Person

Schwarzbard, Sholem

1886-1938

Jewish national hero. On May 25, 1926, in Paris in broad daylight, Sholem Schwarzbard, a Russian Jewish poet, and decorated French soldier from the First World War, shot and killed Simon Petlyura, the exiled Ukranian nationalist leader responsible for the pogroms against the Jews in the Ukranian villages during the Russian Civil War, 1919-1920. In his defence Schwarzbard, who had witnessed these atrocities, could only say, “I am a Jew.” The incident caused a worldwide sensation. At the ensuing trial the tables were turned and Petlyura and his armies were condemned. In November 1927 Schwarzbard was acquitted thanks to the brilliant defence of his laywer, Henri Torres, and also to the support of world opinion and of eminent personalities, such as Henri Barbusse, Maxim Gorki, Romain Rolland, and Albert Einstein. Schwarzbard was acclaimed a hero by the Jewish and non-Jewish world. In September 1937 Schwarzbard came to South Africa on behalf of the Yivo in Paris to sell the newly published Universal Yiddish Encyclopedia. In Cape Town on the 4th of February 1938, he met Hilda Purwitsky, a teacher and journalist, who was on the Cape Town committee of the Yiddish Encyclopedia, who was assigned to act as his secretary whilst he was in Cape Town. They formed a close friendship. He died suddenly of a heart attack at her cottage in Camps Bay on the night of the 3rd of March 1938. He was buried at Woltemade Jewish cemetery in Maitland in Cape Town. However in 1967 his remains were transferred to Kfar Avichayil, near Natanya in Israel, where he was reinterred with great ceremony as a national hero.

ZAUCT