Hyman Lachowsky

Hyman Lachowsky was a Russian-Jewish bookbinder and Frayhayt-group anarchist convicted alongside Jacob Abrams. Eyewitnesses testified he was severely beaten by police during interrogation. Convicted Oct 23, 1918 under the Sedition Act; sentenced to 20 years and $1,000 fine. Deported to Soviet Russia Nov 24, 1921 aboard SS Estonia. Returned to his hometown in present-day Belarus; reported to have perished under Nazi occupation during the Holocaust. Born in 1894, his death is unresolved: Kenyon Zimmer’s reconstruction from INS and FBI files puts it about 1961, while earlier accounts say he was probably murdered by the Nazis in Minsk after the German occupation began in 1941. Because the accounts conflict, no death date is recorded.

From Kenyon Zimmer's Red Scare Deportees index (kenyonzimmer.com, compiled from INS deportation case files): In 1917 Lachowsky joined New York’s militant Jewish anarchist Shturem Group, which became the Frayhayt Group in 1918. On August 23, 1918, he was arrested with Molly Steimer while distributing leaflets protesting US intervention in the Russian Civil War. Beaten during interrogation, he was convicted with other group members under the Espionage Act and sentenced to twenty years in prison and a $1,000 fine. In October 1919 he declared to immigration agents, “I am an alien and an anarchist…I am opposed to all organized government. Not only the Government of the United States but any government…I’m an anarchist and proud of it.” By 1921, however, he had become disillusioned and renounced anarchism. After losing the Supreme Court free-speech case Abrams v. United States, he was deported November 23, 1921.

Disillusioned with radicalism, he returned to Minsk, started a family, and stayed out of politics. He reportedly died of natural causes sometime before the Second World War.