Deputy Karl Holz, the editor of a Hitlerist paper, the “Stuermer”, which appears in Nuremberg, in Bavaria, has been acquitted by the Nuremberg law court on a charge of libel brought against him by Dr. Wassermann, a local Jewish medical. man, for publishing an article in his paper in which Dr. Wassermann was accused of letting a non-Jewess bleed to death because the Talmud and the Shulchan Aruch impose upon Jews the duty of killing Christians whenever the opportunity offers, and calling upon the Christian population for that reason never to go to Jewish doctors.
The court refused to hear Rabbi Dr. Max Eschelbacher (son of the famous Jewish scholar, the late Rabbi Joseph Eschelbacher who wrote “Judaism and Christianity”, an outstanding work of Jewish apologetics, and of Ernestine Eschelbacher, the “Eishith Chayil” of German Jewry, who died last July), who was called by the prosecutor as an authority on the Talmud, ruling that since hs is a member of the Central Union of German Citizens of Jewish Faith he is partisan and his evidence would be biased.
While ruling out the Rabbi, the court agreed, however, to hear two antisemitic experts, Dr. Erich Bischoff and Professor Goltsberger, who were called by the Defence as authorities on the Talmud, and they declared that the teachings of the Talmud and the Shulchan Aruch are in complete contradiction to morality and that in addition to these written laws the Jews obey also an unwritten secret code which pledges them to practise the most beastly abominations against non-Jews. Dr. Bischoff even went to the extent of swearing that there is a commandment which binds Jews to the practice of human sacrifice.
Deputy Holz was the central figure in the Daube and the Manau ritual murder agitations in Bavaria. It was his paper, the “Stuermer”, which took up the cry in 1928 when the student Daube was found dead that he had been killed for ritual purposes by a Jewish fellow-student named Haussman, and although Haussman was found not guilty and acquitted, he kept up the cry of ritual murder, repeating it in connection with the Daube affair as recently as a few months ago. In the same way when the dead body of a Christian child was found at Manau, in Bavaria, he again started a cry of ritual murder, and the charge was even raised in the Bavarian Parliament by the Hitlerist Deputies.
The Hitlerists brought it up also in the Prussian Parliament where Deputy Ley, a Hitlerist Deputy, said that Pope Sixtus IV. had declared that Jews kill Christian boys for ritual purposes, and that at the present time there are sects of Hassidim which use Christian blood in their ritual. The accusation brought some of the Catholic Deputies to their feet in protest against the belief that ritual murder is upheld by the Catholic Church.
In Saxony, a Hitlerist Deputy named Schemm, who is the editor of a paper called the “Weckruf”, was sent to prison for 30 days for publishing the Daube ritual murder story in his paper, and an artist named Braeutigam, who made a drawing printed in the same issue, showing a number of Jews in the act of committing ritual murder, with the aid of a copy of the Talmud, was given a similar sentence.
We feel ashamed that Jews still have to defend themselves at this late day against the ritual murder lie, a conference of the Bavarian Rabbis declared in a statement issued in connection with the Manau and Daube ritual murder agitations.
We declare solemnly, the Rabbis statement proceeded, that the sources of Jewish teaching are innocent of blood. There is no Jewish sect whatever which practises ritual murder. We are prepared to prove this statement in any court of law.
The Central Union of German Citizens of the Jewish Faith also issued a statement protesting against the ritual murder lie.
HOW THE GERMAN COURTS TREAT ANTI-JEWISH INSULTS
The German law courts have on previous occasions handed down similar verdicts, practically upholding the accusations of ritual murder and of other vile practises made against the Jews, by acquitting the agitators who were being proceeded against for libel.
The ritual murder accusation is not an insult to the Jews, but a historical fact, since many churches in Germany, Austria and other countries are dedicated to Christian saints who were martyred for ritual purposes by the enemies of the Christian faith, the West Berlin District Court found last May in acquitting Deputy Goebbels, the Hitlerist leader in Berlin, on a charge of insulting the Jews by publishing an article in the “Angriff”, of which he is editor, where he said that Jews commit ritual murder. It had not been established, the court said, that the article was an insult to the Jewish religion, since it spoke only of fanatical adherents of the Jewish religion, and not of all who practise Judaism.
No punishment for accusing Jews of committing ritual murder was also the decision of the German Supreme Court, the Leipzig Reichsgericht, in February 1930, when it quashed the verdict of guilty brought in by the Cologne District Court against the editor of the local Hitlerist paper, the “Westdeutscher Beobachter”, Joseph Prohe, whom it had fined 300 Marks for writing in his paper that the Jews in obedience to the Talmud practise ritual murder, fraud and perjury, and drink Christian blood in order to become reconciled to the Jewish God.
The Reichsgericht found that Prohe could not be convicted, because he did not know that the ritual murder allegation was designed to rouse enmity against a certain section of the population.
Dr. Theodor Wolf, the famous editor of the “Berliner Tageblatt”, drew attention recently to the tendency of the German courts, including the Supreme Court, to acquit antisemites, complaining that the German courts have been dangerously infected by Hitlerism, and have been encouraged by the growth of Hitlerist strength to allow their dogmatic antisemitism to overrule the principles of abstract justice, introducing definite anti-Jewish bias in their judgments.
The “Juedische Rundschau” also complained recently that it is not surprising that the Jews in Germany are exposed so much to insult and physical attack, when it is remembered that the Hitlerist papers have been for years inciting the lowest instincts of the mob against the Jews, and the law courts take no action against the agitators.
It is constantly happening nowadays, it wrote, that not only the lower courts, but the very highest treat the Hitlerist vandals with the utmost mildness. This laxity in the face of the insults heaped up against Judaism, Jewry and the Jewish Community, and the refusal to concede the right to the Jews to bring actions against those who libel them and incite the people, has resulted in convincing Hitlerist circles that outrages against Jews may be undertaken with much less risk than against other people. So we have Jews constantly attacked, molested in the streets, Jewish places of worship and cemeteries desecrated, a boycott preached against Jewish businessmen and all that is connected with Jews and Judaism vilified and all with no redress.
We must not shut our eyes to the fact, it said, that Fitlerist ideology has spread in Germany to an extent that would have seemed incredible a few years ago. Even parties and authorities who are not anti-Jewish find themselves obliged to take account of the anti-Jewish mob feeling, which is spreading among all circles of the people. Without any discriminatory laws against Jews, we Jews are to-day treated in actual practice in Germany as second-class citizens. No one dares to appoint Jews as officials. People are afraid to give positions to Jewish scholars of the highest qualifications and attainments. People are afraid to become suspect of being protectors of the Jews. Things have gone so far that people are afraid to be just to Jews.
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.
