration of Ukrainian independence fails.

Petljura now leads the Ukrainian government in exile from Tarnów and Warsaw, but has to leave Poland due to increased Soviet pressure in 1923 and goes into exile in Paris in 1924 ...:



There he founded the newspaper "Tryzub" ("trident", after the Ukrainian coat of arms), which reports on the activities of the Ukrainian government in exile...:



On May 25, 1926, Petljura went window shopping on Paris' Boulevard Saint-Michel. On the corner of Rue Racine a stranger speaks to him in Ukrainian in front of a bookstore: "Are you Petljura?"



Petljura makes an affirmative sign with his walking stick.

The stranger then pulls out a revolver and shoots him five times. Petljura is dead instantly!

When the police called in to arrest him, he calmly handed over his weapon and said, "I killed a great assassin."

Semjon Petljura is buried in the Paris Montparnasse Cemetery ...:



Today this memorial plaque hangs on the wall of the corner house in front of which he was shot ...:




The gunman is the French Jewish anarchist Scholom Schwartzbard ...




... actually born in South Africa, but naturalized from France, after having fought with distinction in the battles of the Somme for France in the Foreign Legion during the First World War.

Schwartzbard is known today that he was told by an agent of the Soviet secret police GPU named Mikhail Volodin ...



.... was led and assigned to Petljura.

Schwartzbard is arrested and brought to justice.

His trial begins on October 18, 1927. Schwartzbard's defense attorney is the prominent star lawyer Henri Torrés, who also represents the Soviet consul in France as a lawyer. The next picture shows Schwartzbard on the investment bench, Torrés sitting in front of him ...:



During the trial, Torrès lives in the Soviet consulate - and is also paid by the Soviets.

His defense strategy is based on the fact that Schwartzbard wanted to avenge the deaths of the victims of the pogroms in Ukraine. As a result of the Petljura-Soldateska pogroms, he lost 15 family members, including his parents.

After an eight-day trial, the shooter was acquitted by the jury on the assumption that he had committed a “crime of passion”.

After 1928 Schwartzbard wanted to emigrate to Palestine, but the British authorities refused to grant him a visa. He moves to the United States with his family.

In 1937 Schwartzbard traveled to South Africa to collect material for the German-language Encyclopaedia Judaica.

He died in Cape Town on March 3, 1938 and was buried in the Maitland cemetery with a large public participation.

29 years later, in accordance with his declared will, his remains are brought to Israel and buried in Moshav Avihayil near Netanya.

In the city of Be'er Sheva in Israel a street is named after Schwartzbard, the "Ha'noqem Street" ...:



That means in Hebrew "avenger road" ...

In today's Ukraine, Semjon Petljura is once again very popular - a bronze monument of him in Winnizya (were he was born) was inaugurated with military honors by the corrupt Poroshenko regime ...:

Interesting post again Martin. Funny how a lot of these failed revolutionaries ended up in Paris.

Phil