A revival of the long-exploded blood-ritual accusation against the Jews is agitating the Jews of Carpatho-Russia who are aroused at the arrest of a Jewish peddler charged with cutting the arms of two Christian girls and extracting their blood for holiday ritual purposes. The incident began when two Christian girls in the vicinity of Ujszeme injured each other’s arms while playing. The mothers of the girls refused to believe that the girls had hurt themselves, charging that the Jews had extracted blood for holiday purposes.
The Jewish population at first ignored the charge as silly chatter but the situation became serious when the Jews learned that the criminal court will try the case because the gendarmes who investigated the matter are alleged to have found that a Jewish peddler, Moritz Steinberger, passed through Ujszeme on the day when the girls were injured. Many peasants, as well as the local teacher, have testified that they saw Steinberger cutting the girls’ arms and extracting the blood into a bottle. It is further charged that a local doctor who examined the injuries diagnised them as the result of a blood extraction.
The entire Carpatho-Russian Jewry is disgusted over the silly accusation and they are appealing to the court to speed up Steinberger’s trial in order to establish the truth before the country is disgraced and made ridiculous in the eyes of the world.
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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.
