Beilis affair

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Andrei Yushchinsky

The Beilis affair was a ritual murder trial against the Kiev Jew Menachem Mendel Beilis. The starting point was the murder of a twelve-year-old boy in 1911. The process aroused outrage across Europe because of its political instrumentalization.

Historical context

In the wake of the October Manifesto and the reforms under Prime Minister Pyotr Stolypin , voices in the Russian Empire called for the abolition of anti-Jewish laws such as the Pale of Settlement and the May Laws increased . The demands met with fierce resistance from the Russian far-right, for whom the legal discrimination of the Jews had become the guarantor of the tsarist order. The Minister of Justice Ivan Shcheglowitow , who was able to gain influence after the assassination of Stolypin in 1911 , became their advocate .

The Yushchinsky case

On March 20, 1911, the body of the 13-year-old boy Andrei Yushchinsky, who had disappeared eight days earlier, was found in a cave near Kiev. His body was partially stripped and had almost 50 stab wounds. At his funeral, leaflets were distributed depicting the boy's murder as a ritual murder carried out by Jews and calling for pogroms . The police concentrated their investigations on the main suspect Vera Cheberjak, whose house was near that of the Yushchinsky and served as the headquarters of a criminal gang.

The Beilis affair

Although the evidence against Wera Cheberjak was growing, Kiev conservatives and the ultra-right of the Black Hundred pushed for charges of ritual murder. With the backing of the Ministry of the Interior, they managed to obtain the dismissal of the investigating police inspector. On the basis of the testimony of a lamp attendant, the Jew Mendel Beilis, the overseer of a brick factory, was arrested and accused of kidnapping and murdering Yushchinsky. When the new chief police inspector continued investigating Wera Tscheberjak, he was arrested for alleged embezzlement.

Two years after his arrest, the prosecution still had no evidence against Beilis. Nevertheless, the trial began in 1913. For the prosecution, he started with a defeat, as the lamp keeper's testimony quickly turned out to be out of thin air. To back up the ritual murder accusation, the prosecution sent the Catholic priest Justinas Pranaitis to arrive. Pranaitis, who described himself as a " Talmud expert", tried to prove the existence of ritual murder by means of appropriate passages in the Talmud. In the interrogation that followed, however, the defense was able to prove that Pranaitis hardly understood Hebrew. So the prosecution had nothing left against Beilis. Although seven of the twelve members belonged to the "Black Hundred", the jury acquitted Beilis. However, the defense's success was marred by a second verdict, which confirmed Beili's innocence, but claimed that the murder of Yushchinsky was actually a ritual murder by unknown Jewish perpetrators.

Aftermath

The media reported on the Beilis affair across Europe. The apparent involvement of senior civil servants in the bogus indictment aroused great outrage abroad. After the February Revolution of 1917 , numerous prosecution investigators were arrested in the Beilis case. Vera Cheberjak and members of her gang were tried in 1919 for the murder of Yushchinski. Beilis left Russia, emigrated to Palestine and in 1920 to the USA ; there he died in Saratoga Springs in 1934 .

Footnotes

  1. ^ Hans Rogger: The Beilis Case. Anti-Semitism and Politics in the Reign of Nicholas II. In: Herbert A. Strauss (Ed.): Hostages of Modernization. Studies on Modern Antisemitism 1870–1933 / 39. Volume 2: Austria, Hungary, Poland, Russia. Berlin et al. 1993, pp. 1257-1273, here p. 1269.
  2. ^ Rebekah Marks Costin: Mendel Beilis and the blood libel. In: Robert A. Garber (Ed.): Jews on Trial. Princeton 2004, pp. 69–93, here p. 70.
  3. ^ Rebekah Marks Costin: Mendel Beilis and the blood libel. In: Robert A. Garber (Ed.): Jews on Trial. Princeton 2004, pp. 69–93, here p. 80.
  4. ^ Rebekah Marks Costin: Mendel Beilis and the blood libel. In: Robert A. Garber (Ed.): Jews on Trial. Princeton 2004, pp. 69-93, here p. 87.
  5. ^ Hans Rogger: The Beilis Case. Anti-Semitism and Politics in the Reign of Nicholas II. In: Herbert A. Strauss (Ed.): Hostages of Modernization. Studies on Modern Antisemitism 1870–1933 / 39. Volume 2: Austria, Hungary, Poland, Russia. Berlin et al. 1993, pp. 1257-1273, here p. 1262.

literature

  • Rebekah Marks Costin: Mendel Beilis and the blood libel. In: Robert A. Garber (Ed.): Jews on Trial. Ktav, Jersey City NJ 2004, ISBN 0-88125-868-7 , pp. 69-93.
  • Ezekiel Leikin (Ed.): The Beilis Transcripts. The Anti-Semitic Trial that Shook the World. Jason Aronson, Northvale NJ et al. 1993, ISBN 0-87668-179-8 .
  • Albert S. Lindemann : The Jew Accused. Three Anti-Semitic Affairs (Dreyfus, Beilis, Frank). 1894-1915. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge et al. 1991, ISBN 0-521-40302-2 .
  • Hans Rogger: The Beilis Case. Anti-Semitism and Politics in the Reign of Nicholas II. In: Herbert A. Strauss (Ed.): Hostages of Modernization. Studies on Modern Antisemitism 1870–1933 / 39. Volume 2: Austria, Hungary, Poland, Russia (= Current Research on Antisemitism ). de Gruyter, Berlin et al. 1993, ISBN 3-11-013715-1 , pp. 1257-1273.
  • Frank Golczewski : Beilis, Mendel , in: Handbuch des Antisemitismus , Volume 2/1, 2009, pp. 65f.

Web links

Commons : Beilis Affair  - Collection of pictures, videos and audio files