Violent Justice: How Three Assassins Fought To Free Europe's Jews

• NCJ Number: 153187
• Author(s): F Imonti; M Imonti
• Date Published: 1994
• Length: 318 pages
• Sale Source: Prometheus Books
• Publication Type: Historical Overview
• Language: English
• Country: United States of America
• Note: *This document is currently unavailable from NCJRS.

Annotation

This book chronicles the lives and actions of three Jewish activists, who against the traditional pacifism of Jewish victims of European anti-Semitic violence, turned to violence themselves in order to gain world attention for the plight of their people.

Abstract

In 1926, Samuel Schwarzbard, a soldier and revolutionary, shot and killed Simon Petliura, lead of independent Ukraine, for helping to kill thousands of Jews in pogroms. In 1936, David Frankfurter shot Wilhelm Gustloff, a Nazi leader in Switzerland. And in 1938, Herschel Grynszpan killed Ernst vom Rath, a German diplomat, in retaliation for the deaths of Polish Jews. All three men worked without the support of an organization, each confronted his victim face-to-face, and each surrendered voluntarily and prepared to defend his actions before society. Although all three committed these assassinations for the common good of the Jewish community, that community reacted to all three incidents with almost unanimous condemnation.