Trial’s End Sighted As Judge Orders Experts to File Facts

the Jews is based on the “Protocols.” The plaintiffs in the action, who include Dr. J. Dreyfus-Brodezky, president of the Swiss Federation of Jewish Communities; Dr. Marcus Cohen, president of the Swimm Zionist Federation, and Dr. Marcus Ehrenpreis, chief rabbi of Sweden, had made this one of their contentions in seeking to have the documents confiscated as libelous.

The story of how a pamphlet, “A Dialogue in Hades Between Machiavelli and Montesquieu,” written by a French lawyer, Maurice Joly, in 1864, was found in the French National Library by Czarist agents years later and converted into a vicious attack on the Jews, was graphically recounted during the day by a series of witnesses.

TELLS OF ORIGIN

Sergius Swatikow, who was vice-governor of Petro during the Kerensky regime, testified that the “Protocols” had been fabricated in Paris at the orders of General Raschkovsky, head of the Ochrana, the Czar’s secret police. He declared that a man named Gelensky prepared the forgery from the Joly pamphlet.

Count du Chayla, a Frenchman who has spent much time in Russia, testified he had seen the manuscript written in French by Nilus, a monk, in 1909. Nilus, he said, doubted the authenticity of the document but believed it was nevertheless true.

The witness declared his belief that publication of the “Protocols” was a direct cause of the Russian Revolution, since as a result of it, the Czar was induced to redouble measures of oppression and withhold adoption of a constitution for Russia.

Further details of forgery of the documents were recited to the court by Vladimir Burtzev, famous Russian journalist, and Boris Nikolajewsky, noted historian and a leader in the Russian Menshevik movement, who recently concluded an investigation of many years into the activities of the notorious Czarst spy Aseff.

Much amusement was caused in the courtroom by the burly Fischer and his associates representing the defense when they asked the witnesses whether they were Jewish. The defense attorneys were unable to make any headway in cross-examination of the witnesses.

The principal defendant in the case is Dr. A. Zander, editor of the Swiss Nazi paper, Eiserne Besen (Iron Broom). Standing trial with him are three other Swiss Nazis, Haller, Aebersold and Schnell. Two principal defendants, Theodor Fritsch, Hamburg publisher, and Col. Mueller von Hansen, have died since the inception of the trial.

700 COPIES SEIZED

The plaintiffs, whose action already has resulted in sequestration of 700 copies of the “Protocols,” are seeking confiscation of the volumes and penalties for publication and distribution of the libels in Switzerland.

Because of the significance of the issues involved, the attention of Jews throughout the world is being focused on the trial. The “Protocols” have been exposed as forgeries many times, and as far back as 1921 by the London Times, but it is generally felt that a decisive verdict by a court of record in the heart of Europe would furnish conclusive proof that anti-Semitic claims of a Jewish plot for world dominion are false and unfounded.