After confessing in writing to the murder of an Arab policeman last September, crime for which he was convicted, Constable Mordechai Schwartz was hanged at eight o’clock this morning at Acre Prison. Last rites were administered by Rabbi Jushua Kaniel of Haifa.
In his confession, Schwartz said he had committed the crime while “temporarily insane.” Before going to his death, Schwartz had told friends and newspapermen that he was dying for a “private mistake” and asked that no effort be made to make of him a martyr.
Schwartz is the second Jew to be hanged during the British administration of Palestine, and the first to die after conviction by a civil rather than a military court. Shlomo Ben Yossef, Revisionist youth who was convicted of shooting at an Arab bus last April, was tried by a military court under the emergency regulations. He was executed June 29.
Schwartz was a native of Kromno, Czechoslovakia, where his parents are farmers. He is survived also by 13 brothers and sisters.
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