Ritual Murder Tale Stirs Town in Ukrainia

(Jewish Telegraphic Agency Mail Service)

An investigation has been started against the local militia chief in connection with the ritual murder accusation against the Jews in the town of Kanieff, according to “Der Stern,” Yiddish Communist paper of Charkoff.

The paper describes the event in the following manner.

On Passover Eve this year there was a great tumult in the little town of Kanieff, on the Dniester. Jews went about perturbed, looking fearfully to all sides. A few began to creep into the hiding places in which they used to hide in the days when bandits fell upon the town.

What had happened in Kanieff? On March 20th, a Ukrainian girl, Leschinsky, disappeared from her home. Late at night and no sign of her. All night long her parents waited for her, but she did not come. The next morning the neighbors heard that she had disappeared, and in the street people began to talk. It was Passover Eve, they said, so the Jews must have killed her and kneaded her blood into their Matzos. Leschinsky’s parents thereupon went to the militia and told the chief that their daughter had been lost, and that as she took milk every day to the Jew Benzion Lieberman and as it was the Jewish Passover Eve, the only thing that could have happened was that Benzion Lieberman had killed her for ritual purposes.

The chief of the militia took eight. witnesses along with him and went to Benzion Lieberman to look for the body. of the girl. They searched but found nothing. Someone noticed that the floor of the kitchen had been newly covered and that the clay was still wet and fresh. So the chief of militia had the earth dug up in the kitchen. But there was no sign of the girl and no blood.

The town was by then in an uproar. Hooligans began to shout that even if Lieberman had not killed the girl, it must have been other Jews who had killed her. People began to go about seeking out other Ukrainian girls employed by Jews and told them to run away because their lives were in danger. There were cries of “Beat the Jews!”

The day passed in fear and trembling. At night a crowd gathered in the synagogue and began to talk of sending a delegation to Charkoff to report to the Wzik.

It was a nightmare for the Jews that night, every house was shuttered up.

The next morning the matter was cleared up. The Kanieff tragedy became a comedy. A number of peasant women who had been in the maternity hospital came home and when they heard what was going on, they told their story. The girl Leschinsky was in the maternity hospital, where she had given birth to a child.

The “Menorah Journal” gave a dinner on Thursday night in the Hotel Majestic, New York.

Henry Hurwitz, editor of the “Menorah Journal,” presided. Other speakers were Dr. Nathan Isaacs, professor of business law at Harvard University, and Adolph S. Oko, librarian of Hebrew Union College.