The sporadically recurring allegation that Jews were using blood of Christian children for ritual purposes, upon which a special issue of the anti-Semitic paper Der Stuermer was built last August, again stood discredited today following the arrest yesterday of a non-Jew in Breslau as the suspected murderer of two children killed mysteriously there in 1926.
The suspect is Hermann Hoell, a German laborer, who is believed to be subnormal mentally. The Breslau police are convinced that it was he who committed the crime in 1926, which the Stuermer, organ of the notorious Jew-baiter Julius Streicher, has persistently ascribed to the Jews.
The special edition which the Stuermer published last August, reviving the murder of 1926 and ascribing it to the Jews, brought official protest by German Jewry. This edition also was condemned by Sir John Simon, the British Minister of Foreign Affairs, from the platform of the House of Parliament. It was later confiscated in Breslau by the order of local authorities, an act which caused serious friction between Julius Streicher, who is considered Hitler’s right hand man, and the Gestapo, the German political police, which was backing the attitude of the Breslau police authorities.
The Juedische Rundschau, official organ of the Zionist Organization in Germany, today comments on the manner in which the murder of 1926 has been utilized by Streicher for anti-Jewish propaganda.
“The arrest of Hermann Hoell shows how crimes which have never been committeed by Jews are being utilized in Germany as a means of fighting German Jewry,” the paper says.
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.
