Simón Radowitzky
Simón Radowitzky (born September 10 or November 10, 1891 in Stepan , Volyn Governorate , † February 29, 1956 in Mexico City , Mexico ) was a Ukrainian - Argentine anarchist and trade unionist.
Life
youth
Simón Radowitzky was born in 1891 to a Jewish working-class family from Poland in the Ukraine and grew up in Yekaterinoslav . At the age of ten he left school to start an apprenticeship as a blacksmith . There he was introduced to the ideas of anarchism by the daughter of the blacksmith. Four years later he moved to an ironworks and took part in a strike against longer working hours, where he was injured in the chest by a Cossack with a saber. After six months of treatment, Radowitzky was sentenced to four months in prison for distributing leaflets to workers.
During the Russian Revolution of 1905 Radowitzky was Vice-Secretary in the Soviet of his factory and this threatened exile in Siberia after the end of the revolution . He emigrated and finally settled in Argentina in 1908. In Campana Radowitzky found a job as a mechanic for the Argentine railway. He maintained close relationships with the growing local anarchist groups and came into contact with a group of Russian intellectuals and anarchosyndicalists through the anarcho-syndicalist Federación Obrera Regional Argentina (FORA). After a short time, Simón Radowitzky moved from Campana to Buenos Aires .
Assassination attempt and arrest
On May 1st , 1909, Simón Radowitzky took part in two large trade union demonstrations. In the Plaza del Congreso , the FORA members held a demonstration in memory of the martyrs of Chicago , separately from the Unión General de Trabajadores . The police then stepped in under the orders of Ramón Lorenzo Falcón and attacked the assembled workers with infantry and cavalry troops. The troops acted with extreme severity, and in the hour-long fighting that followed, eight workers died and 40 others were injured. Ramón Falcón then closed all the workers' premises and arrested 16 union leaders. This was the prelude to the so-called Semana Roja (German: Red Week ), in which the FORA, together with the UGT and the Socialist Party, successfully called for a general strike . At the funeral of the victims on May 4, 80,000 workers gathered, but the police stopped them during their funeral procession. The authorities, who had initially blamed a Russian-Jewish conspiracy for the events, gave in after a week and complied with the workers' demands.
After a fatal bomb attack on Ramón Lorenzo Falcón, the Buenos Aires police chief, Simón Radowitzky was sentenced to life imprisonment. With the help of Argentine and Chilean anarchists, he managed to escape from Ushuaia.
Spanish Civil War and Mexico
After the outbreak of the Spanish Civil War , Radowitzky decided to join the International Brigades and went to Spain. On the Aragon front he fought together with the 28th division of Gregorio Jover Cortés , in which mainly anarchists fought. After Francisco Franco came to power and the civil war ended, Radowitzky fled across the Pyrenees to France and was interned there in the Saint-Cyprien concentration camp. Radowitzky left France for Mexico, where he was employed in a toy factory and published anarchist magazines. Radowitzky died of a heart attack in Mexico City in 1956 .
literature
- Osvaldo Bayer : La Patagonia Rebelde . Buenos Aires / Wuppertal, 1972–78.
- Fernando Artavia: Radowitzky, Simon , in: Handbuch des Antisemitismus , Volume 2/2, 2009, p. 666f.
Web links
- Radowitzky's biography at libcom.org (en.)
| personal data | |
|---|---|
| SURNAME | Radowitzky, Simón |
| ALTERNATIVE NAMES | Radowicki, Szymon (Polish spelling) |
| BRIEF DESCRIPTION | Ukrainian anarchist |
| DATE OF BIRTH | September 10, 1891 or November 10, 1891 |
| PLACE OF BIRTH | Stepan |
| DATE OF DEATH | February 29, 1956 |
| Place of death | Mexico City , Mexico |