Herr Wolfgang Bergermann, the editor of the Hitlerist paper “Hessische Volkswacht”, has been sentenced to-day to two months’ imprisonment on the charge of blasphemy for writing in one of his anti-Jewish articles that “Jehovah, the super-Jew, is not a God, but a businessman”.
Parts of the Talmud were quoted during the trial by experts in order to refute the allegations made in the article in question against the Jewish religion. On the other hand, a number of witnesses were called by the Hitlerists to testify that the Talmud has nothing to do with the Jewish religion and that insulting the Talmud in an article does not necessarily mean that the Jewish religion has been insulted.
After hearing the experts, the court decided that, although the Talmud is not Divine, nevertheless, it forms a part of Jewish ritual and any public abuse against the Talmud is equivalent to an insult against the Jewish religion as a whole. The editor of the Hitlerist paper was therefore sentenced to two months’ imprisonment and to pay the cost of the trial.
Herr Bergermann has been sentenced on a previous occasion for a similar offence, but he made then a public. apology in court and pleaded that the offensive article had not been written by him.
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.
