The ritual murder case which has been dragging in the Province of Carpatho-Russia since last October has been quashed, the two Jews, Liebermann and Steinberger, who were accused of having drawn blood for ritual purposes from the arms of two Christian school-children in the district of Velka-Berezna, being released and the State Attorney starting proceedings against several people on the charge of having instigated the children to come forward with a fabricated story.
The proceedings against the two Jews, Liebermann and Steinberger, were started on the basis of information laid with the local police by a Hungarian woman school-teacher named Aranka Szoeke, of the village of Nova Simera, that certain Jews had drawn blood into a bottle from two of the children attending her school giving the children 50 heller to allow them to do so. The gendarmerie, after prolonged investigation, found that the two Jewish pedlars, Liebermann and Steinberger, had been in Nova Simera at the time and when they were paraded for inspection the children claimed to recognise them. The State Attorney thereupon ordered proceedings to be taken against them before the District Court of Velka-Berezna on the ground of Article 301 of the Penal Code dealing with “the infliction of minor bodily injuries”. M. Pazuchanik, the headmaster of the school at which the teacher Szoeke is employed and which is attended by the two children, a boy of eleven named Vasil Kosta and a girl of eight named Bogdan, repeatedly declared that he regarded the whole story as an invention to which the children had been put up by older people who wanted to stir up an anti-Jewish agitation. He added that he had warned the teacher Szoeke not to make the charge.
It was stated that when the investigating officer at the District town was informed of the complaint he immediately described it as an attempt at ritual murder, and a high political official when the Public Prosecutor at Uzhorod took proceedings on the charge of “inflicting minor bodily injuries” declared that in his view the matter was of “a different and more serious character”. There was considerable apprehension among the local Jewish population during the time that the ritual murder proceedings were in progress, because it was feared that it might lead to an agitation against all the Jews of the locality. There are sixty to eighty Jews living in Nova Simera among a total of 1,700 inhabitants, most of them Ruthenians, and there are altogether about 1,000 Jews in the entire district.
RITUAL MURDER LIE DISGRACING MASARYK’S REPUBLIC: JEWISH DEPUTY’S PROTEST IN PARLIAMENT.
A vehement protest was made in Parliament by Deputy Ludwig Singer, one of the members of the Jewish Parliamentary Club, who declared that the ritual murder proceedings at Velka-Berezna were a disgrace to the Republic of President Masaryk, who is known to the world for his great fight against the ritual murder lie at the time of the Hilsner blood-libel. It is a scandalous thing, Deputy Singer said, that in President Masaryk’s Republic, it should be possible for the law courts to take proceedings against Jewish citizens on such a charge.
He protested further against the anti-Jewish attitude of the semi-official Press in the Province of Carpatho-Russia, where Velka-Berezna is situated. The Director of the local school, attended by the two children, he said, had declared in court that there was a great deal of antisemitism in the school and that the only Jewish pupil there was always being beaten by the other children.
The Public Prosecutor instituted proceedings against M. Pazuchanic, the Director of the school attended by the two children, for declaring that the children had admitted to him that they had invented the story, and that he had heard teachers at the school and others threaten the children that they would be punished if they did not give evidence against the Jews and also against the editor of a semi-official Hungarian-language paper, the “Uj Koezloeny”, for reporting in his paper a talk he had had with the children who had admitted having invented the story and said that they were being subjected to pressure in order to make them adhere to their story in court.
The Jews of Czecho-Slovakia made representations recently to the Minister of Justice, Dr. Meissner, who is himself a Jew, that he should intervene to put a stop to the scandal of this blood-libel case.
A report on the question was contained in the report of the Joint Foreign Committee presented to the last meeting of the Jewish Board of Deputies held on the 18th. inst.
The Archive of the Jewish Telegraphic Agency includes articles published from 1923 to 2008. Archive stories reflect the journalistic standards and practices of the time they were published.
