The Czecho-Slovakian ritual murder case, which was prematurely reported quashed a few days ago in the entire Czecho-Slovakian Press and abroad, appears now to be really on the way to a vindication of the accused Jews and the punishment of the officials who brought up the charge against them.
The Military Procurator of Uzhorod has initiated proceedings against M. Faltynek, the examining judge in the case, who, when it was first reported to him as a charge of “inflicting minor bodily injuries” said that it was “something of a different and more serious character”, and against the Commandant of the district gendarmerie, M. Perecin, who originally preferred the charge, and recently had proceedings started against the headmaster of the local school, M. Pazuchanik, and the editor of the local paper M. Handelsmann, because they had declared in court that the two children, Vasil Kosta and Helens Bogdan, had been induced under pressure and threats to tell a story that they had admitted to them was a pure invention.
The proceedings against the two officials, who have been removed from their posts, are taken on the ground of a sworn statement made by the mother of the boy Vail Kosta, that Faltynek, the examining judge, had obtained her signature under threats to the document in which she accused the two Jews, Liebermann and Steinberger, of having drawn blood for ritual purposes from her son and the girl Bogdan.
He had threatened her, she stated, that if she did not sign the document she would herself have to pay certain heavy costs for hospital treatment.
The investigation of the case is being continued now by the newly-appointed Commandant of the gendarmerie detachment at Uzhorod, Staff-Captain Novak.
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.
