HIS BRAIN STOLEN, HIS BODY HIDDEN - ANARCHIST; the Tale of Lazarus Averbuch, at Ridge Lawn Cemetery.

hey gang i'm at rich lawn cemetery today right across the street down the road here from bohemian national and if you go way way in the back here we're looking for the grave of a man named jerome who was said to be an anarchist and we're going to talk about that and i asked britain i said do you know where this grave is i know it's at richlawn he was able to come out here and scout and make things easier for me to find it and i just took a quick look and it's way way way in the back over here and i'll tell you when we get back there it's going to be some shocking things that we are going to see in this little hidden back section of this jewish cemetery a lot of pictures here a lot of interesting monuments but as we get to the back it's not the case not nearly the case so i will tell you the story as we walk among some of these graves and we head to jerome's grave we have the jets of course coming through so i'm going to pause every once in a while if we need to like right now so let's talk what anarchy is all about first i'll give you some context of what we're talking about post antebellum anarchy in chicago following the civil war particularly following the long depression it was called as a worldwide price and economic recession started in 1873 and running through pretty much well the end of the 19th century there was a rapid expansion of industrial production in the united states going right after that and chicago was here a major industrial center and now there were tens of thousands of germans and what they called at the time bohemian immigrants and they were all employed at about a buck 50 a day right here in the city and a lot of them lived not far from here they worked an average of 60 hours a week a normal week six days work week and you know it was like slave labor the city became the center for many attempts to organize labor's demands you know the unions for better working conditions which they did deserve and the employers of course responded with anti-union measures we know about the black listing of union members and lockouts strike breakers employing supplies thugs and private security forces and that really just made things worse the tensions would obviously get start to get out of control and the businesses were supported by the newspapers at the time who were opposed to labor and immigrant press they wanted to suppress what they were saying so socialist and anarchist organizations started to sprout up and become active and that's where the term anarch the chicago anarchist movement who here they operated actually a militant revolutionary type of force and they were armed and they were equipped with explosives now you may have heard of the haymarket riot which happened here and that's really where everything kind of came to a crescendo where one of the anarchists threw a bomb it killed people policemen and it just turned it's called a riot but it was it was it was like a war and a lot of people were injured and a lot of people were well killed and it was a pretty big deal here in fact if you go to montrose cemetery you can see i'm sorry forest home cemetery these are stuck these are fastened shut you can see the monument it's quite an amazing monument and there's i believe the i don't think it's a cenotaph i think it's the actual grave of emma goldman who was a leading national anarchist for proponent if you will so that's a little bit of background on the hay market thing and you know this place being the epicenter for a lot of that work now the man we're looking for lazarus ever buck he was born in 1889 he was born in what was called then the russian empire the present-day capital of the republic of moldova a place called kishnev he and his older sister olga they had survived this this i i don't i don't know if it's a purge or riot it was called the kitchen of pogroman it was basically an anti-jewish riot and of course at the time and seems like ever since history the jews have always been fighting the fighting the racist beliefs in people and always were persecuted so it's no different so lazarus actually followed his sister here to chicago he emigrated a year after her he came here in late 1907. they lived in a small apartment here and what was at the time the eastern european jewish neighborhood on chicago's near west side of course all that's changed now lazarus worked as an egg packer on south water street in chicago and back in the day south water street boy that was the area where you had meat packing and and all kinds of food related even today even today you have a lot of that going on and well the big story early in the morning on monday march 2nd 1908 lazarus visited the home of the chicago police department the chief of police a guy named george shippy and that's another story we'll visit his grave someday and you know one version said that he entered the residence at 9 00 am and all of a sudden shots were fired and he was killed now the story that i'm going to tell you here has two sides of course there's always two sides of the story depending on you know the interest but in my opinion he may have been murdered when you hear the aftermath that i tell you this is a very interesting story so of course the one side the popular side is that he got there at 9am and according to police chief shippy this was lazarus's fourth visit in two days making him quote unquote a suspicious figure when he encountered the man shippy said was in the entryway of his house he grabbed lazarus by the arms he was attempting to disable him and it said that lazarus drew a knife and he cut he wounded shippy in the arm and then it is said that lazarus grabbed a rev you know pulled out a revolver and fired and it said that he struck shippy's son harry as he entered from the upstairs he was coming down to investigate all the noise now shippy's driver and bodyguard a guy named james foley had entered the house and he also attempted to restrain lazarus and that said that lazarus shot foley in the hand before both foley and shippy just opened up on him and shot him to death and of course the newspapers reported that lazarus they said he was an anarchist and wanted to assassinate shippy because shipyard shut down an anarchist demonstration shortly before so as i was saying from the beginning there would be two sides to the story and now the the jewish contingent was saying no no no it didn't happen that way and the jewish press started getting involved they said no he didn't have anything in his pocket he just had a piece of paper he was there trying to get the police chief to sign this piece of paper that said it was really a testament of good character so that he could seek work outside of chicago and you have to wonder if maybe he reached in his pocket for the paper and police chief shippy maybe thought he had a gun or maybe who knows but olga testified in an interview and she said lazarus could not even afford a gun he didn't even know how to use one well after the killing the chicago police initiated a search for a curly-haired man someone they say saw with lazarus before the shooting hanging out so they rounded up suspected anarchists all over and those that they suspected who were of course mostly eastern european immigrants they targeted and soon thereafter there was a federal law made right after lazarus death allowing authorities to deport recent immigrants for involvement with anarchism or other misbehavior two days after the shooting the famous anarchist that i was referring to emma goldman was arriving in chicago actually but the public outrage and negative press coverage that was going on and then the harassment by police had forced her to cancel her planned address following arbuck's death olga his sister was detained by police and interrogated for over three days straight and they didn't even tell her that he was dead she was confronted with his body damaged from gunfire and roughed up by the angry policeman and in the days that followed she struggled to convince the police that lazarus was not an anarchist well authorities buried his body not sure where they say in a potter's field somewhere and when he was to be exhumed and given his jewish burial his body was missing that's right and after three days with major support from community members his body was recovered but his brain had been removed they say possibly in an attempt to study the brain of an anarchist well after a few more days of inquiring his brain was finally recovered and it is here that lazarus was properly buried and as i stand back here close to his grave i am well i'm kind of taken aback by what i'm seeing and i started to see the signs of this just i started approaching this area but there are tombstones just in piles here you have to wonder what's going on look at this over here are these forgotten souls they're people they're somebody but why would they be here in a pile it's even a shovel here i don't know guys i let's do some investigation but these are real people with real names like samuel samuels 1849-1892 and you know this this is probably a grave that's probably where he's buried but all of these other ones here these are all just stacked up so i don't know i don't know what the deal is but there has to be a reason for this why look at this they have we've got porcelain images look at this holy cow dora berman that's a real person guys and her stone is just where's she buried i asked where is she buried look at this here's another one louis leibovitz louis leibovitz he passed in 1942 1942 he's 57 years old maybe deb and trish we can do a little digging here's cohen oh my gosh this is terrible there has to be a reason for this maybe this is just temporary and they're repairing there has to be a reason for this they can't just be dumped here i i don't want to like go down that road but let's investigate there's another one over here they they don't appear to be trashed broken thrown this there must be something wherever their graves are there must be some repair work going on okay that's what i'm gonna say guys but when i first saw this i was like holy cow well there is lazarus they his he his he went by jerome formally but they say mostly it was lazarus so let's walk over here and you know i'm i'm guessing this is where he's buried but yeah because all the other stones are laying down so let me tell you about the the final aftermath as we stand here so olga returned to ukraine in the russian empire as i said back then that was called and of course many jews in that region her region died in nazi death camps world war ii but olga's name was never listed among the dead so it's a mystery police chief george shippy never returned to work this is where it gets very interesting right after this incident he could not go back to work it has said that after the shooting he developed irrational tendencies quote unquote and was prescribed rest but this cure was not effective and he had to resign his post and as the years went by shippy grew violent and guards were assigned they had to be assigned to his home to protect his family from him in february 1913 he was taken from his home and deposited to a mental hospital in kankakee illinois and on april 13th of 1913 it is there where he died and it is said probably from the result of late stage syphilis so we don't know [Music] you know there's two sides to the story and i ask what what do you guys think i'm kind of in the middle but i might be thinking that this man was murdered by this crazy police chief you know when you when you look at the whole story and the context of everything but we'll probably never know but i'd be interested to hear what you guys think anyway rest in peace lazarus jerome you

Channel: Faces of the Forgotten

Views: 351,984

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Id: qFNZQe8k0YQ

Length: 19min 10sec (1150 seconds)

Published: Mon Apr 18 2022