The position of Dr. Meissner, the Jew who is Minister of Justice in Czecho-Slovakia, which Deputy Dr. Julius Reisz, one of the members of the Jewish Party in Czecho-Slovakia described from one angle in an interview with the J.T.A. Representative here (given in the J.T.A. Bulletin of the 17th. inst.), arguing that “as a Jew, he (Dr. Meissner) is anxious, and justly so, that it should not be said that he is interfering in a trial of this nature, because it would be immediately alleged that if a Jewish Minister has to exercise pressure to get the case withdrawn there must be something in the blood-libel”, is dealt with from another angle in the Jewish weekly “Neue Welt”, which is edited by Herr Robert Stricker.
In Czecho-Slovakia there is a Jew who is Minister of Justice, a Social Democrat, Dr. Meissner, the “Neue Welt” writes and under his regime two things have recently happened which rouse indignation and which seriously endanger the security and the prestige of Jewry. There is the acquittal of the Legionary Horak, after he had confessed to the murder and robbery of seven young Jews, and there is the continued blood libel affair of Simera. In both cases the State Attorneys, who are subordinates of this Jewish Minister of Justice, have conducted the investigations in a way which is a mockery of every idea of truth and justice. The authorities are working towards the end that the murder of Jews should be proclaimed permissible and the libel that Jews perform blood ritual should be proclaimed as proved. The Jewish Minister of Justice is besieged from the Jewish side that he should act to put the matter straight, and he is besieged to the same purpose from the non-Jewish side. But he insists on doing nothing. The organ of the Czecho-Slovakian League for Human Rights publishes the following protest against the attitude of this Jewish Minister of Justice: “The State Attorneys are deliberately dragging the blood libel affair, which has already been elevated into a tendencious political issue. The Ministry of Justice was warned in time, over a year ago, that this case would not end without doing very serious damage to the prestige of the Czecho-Slovakian Republic. Nevertheless, the Ministry of Justice has done nothing whatever to guard against this ritual murder agitation. On the contrary, the witnesses called by the defence are being prosecuted, while the very people who are intimately concerned in the allegation against the Jews are untouched.”
If a non-Jewish Minister were to act in this way, the “Neue Welt” says, we should be hearing charges of “anti-semitic chicanery” and “distortion of justice”. But the Jew, and Social Democrat to boot, gives his official agitators plenty of scope, and keeps silence. Indeed, no. He does not even keep silent. We are informed that the Minister of Justice, Dr. Meissner, has replied to persons who have made representations to him that he can do nothing for the reason that he is himself of Jewish origin, and that an action might be misinterpreted by the population. He is a fine guardian of justice, one of that type of Jewish judges who do the Jew an injustice because they, the judges, are themselves Jews. The Czecho-Slovakian Jews are paying a very heavy price for the high honour and privilege of having a Jew as Minister of Justice. They are paying for his honour with their own honour and their safety, and not only they, because the ritual murder trial of Simera is aimed not alone against the Jews of Czecho-Slovakia, but against the Jews of the entire world. It seems that Israel has no cause to rejoice, the paper concludes, when one of ours climbs high.
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.
