Shvartsburd, Samuel Isaakovich

Born under the name Shulim (Solomon) Schwarzburd in the Russian Empire, in the district Bessarabian city ​​of Izmail , located on the banks of the Danube , in the family of Itzik Movshevich (Isaac Moiseyevich) Schwarzburd (1854-1917) ^[1] and Hai Weinberg (? 1893). From the father’s side, the family came from the village of Sarazhinka in the Balta district , where the grandfather of the poet Moishe Schwarzburd rented a distillery ^[2] . My father was drafted into the Russian army during the Russo-Turkish war of 1877–78 and married in Izmail, where his regiment was stationed. After demobilization, he and his wife settled in Sarazhinka, where their three eldest children were born, after which the family was evicted from the village and settled in Izmail, in the mother’s homeland. Shulim was born in this city and was the fourth child in the family (three older children later died). In 1888, a decree was issued to evict Jews from the 50-kilometer border strip and the Shvartsburds returned to Balta , where Shulim studied in the Talmudtor . His younger brother and close companion Shmil (Samuel) was born in April 1888 already in Balta. After the death of his grandfather, the family was in poverty, his father was engaged in petty trade, his mother - the artisanal production of carbonated water and lemonade.

Mother died when Shulimu was seven years old and three years later his father remarried, and Shulim was forced to leave school and help his family. He worked as a peddler and messenger, then for three years served as an apprentice for a local watchmaker, after which he worked as a watchmaker in Kruty . In 1903, he was fascinated by socialist ideas, was arrested several times, took part in the First Russian Revolution , was kept in prison in Volochisk for several months in the winter of 1905-1906, and after his release in the spring of 1906, he left Russia and settled in Chernovtsy . Here he received documents addressed to Samuel Schwarzbard and again got a job as a watchmaker (his younger brother, who later emigrated to Paris, lived there under the same name).

For some time he lived in Lemberg (1907), Kashau (1907), Budapest (1907), St. Gotthard (1907-1908), Znojmo (February - June 1908), Vienna (1908-1909). Anarchist ideas became interested under the influence of Pierre Ramel and joined the latter's circle in Vienna. Here, in September 1908, he was arrested during the rally of expropriation with Peter Pyatkov (Jaclis) , nicknamed Artist; during the interrogation refused to hand over the latter. After being released four months later, in January 1909, he left Vienna for good, and after wandering around Austria-Hungary doing his daily work (Budapest, Stry , Skole , Borislav , Drohobych , Graz , Zurich ) settled in Paris in late January 1910, where he settled brother, again got a watchmaker and began to write poetry. At the end of the same year, he met his future wife, an emigrant from Odessa, Anna (Hanoi) Render. In 1911–1912, he worked in the watch workshop of Frederick Mote ( Fr. Frédric Mauthé ) on Rue Bondi, 60, where he first worked on large-sized watch movements, in the fall of 1912 - at Louis Goldfein Horlogerie de Précision on Rue de Fauburg, 13, until July 1913 in the workshop of J. Simon on Rue de Rivoli, 14 and by the beginning of the First World War - in La maison Pinot et Corbard on Rue de Temple, 132.

With the beginning of the First World War , he joined the younger brother as a volunteer in the French Foreign Legion ( Légion étrangère ). On August 14, 1914, Schwartzburd married his bride Anna Render, and in the morning of August 16 he left Lyon station with a group of thirty-five Russian volunteers and was sent as a member of the 1st Regiment of the Foreign Legion (Le prémiere régiment étranger) to military training in the Lyon area . Participated in the fighting began in Champagne , took part in the Battle of Champagne (December 1914 - March 1915), in April 1915 he was transferred to Arras with a regiment. In August 1915, with twelve Russian volunteers, he was transferred to the 363rd Infantry Regiment ( 363e régiment d'infanterie ), with whom he fought in the Vosges mountain range until March 1916. He distinguished himself in battles on the Shaplot Pass on March 1, 1916 (where he was wounded and evacuated from the battlefield), for which he was awarded the Military Cross - the highest award of the Legion. After being seriously injured during the Battle of the Somme, he was demobilized and sent to hospital, and in August 1916 he returned to Paris, where he continued treatment and worked at home as a watchmaker. The period of hostilities turned out to be the most fruitful for Schwarzburd as a poet, all the poems of this period were signed by the pseudonym "Bal-haloymes" ( dreamer ).

In mid-August 1917, having refused a military pension, he and his wife returned to Russia. On August 22, they left Brest and on September 4 arrived in Arkhangelsk on board the transport ship Melbourne. At first he worked as a watchmaker in Balta, but at the end of 1917 he joined the anarchist detachment at the Odessa Red Guard. After the seizure of power in Odessa by the first Soviet of Workers' Deputies in January 1918, he participated in the work of the anarchist club “21” on Peter the Great Street, 21, then on the anarchist club on Gogol Street, 5; headed the expropriation operation of the coastal mansion of the manufactory A.F. Birnbaum, in which the Free Rational Children's School and a shelter for homeless children was organized (the manufactory’s wife took the side of the expropriators and worked in this shelter herself). After the capture of Bessarabia by the Romanian troops in the spring of 1918, with the detachment of anarchists in the battalion named after Semyon Roshal (later as part of the Kotovsky brigade) participated in the battles in Tiraspol , then in the battles for Bender . Lagging behind the battalion in the Novoukrainka area, with ten comrades, he made his way through Yelisavetgrad , Znamenka and Kremenchug to Poltava , where, after disbanding the battalion, in the summer of 1918, he returned to Odessa, suffered from typhus and spent a period of German and French intervention, working in an orphanage for shelter. Unsuccessfully, he tried to obtain from his colleague Sasha Feldman (? —1919), an anarchist and a member of the Odessa Council , to help restore the network of free education institutions and "rational" education. In the spring of 1919 he was engaged in organizing the supply of provisions for children's institutions in the city, and in June joined the "anarchist detachment" of the international division of the Red Army in Cherkasy and participated in battles in the Kiev sector. In August, after several defeats, the division was disbanded, and Schwarzburd remained in Kiev . By this time, due to the suppression of the political opposition, he, however, finally became disillusioned with Soviet power . On October 3, 1919, he returned to Odessa, appeared with his wife to the French consulate, and at the end of 1919, as a French citizen, sailed through Istanbul and Port Said to Marseille on the ship “Nikolay I”.

By the end of January 1920, Schwarzburd and his wife arrived in Paris and rented a room in Passage de la Foley Mericure, 20. In May, he received official demobilization documents and opened a small watch workshop on Menilmontant Boulevard, 82 not far from the Per Pere Lachaise cemetery ; his wife worked as a seamstress in the same workshop. It soon became clear that all members of his family (15 people altogether) were killed during the wave of Jewish pogroms that swept across Ukraine in 1918-1920.

Schwarzburd and Petlura

Already in September 1920 in Paris, his first poetic collection, “Troyman un virklehkeit” ( Dreams and Reality ), came out in which lyrical poetics were closely combined with the brutality of recent military realities ^[3] . During these years, Schwarzburd actively collaborates with local anarchist circles and under the pseudonym Bal-Haloymes ( Dreamer ) is engaged in journalism. At the same time, three more books of the writer were announced (a collection of poems and two collections of prose and memoirs), but these materials were published only in the 1930s. Poetic publications and unpublished prose of this time reflect his painful memories of visiting the Jewish towns of Ukraine after a wave of pogroms swept over it. In Paris, Schwartzbard was friendly with Nestor Makhno and Peter Arshinov ( Marin ), supported acquaintance, among others, with Volin (V.M. Eichenbaum) , Emma Goldman , Molly Steimer, Senia Fleshin and Alexander (Ovsei) Berkman . Since 1923, as a journalist, he collaborated with a number of anarchist periodicals in Yiddish, acted as a Parisian correspondent for the London Der Arbeter Frind and for the New York Di Friere Arbeter Stieme (his correspondence for the first was edited by the British anarcho-communist and Rabbi Yankev-Meyer Zalkind who had a great influence on Schwartzbard when they met in 1920). These publications Schwartzburd signed with his personal name "Scholem" (literally the world ).

On January 16, 1925, Schwartzbard received French citizenship and in December of the same year he found out from newspapers about Simon Petliura 's stay in Paris, who in Jewish years was generally considered responsible for mass atrocities committed by troops under his command in Ukraine. During the massacres and violence against the Jewish population of Ukraine during the Civil War , at least 50 thousand people were killed, more than 300 thousand children were left orphans ^[4] . A number of historians believe that the real numbers were higher (more than a thousand and a half Jews were brutally murdered in the notorious Proskurov pogrom of 1919 alone) and, although Petliura apparently did not give any orders to this effect, he did not prevent the atrocities of his subordinates found it necessary.

On April 1, 1926, Schwartzbard and his wife moved to a one-room extension to their workshop, but at that time his thoughts were entirely focused on Petlyura. First, he unsuccessfully tried to find out his whereabouts, then began to carry with him a photograph, cut from the newspaper, in the hope of meeting him on the street. In late April or early May, he first came across a man similar to Petliura with a group of men talking in Ukrainian near the metro station at the intersection of the Saint-Michel and Saint-Germain boulevards. From that moment on, he began to track down this man, finding out that he regularly dines at the restaurant Chartier on the corner of Racine Street, but he was not sure that he actually had Petlura until a sharper photo of the latter was published. in the Ukrainian immigrant newspaper "Trident" . Then he acquired a Melior pistol and began to search for a convenient moment to kill Petlyura.

On May 25, 1926, at the corner of Saint-Michel Boulevard and Racine Street, Schwarzbard approached Petlura, who was looking at the window of the shop window, and having made sure in Ukrainian that Simon Petliura was in fact in front of him, shot him five times with a revolver, then calmly waited for the police to arrive. weapon and announced that he had just shot the killer. Petliura died nearby, in the Hôpital de la Charité ( Charité hospital ) on rue de Jacob, fifteen minutes after his arrival. The trial of Schwartzbard began a year and a half later, on October 18, 1927, and received wide publicity. Famous people of various convictions stood up for the defendant, including philosopher Henri Bergson , artist Marc Chagall ^[5] , writers Romain Rolland , Henri Barbusse , Maxim Gorky and Victor Marguerite , physicists Albert Einstein and Paul Langevin , politician Alexander Kerensky and others ^{[6] [7]} ; the preparation of expert materials for the defense was the former Prime Minister of Hungary Mihai Karoyi . On the part of the anarchists, Emma Goldman and Alexander Berkman were called to raise funds for the defense ( Saul Yanovsky condemned the attempt). The defense was led by the famous French lawyer, Henri Torres . The Schwartzbard Defense Committee, formed in New York and Paris, gathered 126 witnesses, who told in detail the preliminary investigation about the horrors of the Jewish pogroms in Ukraine under the authority of the Directory ^{[8] [9]} . A small part of these witnesses was chosen by lawyer Torres to appear in court. The tactics of the prosecutor Cesar Kampinka focused on the negative assessment of the nature of the accused, but suffered from the speeches of the lawyer by the plaintiff - Alfred Willm. The latter, as well as the prosecution witnesses selected by him, tried to indirectly link the attempt to the hand of Moscow and the indefinite Jewish conspiracy , and also blame the mass pogroms on the behavior of the victims, which ultimately had the opposite effect and damaged the accusation. Schwartzbard himself refused the final word, and after 8 days (October 26) he was acquitted by the majority of the jury and immediately released from the prison of Sante , within whose walls he spent 18 months of preliminary investigation.

Recent years and literary activity

After his release, Schwartzbard remained in Paris, where he worked as an agent in insurance companies and continued his literary activities. During these years he published a collection of stories about the French front during the First World War (Milhome bilder - Images of War ), about the author’s stay in Ukraine in 1917-1919 (“Fun tifn opgrunt” - From the deep abyss ), poems, plays, memoirs ("In Loif Fun Yorn" - In the days running ). Schwarzbard regularly collaborated with American and British Yiddish periodicals, including a series of reminiscences of “Fun Mine Milhome Togbukh” ( From my military diary ) in the newspaper Arbater Fraind ( Working Friend ), articles in “Der Moment” ( Moment ), Freie Arbater Stieme ( Free Worker Voice ) and Yidishe Zeitung ( Jewish Newspaper ). Having soon ceased publishing in the anarchist press, he sent his stories and memoirs to more politically moderate publications ( Morgn Magazine , Moment, Heint and Di Cite ) in the USA . Again he showed an interest in anarchist organizations, now of a less radical nature, he began only in 1933 in Chicago , where his circle included the founder of the Anarchist Red Cross, Boris Vladimirovich Yelensky and his wife (whom he met in Odessa in 1919).

Already in 1927, shortly after the end of the process, in the homeland of Schwarzbard, in Bessarabia , a book of reports on the process was published in Yiddish in two editions ( Z. Rosenthal , Der Schwarzbard-process , Chisinau : Unzer Zeit, 1927) - the first in the series books on this topic, which will be published in different countries and in different languages. Starting from the novel of the same name by Henri Barbusse , the image of Sholom Schwarzbard began to find its embodiment in fiction. In 1934, during his lifetime, the premiere of Alter Katsizne ’s three-act play “Schwarzbard: a sintethisher report” (1933), staged by Alexander Granakh in Yiddish, took place on the Jewish theater stage in Europe and America (full the text of the play was published only in 1980 in Paris).

In 1937, Schwartzbard again traveled to the United States , and from there in September to South Africa to gather materials for the planned new edition of the Jewish Encyclopedia . Публиковался в «Африканер идише цайтунг» ( Африканской еврейской газете ).

3 марта 1938 года он скоропостижно скончался от сердечного приступа на пляже в Кейптауне , где и был похоронен. Через 30 лет, в 1967 году, его прах был перезахоронен в Израиле , в мошаве Авихаиль севернее Нетании — поселении бывших легионеров ; несколько улиц в Израиле носят имя Шварцбарда. Архив писателя хранится в ИВО ( Еврейском научном институте ) в Нью-Йорке и в библиотеке Кейптаунского университета . Его жена Анна, нашедшая во время войны убежище во французской провинции, сама начала публиковать стихи на идише после войны, в том числе посвящённое мужу стихотворение «Ди нейтерн» ( швея ) в анархистской газете «Найе арбетэр штимэ», с которой некогда сотрудничал её покойный муж.

В 1967 году его останки были перевезены в Израиль ^[10] и перезахоронены на кладбище мошава Авихаиль ^[11] .

В его честь названы улицы в Иерусалиме , Нетании и Беер-Шеве .

• טרױמען און װירקלעכקײט ( троймэн ун вирклэхкайт — мечты и реальность, стихотворения, в 2 тт., под псевдонимом Бал-Халоймэс ). Париж, 1920.
• אין קריג מיט זיך אַלײן ( ин криг мит зих алэйн — в борьбе с самим собой, проза). Чикаго : М. Цешинский, 1933.
• אינעם לױף פֿון יאָרן ( инэм лойф фун йорн — в потоке лет, воспоминания). Чикаго: М. Цешинский, 1934.
• אין אָנדענקונג פֿון שלום שװאַרצבאָרד ( ин ондэйнкунг фун Шолэм Шварцбурд — в память о Шолэме Шварцбарде). Чикаго: М. Цешинский, 1938.

• דער שװאַרצבאָרד-פּראָצעס: פּאַריז 1926 — אָקטאָבער 1927 ( дэр Шварцборд-процес — Золмен Розенталь: Процесс Шварцбарда: Париж, 1926 — окт. 1927), 2-е издание. Кишинёв: Унзер цайт, 1927.
• דער שאָס אױף פּעטליוראַן: שװאַרצבאַרד-פּראָצעס ( дэр шос аф Петлюран: Шварцбард-процес — Ш. Вейс: Выстрел в Петлюру, Процесс Шварцбарда). Варшава : Грошн-библиотек, 1933.

• Гусев-Оренбургский С. И. Багровая книга. Погромы 1919-20 гг. на Украине. — Харбин : Издание Дальневосточного Еврейского Общественного Комитета помощи сиротам-жертвам погромов («ДЕКОПО»), 1922. — 252, III с.
• Гусев-Оренбургский С. И. Книга о еврейских погромах на Украине в 1919 г. : [составлена по официальным документам, докладам с мест и опросам пострадавших] / С. [И.] Гусев-Оренбургский; ed. и послесовие А. М. Горького. — Петроград : Изд-во З. И. Гржебина, [1923]. — 164 с.
• Красный Пинхос. Трагедия украинского еврейства (к процессу Шварцбарда). — Киев : Гос. изд-во Украины, 1928. — 71 с.
• Процесс Шварцбарда в парижском суде / сост. И. Будовниц. — Ленинград : Из-во «Красная газета», 1928. — 80 с.

• Тейлирян, Согомон

• About how Samuel Isaakovich conveyed greetings
• The trial of Schwarzburd. France, 1927 (historian Alexei Kuznetsov on Echo of Moscow radio)