To End Suffering

Hawke's Bay Tribune, Volume XIV, Issue 197, 29 July 1924, Page 5

To End Suffering

The Right to Kill

PLEADED BY POLISH ACTRESS. SORROWFUL SCENES AT TRIAL. [By Cable—Press Association—Copyright.] (Received 29. 9.15 a.m.) Paris, July 28. “The right to kill” wag the defence of Stanislawa Uminska, Polish actress, charged with shooting her husband, who was slowly dying from cancer of the liver. Uminska gave her evidence sobbingly, and stretching out her arms pleadingly to the magistrate, said: “1 loved him. I had to kill him to end his sufferings, which were terrible to see. He continually pleaded with me to kill him and gave me a revolver. He said a bullet in the mouth would bring instant death. I refused, but when 1 saw his tortures increasing without hope of recovery I shot him when he was sleeping.”—(A. and N.Z.)

An earlier cable stated that Afademoiselle Unicuska assumed the right to kill her fiance in a hospital at Villejuif because he was suffering terrible agony from incurable cancer. Jean Zozonwski a Polish novelist, went to Paris for surgical treatment with Alademoiselle Uminska, and during the second operation she gave hei own blood to help in his recovery. The sacrifice, however, wag useless. The sick man then besought the doctors to put him out of his misery. After the girl saw her lover she tearfully pleaded with the doctors to end hi s agony. The doctors refused. She then returned to the hospital, leant over Zozonwski, kissed him, then twice shot him In the head point blank. She fell, fainting, beside the bed. Zozonwski died without regaining consciousness.