A “ritual murder” scare among the Christians of a certain neighborhood here in Cologne, for a while threatened the safety of the Jews of that vicinity.
Hundreds of Christians invaded a Jewish store in the vicinity, yelling:
“The Jew is hiding a Christian boy in order to draw blood from him for the Pesach ritual.”
The father of the Christian boy who had disappeared, together with the neighbors, searched through the whole store, the cellar and the roof, while the threatening crowd outside made the situation look dangerous for a while.
Finally the lost boy returned. It was found that the Jewish storekeeper had driven away some children who were making a noise around his store, and that one of the little boys, while running, got lost in the confusion of the street traffic and so couldn’t find his way back home for a while.
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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.