Menahem Mendel Beilis
The Beilis affair was a ritual murder trial of Kievan Jews Menachem Mendel Beilis. The starting point was the 1911 murder of a 12 - year-old boy. The process aroused indignation throughout Europe for his political instrumentalization.
Historical Context
Under the impact of the October Manifesto and the reforms under Prime Minister Pyotr Stolypin were in the political debate in the Russian Empire increasingly voices that called for the abolition of anti-Jewish laws such as the Pale of Settlement and the May Laws. The demands met with fierce resistance from the Russian ultra-right, for which the legal discrimination of the Jews had become the guarantors of the tsarist order. To their advocates was the Minister of Justice Ivan Schtscheglowitow who could gain influence in 1911 after the assassination of Stolypin.
The case Juschtschinski
On 20 March 1911, the eight days previously missing 13 - year-old boy Andrei Juschtschinski body was found in a cave near Kiev. His body was partially undressed and had nearly 50 stab wounds. At his funeral, leaflets were distributed, which represented the murder of the boy as carried out by the Jews of ritual murder and calling for pogroms. The police focused their investigations on the main suspect Wera Tscheberjak, whose house was close to that of Juschtschinskis and served as the headquarters of a criminal gang.
The Beilis affair
Although the compressed circumstantial evidence against Wera Tscheberjak, urged Kiev Conservatives and ultra-right of the Black Hundred on an accusation of ritual murder. With the backing of the Ministry of Interior, they managed to obtain the dismissal of the investigating police inspector. Based on the testimony of a light keeper's now the Jew Mendel Beilis was, overseer of a brick kiln, was arrested and accused of Juschtschinski kidnapped and murdered. As the new senior police inspector was investigating further Wera Tscheberjak, he was arrested for alleged embezzlement.
Two years after his arrest, the prosecution still had no evidence against Beilis in his hand. Nevertheless, the process began in 1913. To the prosecution, he began with a defeat, as quickly turned out the statement of the lamp guard as out of thin air. To give the ritual murder accusation emphatically, was the prosecution arrive Catholic priest Justina Pranaitis. Pranaitis, who described himself as a " Talmudic experts" tried to prove the existence of ritual murder by corresponding passages in the Talmud. In the subsequent interrogation, however, the defense was able to prove that Pranaitis hardly understood Hebrew. Thus, the indictment against Beilis had nothing in his hand. Although seven of the twelve members of the "Black Hundred " belonged, the jury acquitted Beilis. However, the success of the defense was marred by a second verdict, although it reiterated Beilis innocence, but claimed in the murder of Juschtschinskij there had actually been a Jewish ritual murder of unknown perpetrators.
Injury
The media reported across Europe about the Beilis affair. The obvious implication high state official in charge called the deemed foreign forth great indignation. After the February Revolution of 1917, numerous investigators for the prosecution were arrested in the case Beilis. Wera Tscheberjak and members of their band was put on trial in 1919 for the murder Juschtschinskis. Beilis left Russia, emigrated to Palestine in 1920 and in the USA; there he died in 1934 in Saratoga Springs.