A MURDER-MAKING LEGEND
M. De Plehve and the Tsar can accomplish one good and blessed work, if
so minded, without altering a single anti-Semitic Russian law. The
Emperor can destroy, in Russia, the atrocious legend about the annual
killing of Christian children by Jews as an alleged part of the Blood
Atonement in Hebrew Paschal rites. In this humane and Christian task he
is entitled to the co-operation of the Emperor of Austria, the King of
Roumania, and the heads of other Balkan States, where this story of
ritual murder is constantly circulated, and not infrequently as a part
of political propaganda. There ought to be a truly Christian crusade
waged against this infamous product of ancient, insensate, sectarian
hate. It was the inspiration of the most horrible of the Kishineff
murders; the driving of nails through the eyes of a woman, the cutting
out of the tongue of a two-year-old child, and of nameless sexual
mutilations. Thousands of innocent people have been done to death in the
centuries through which these crimes have been the bloody fruit of a
monstrous invention, born of a spirit of superstitious savagery, which
no age has yet made any honest civilised endeavour to exorcise out of
ignorant and fanatical Christian minds.
The Jews of Kishineff believe with all right-minded people everywhere
that no one deplores these shocking crimes more than the Emperor. His
humanity is beyond question in popular belief, and, should a suitable
opportunity be given, or be forthcoming, while the recollection of this
great stain on his country’s reputation remains in the public memory, he
may be counted upon, it is to be hoped, to place on record his honest
condemnation of such abominable deeds.
Let His Majesty the Tsar add this task to other noble duties with which
his name is associated. A special ukase, reciting his own disbelief in
the ritual-murder legend, and forbidding under severe penalties its
circulation anywhere, and, by any means, in Russia; ordering that this
ukase shall be read, in the Emperor’s name, in every church in the
Empire, a fortnight before Easter each year for the next five years; let
this be done, and the good work is virtually accomplished for
Christianity, for civilisation, and for Russia, too.
A similar obligation lies upon the governments of Austria and of the
Balkan States. Roumania is at present the worst of sinners in this
matter. This legend is in constant circulation through the anti-Semitic
press there, being used, in fact, as an argument in political campaigns
for driving the Jews out of the country.
A few months ago, a Roumanian paper, the _Vocea Tutovei_ of Berlad,
openly incited the populace to kill the Jews. In a series of articles,
subsequently reprinted in pamphlet form, popular ignorance and passion
were appealed to by stories of alleged Hebrew murders of Christian
children. One extract from this organ of Roumanian opinion will
illustrate at once the savage sentiments of the writer and the culpable
conduct of a government which could permit such appeals to assassination
to be openly made in a civilised land:
“The recent ritual murders committed by Jews in Austria, Bohemia,
Hungary, Germany, and Russia must still be fresh in everyone’s
mind. And how many children have disappeared in our own country!
How many mutilated bodies have been found, while the criminals have
remained undiscovered! Who are these criminals--these bloodthirsty
murderers of our prattling babes? They are the fanatical Jews that
infest our land. These monsters are the slayers of our Christian
children. They are the criminals--the Jews who have invaded our
country like locusts.
“The time for peaceful and legal restrictions is passing away. Let
all good Roumanians raise their heavy sticks and kill these
parasites of their country.”
Roumania is the western boundary of Bessarabia. Before the Berlin Treaty
of 1878, a portion of this now Russian province belonged to Roumania.
Moldavians live on each side of the frontier. The pamphlets circulated
by the anti-Semites of Berlad, containing the above and other murderous
appeals to fanaticism, would inevitably find their way into the
Moldavian community of Kishineff, where Pavolachi Kroushevan, himself a
Moldavian, was carrying on a similar bloodthirsty propaganda in the
_Bessarabetz_ against the Jews of Bessarabia. The Governments which
continue to permit this kind of press savagery are themselves morally
responsible for the crimes which find their instigation in such
writings. Nor can diplomatic denunciation, after the occurrence of deeds
of infamy such as those of Kishineff, atone in any way to the outraged
sense of civilised human feeling for what Leo Tolstoy rightly terms the
“permitted assassinations” of innocent people. For the law or Government
which encourages by indifference the circulation of these atrocious,
fabricated tales of the slaughtering of Christian children by Hebrews,
is either the indifferent guardian of citizens’ lives or the cowardly
accomplice of a fanatical ruffianism which it is unable or unwilling to
grapple with and put down.
There is another and a higher authority that can deal with the
propagation of this crime-stained legend, especially in Catholic
countries like Austria and Poland. This is the authority of the Holy
See.
A few years ago a parish priest of Vienna revived the old story of the
alleged murder of the boy Simon of Trent, for ritual purposes, by Jews
in the fifteenth century. He republished particulars of what purported
to be the crime so named, but unfairly suppressed the facts associated
with the accusation, which would explain the whole charge away. The Jews
who had confessed to the murder of the boy did so under the application
of torture; a pretty common method of extorting desired “information” of
trumped-up charges by the various authorities in the Middle Ages. The
confession thus wrung from the accused by the application of the rack
led to their execution, but it is on record that Pope Sixtus IV.
denounced their conviction and death as a murder.
The reverend anti-Semite tried his hand again, in the same line, in
conjunction with a renegade Jew, and came to grief. One Paul Meyer
“revealed” how a Christian boy, to his (Meyer’s) own knowledge, was
kidnapped and slaughtered for the purposes of Paschal rites by the hated
Hebrews. The sensational story was published in an anti-Semitic Vienna
newspaper. This was a deliberate challenge to inquiry and refutation.
The challenge was accepted by the Jews of the city, in a prosecution of
the _Vaterland_, when Meyer confessed in open court that the whole story
was an invention of his own, palmed off on both the priest and the
public.
An ex-professor of Hebrew in the University of Prague, an enthusiastic
student of Eastern cabalistic writings, has contributed very materially
to the revival in Poland, Bohemia, and Austria of these miserable
inventions. He has written a work in Latin on the subject, and he gives
the impression of an honest fanatic who is in the grip of a mysterious
investigation. He also falls back upon a converted Jew as a guide, and
is led to believe in the authenticity of certain cabalistic writings
shown to him by this man, Brimamo. He quotes from one of these books,
the “Ha-likkutim,” a passage which the credulous _padre_ is convinced
proves the employment of the blood of Christian maidens in these
unhallowed Hebrew ceremonies. This quotation is found, on critical
examination, to refer to a passage in the Bible dealing with the
supernatural world, in which the colour of the blood of a virgin is
taken as emblematical of the Day of Judgment. There is nothing whatever
beyond this in Brimamo’s work to justify the inference that Christian
maidens’ blood is sometimes used in Jewish sacrifices.
In the same book Canon Röhling draws upon other cabalistic documents for
suggestions and innuendoes tending to uphold his case, but in every
instance in which he quotes passages to support his propositions, they
are found, on close inspection, to convey no such meaning as he attempts
to attach to them. There is not, in fact, a solitary authenticated
instance of this sanguinary sacrifice given in his two works, “My
Replies to the Rabbis,” and “The Controversy and the Human Sacrifices of
Rabbinism,” both published in 1883. Still, these writings have been
widely read, and have done much harm in misleading minds that look for
truth and Christian guidance from clerical authors.
Can nothing effective be done to kill this legend? I quote in an
appendix, some pronouncements from Bulls issued by Popes Innocent IV.,
Gregory X., Martin V., Nicholas V., and Paul III., all reprobating this
blood accusation as being a groundless and monstrous invention, and a
general pretext for the plundering of Jews. These enlightened words of
denunciation were addressed to the rulers, prelates, and people of the
Middle Ages, some of them so far back as six hundred years ago. Can this
example not be followed now when the reputable press of all civilised
countries would willingly co-operate in a just crusade against this
hoary-headed, crime-stained infamy?
It has been urged that as anti-Semitism in France, Austria, and Germany
is a political movement, a denunciation of the use of the murder-legend
calumny would probably be misconstrued. This is a highly sensitive but
very inconsistent position. Surely, when Socialism--which is a far
greater and nobler political movement in each of these countries--can
be vigorously condemned, on assumed moral and Catholic grounds; an
agitation relying upon literature and legends, convicted of forgery and
lies, and condemned again and again by the Holy See itself; and which
has the killing or torture of fellow beings as its _ultima ratio_,
should claim some measure of earnest repudiation and moral censure at
the hands of Catholic Powers, temporal and spiritual.
His Holiness Pope Pius, the Emperor of Austria, and the Tsar could
easily draw the fangs of this murder legend. To no other minds in
Christendom could the consequences of this horrible calumny of long and
infamous vitality be more odious or hateful. It is a reproach and
disgrace to Christianity that certain notorious clerical organs in
France and Austria persistently circulate these incitations to fanatical
outrage, and a stain upon the political life of Austria, Roumania, and
Russia, whose governments tolerate this poisonous propaganda. It is a
pestiferous evil that could be readily stamped out if the wish and will
to rid Europe of its baleful influence could overcome the opportunist
counsels of a spiritless _entourage_, which prevent the three best and
greatest potentates in Europe from realising all the evils, religious,
moral, and political, that spring from this perennial source of
shameless sectarian rancour, bloodshed, and crime.