Fifty-six persons will be tried in District Court tomorrow on charges growing out of riots in the town of Przytyk on March 9 in which two Jews and a Gentile were killed and scores of Jews injured.
A committee of five prominent attorneys has been named to defend the twelve Jewish defendants. It includes Kazimier Petruszewicz, dean of the Wilno Bar Association, and Waclaw Szumanski, non-Jews; and M. Ettinger, Leon Bernsohn and A. Margolis, Jews.
Twelve anti-Semitic Nationalist (Endek) attorneys have been retained to defend the Gentile defendants. More than 100 witnesses are expected to be called to testify.
The official indictment, which describes the disorders and the events leading up to them, says Przytyk is a town of 3,000 inhabitants of whom 90 per cent are Jews. Market days had for a long time been used for anti-Jewish demonstrations. Tension was particularly high March 9 as a result of the slaying of several peasants by the police nearby and an intensification of anti-Jewish propaganda.
Police patrolled the market area and the morning marketing passed relatively quietly. An attempt in the afternoon to arrest an anti-Semite preventing shoppers from entering a Jewish bakery caused a crowd to collect. The crowd had begun to disperse when one Felix Bugaitchik gave a signal to a group of farm-laborers, who thereupon began attacking Jewish stores.
The indictment says that in the ensuing excitement Jews and peasants clashed. Firing began and three Christians were wounded. The police were surrounded by the mob and would not intervene. Reports that Jews were shooting Christians, the indictment says, prompted peasants to arm themselves and join in the affray.
The police cleared the market place, pushing the mob into Warsaw Street. The indictment alleged that a policeman saw a Jew fire a revolver from a window and that the Jew, identified as Sholem Lesko, later admitted to examining judges that he fired into the air to scare off the mob attacking his father’s shop. One Christian died of wounds from a bullet which police said came from Lesko’s revolver.
The mob then attacked Jewish establishments, demolishing Jewish homes and stores and plundering some of them. Wherever occupants were found they were beaten. The indictment relates several cases where Jews were seriously injured. In one house, while three children were hiding under a bed, the attackers killed Joseph Minkowski and fatally wounded his wife. A six-year-old boy was dragged from under the bed and beaten with clubs.
After the Minkowski murder, police reinforcements arrived from Radom and the mob was dispersed. The indictment divides the defendants into three groups according to the charges against them. The three defendants charged specifically with the Minkowski attacks are Wladislaw Gospodarczyk, Konstanty Kozlowzki and Josef Tkatchik.
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