Abraham Surasky was a Jewish-American peddler who was the victim of a 1903 antisemitic murder in rural South Carolina.

Life

Born in the shtetl of

Knyszyn Knyszyn ( be, Кнышин, yi, קנישין, translit=Knishin, lt, Knišinas) is a town in north-eastern Poland, northwest of Białystok. It is situated in the Podlaskie Voivodeship (since 1999), and was formerly in the Białystok Voivodeship ...

Poland Poland, officially the Republic of Poland, is a country in Central Europe. It is divided into 16 administrative provinces called voivodeships, covering an area of . Poland has a population of over 38 million and is the fifth-most populous ...

in 1873, Surasky was the youngest of the three Surasky brothers. On July 29, 1903, at the age of 30, Surasky was attacked and murdered by gun and by ax. The murderers were Lee Green and George Toole, both white Christian men. Surasky was working his route, about 15 miles from Aiken, when he was attacked by Lee Green while Surasky was attempting to help Green's wife Dora carry goods from her wagon into the house. Surasky's body was left in his buggy in the woods after being shot several times and axed twice in the head. An African-American teenage girl named Mary Drayton was hired by Lee and Dora to clean up the evidence of the crime while another person was hired to dispose of the body. According to Drayton's sworn affidavit, Lee Green had a long-standing hatred of Jewish peddlers and had previously shot at and attempted to murder another Jewish peddler named Levy three weeks prior. Another witness claimed that Green "was going to kill ever icJew peddler that came around and get shed of them.” Dora Green testified that Surasky had tried to sexually assault her and that her husband was a southern gentleman defending her honor. According to Drayton, the Greens had concocted the story after the fact. The court acquitted Lee Green of murder. Lee Green was convicted of murdering another person several years later. Surasky was buried in an unmarked grave at the Magnolia Cemetery in Augusta, Georgia. He was survived by two daughters, Dorothy and Mildred, who were raised by their uncle Sam Surasky and his wife Mary. In 1993, 90 years after his murder, a tombstone was unveiled at Surasky's grave. The grave had been located by Stephen Surasky, the grandson of Abraham's brother Solomon.

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External links

Abram Surasky
at Find a Grave
Jewish Heritage Collection: Oral history interview with Mordecai Persky
Lowcountry Digital Library {{DEFAULTSORT:Surasky, Abraham 1873 births 1903 deaths 1903 in Judaism 1903 murders in the United States American Ashkenazi Jews American people of Polish-Jewish descent Antisemitic attacks and incidents in the United States Christian terrorism in the United States False allegations of sex crimes Jewish-American lynching victims Lynching deaths in South Carolina Murdered American Jews People from Aiken, South Carolina People from Knyszyn People murdered in South Carolina Polish Ashkenazi Jews Emigrants from Congress Poland to the United States Street vendors Victims of antisemitic violence Aiken County, South Carolina Jews from South Carolina

Life

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