J e w i s h  R i t u a l -
M u r d e r :   a   H i s t o r i c a l   I n v e s t i g a
t i o n
Der jüdische Ritualmord: Eine historische Untersuchung
von Hellmut Schramm, Ph. D.

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Marie Klima

A blood-murder which remained unsolved had preceded by a few
years the two ritual-murders of the years 1898/99 in the same
Bohemian district of Tschaslau. In 1894 a non-Jewish servant
girl, Hlawin, "disappeared" from the house of the Jew Bretter in
Kolin. After approximately a month her body was found on the right
bank of the Elbe. She was not bloated although she allegedly was supposed
to have lain in the water for four weeks; all signs indicated clearly that
the body had been cast into the water in a de-blooded
condition.
(Report of the Deputy Schneider in the Austrian
Reichstag on 10 November 1899).

Four years later, on 17
July 1898, the daughter of the cottager Franz Klima of
Ober-Wieschnitz near Polna, the 23 year-old Marie Klima, was
murdered, but the body was just discovered on 27 October 1898, so
that further inquiries about the murderer or murderers were made extremely
difficult. Maria Klima had participated in an outing in the
so-called Herrschaftswald [literally: forest of the
authority/rulership] on 17 July, a Sunday and remained
missing from that day as if she had vanished from the surface of the
world. On 27 October 1898 the Herrschaftsjäger [a hunter in
the forest] Chalupa found the body, which was lying with the head
downwards, the arms widely outstretched, and the feet violently drawn
up with the heels turned toward the back, under a brushwood hill. --
We shall see how these circumstances will be of the greatest significance
in the handling of the following murder case!

At the end of May
1899, a farmer found a knife hidden in the moss, not far distant from
the murder site, and later shreds from pieces of clothing which belonged
to Marie Klima were discovered. They indicated that they'd been
torn from the body of the victim. The investigations begun by a court
commission ran their course without a result. On the basis of several
statements by witnesses, points of suspicion were increasingly thickening
(268)around one of the numerous Jewish
inhabitants of the place, the Jewish vagabond Leopold Hilsner, with
whose person we will have to deal more closely. But, for some
incomprehensible reason, the authorities in charge in Polna and
Kuttenberg did not pursue the matter further, although in the
meantime a new case of murder, totally similar in form, and only a
few meters in distance from the first murder site, had caused the greatest
consternation and excitement in the populace.

Leopold Hilsner

This
23 year-old, already an extremely typical representative of Eastern Jewry,
was viewed in the Bohemian district of Polna as a work-shy, rotten
fellow, who nevertheless was always amply supplied with money, about whose
origin he could give no definite account. With his brother Itzig
and his mother, he resided in the cellar rooms of the seedy Jewish school
in Polna, which simultaneously served as synagogue. The
"apartment" of Hilsner resembled -- according to the judicial
house-search protocol of 13 April 1899 -- "more a cave than a human
dwelling." The judge found two rooms filled with human excrement (!). The
old lady Hilsner "earned" her living by begging old clothes and reselling
them. Despite his youth, Hilsner had repeatedly come into conflict
with the courts. Now and then he went on an "outing," i.e., he moved
around importuning as a member of the Jewish beggar proletariat and -- as
his biographer Nußbaum expresses it euphemistically -- "here and
there probably accepting work." Thus, also a short time after the murder
of Marie Klima, Hilsner had suddenly "gone out of town,"
only to return to Polna many weeks later.

Hilsner, it
was proved, also was in Vienna. Here he possibly already established
contacts with his taskmasters who, thanks to the sloppiness of the
inquiries of the authorities, also remained undiscovered. When this
vagabond was back home again, he mostly roamed the woods of the
surrounding area and molested young girls who (269) were on their way to their work places -- the
prototype of the racial profaner! As was later established before the
court, he had shamelessly misused a young girl, the maidservant Anna
Benesch who resided in Polna, by making the promise to marry
her and to let himself be baptized. When she finally escaped from
his claws, he stalked her with threatening letters, one of which was later
read out in the courtroom. Various witnesses deposed that Hilsner,
already as a very young man, harassed girls in public and molested them
with his hands. When the inquiries concerning Marie Klima, who was
murdered on 17 July 1898, remained unsuccessful for a long period
of time, another young girl, Agnes Hruza, once exclaimed out of
instinct in the presence of witnesses: "It's possible that Hilsner
murdered her. He was always following her!" -- She couldn't know that she
had already been selected as the next ritual-murder victim.

Agnes Hruza

The barely 19 year-old seamstress Agnes Hruza walked
daily to her place of employment in Polna from Klein-Wieschnitz, a
little village separated from Polna only by fields and thickly
wooded strips, the so-called Brezinawald. In this little country town in
the Tschaslau district (Bohemia), more than 200 Jews were then living
among the scarcely 5000 inhabitants, predominantly in a particular
section, the "Judenstadt" ["Jew City"]. On 29 March 1899,
the girl was making her way home in the evening toward six o'clock, but
remained missing since then. An enormous excitement got hold of the
populace, for it had been more than eight months ago when Marie
Klima had disappeared without a trace. The Jewish population
persisted in a provocative indifference. Then, three days later, on
Sunday of Holy Week (!) 1899, a gendarmerieau team [i.e.,
police detachment] discovered the frightful crime: on the edge of the
Brezinawald, only six meters distant from the foot-path, hidden among
dense shrubbery and fresh brushwood, they came across the corpse of
Agnes Hruza, which, covered only with scraps of clothing, offered a
horrendous sight. Similar to the body of Marie Klima found a few
months previously, she was lying on her belly, a piece of shirt (270) was drawn over her head. A deep furrow of
strangulation on the right side of the neck showed that a noose had been
thrown over the head of the victim, in the manner of a highwayman. On the
left side of the neck, this furrow coursed into a frightful gaping wound,
which, after the manner of a ritual-slaughter cut, ran from under
the right side, diagonally upwards toward the left side in the direction
of the ear and had severed through the soft tissues down to the vertebral
column. The head was lying upon the crossed hands. The legs were sharply
bent at an oblique angle, and traces of blood were to be found only in
wholly insignificant volume, which was quite odd. Around the site of
discovery, the missing pieces of clothing of the murdered victim were
strewn in every direction in a peculiar manner. In the direct vicinity, a
large piece of coarse canvas was found, in the center of which a bloody
spot was so folded, as though someone wiped off a bloody knife!

The
autopsy findings of the court physicians, Dr. Michalek and
Dr. Prokeš gave, aside from supplying terrible details, the cause
of death as fatal exsanguination, although as mentioned, only
insignificant traces of blood were found. Therefore the blood must
have been collected in a container. In the case of Marie Klima, as
well as in this murder case, the knees had been acutely bent in order to
let the last drops of blood run out, according to the judgement of the
experts. At the trial, Dr. Michalek stated that Hruza "was
as if made out of wax in the upper and the lower parts of her
entire body"(stenographic report) (1). The
gaping neck wound could have been produced only with a strong and long
knife -- like the crime in general, it had been committed with unusual
cruelty. One of the usual murder cases: sexual murder, lust murder or
murder with robbery, were ruled out due to the interior and exterior
findings concerning the body. -- "Hruza was slit open like a
piece of cattle," was the opinion of the people!

On the first day
of the Easter celebration in 1899, strong grounds for suspicion
were already leading to an interrogation at Hilsner's house. As
several witnesses expressed, he had already been methodically stalking his
victim for a long time. Since he got caught up in contradictions, the
local gendarmerie chief Klenovec, in (271) agreement with the city council, arranged the
arrest of Hilsner. Thereupon Klenovec received an "offer" of
25,000 Fl. from the Jewish factory owner Sim, if he, the
Wachtmeister [master of the watch or guard], should succeed in
"finding out the true perpetrator" (Nußbaum, p. 64). -- Klenovec
formed his own opinion of the mission of the Jew, and reported it to the
authorities. . .

As examining judge, of all people, the
baptized Catholic Jew Reichenbach was appointed, who had
nothing more urgent to do than to set Hilsner free again, and did
not even depose him!

About one week after the discovery of the
body, the Czech editor Yaromir Husek wrote to the (anti-Semitic)
Deputy Schneider(2) in
Vienna the following letter:
"Esteemed Sir! In Polna, a 19
year-old girl, Agnes Hruza, was murdered by a Jew. When a Jewish
judge(3) [was
appointed] there, he has now already made attempts to hush up the
entire story. The Jewish murderer was seen by Frau Hruza(4), the
wife of the head of the congregation, and was a certain Leopold
Hilsner, a 22 year-old Jew. The Jew seized the woman, and after he
saw that it was not the same one he was waiting for, he let her loose and
directly afterwards the single woman Agnes Hruza was murdered. The
Jew was arrested due to the urging of all the people, but soon released by
the Jewish judge. Please intervene directly with the Justice Minister, so
that a non-partisan court commission is entrusted with the case, otherwise
the Jewish judge will be in a position to erase all traces of the
murderer and to help him; we already have many examples of his
flagrant partisanship. I have published that in the Ceske Zaimy,
but the issue was confiscated, as usual, therefore I have no other
recourse than to turn to you and to request energetic intervention.
There is danger in delay!
Yaromir Husek"

(272) The Deputy arranged for publication of the
letter in both of the two German Vienna daily papers, in the Deutsche
Zeitung and the Deutsches Volksblatt and the forwarding of the
letter to Justice Minister Ruber.

But only after a long time
was the arrest of Hilsner even ordered -- in any event, the
murderer had found sufficient time to cover his tracks. As a result [of
the arrest], the Jews of Polna and the surrounding region emigrated
in large numbers, mostly to Prague and Vienna! The populace
boycotted Jewish businesses, the Polna town savings bank withdrew
credit from Jews. In a community situated in the vicinity of Polna,
inhabited mostly by Germans, the last Jew was finally shown the gate with
an accompaniment of music! In reply to the question of a correspondent, as
to whether Polna was being harmed economically by the decampment of
the Jews, the Mayor Sadil drew the excellent analogy: "It is just
as if a person got rid of scabies" (Nußbaum, p. 37).

The Five-day Jury-Court Trial in Kuttenberg
(12-16
September 1899)

First of all, Hilsner denied everything before the
jury-court at Kuttenberg. He even went so far as to claim that he had not
known the murdered girl at all. The trial, which was causing a great
sensation, yielded the further revealing fact that Hilsner had to
have committed the murder with two more foreign Jewish accomplices.
This crew of killers had surfaced in Polna shortly before the
crime, had found a hiding place in the nook and cranny of the Jewish
school, where no regulations for reporting [i.e., as hotels and boarding
houses had to do] were heeded, and had likewise disappeared again without
a trace.

Marie Pernicek, the woman in service with the Rabbi
of Polna, stated before the court (Protocol 30 from 29 July 1899)
that on the day after the murder of Hruza, a strange "bent"
Jew of creepy appearance, with a longish face pockmarked by pox scars, and
with a dark full beard -- he is described by this witness in a very
detailed fashion which conforms to the statements of other witnesses --
(273) had eaten lunch with her employer and was
very hungry. The Rabbi's wife had the girl wash off the sofa on which this
"bent" Jew had sat, "so that the children would not become ill, since the
stranger had had the blue pustules! [an expression used to mean small pox
lesions]"

According to another part [of the testimony] this witness
further explained that during her six years of service with Rabbi
Goldberger, she had been regularly offered wine before the Easter
celebration; she then fell asleep as if passing out; on the next
morning she was extremely weak and noticed numerous piercing cuts
on her arms. The girl took this to mean that she had been
bled!

Naturally Rabbi Goldberger also denied everything
before the court, although Pernicek declared she wanted to make her
statement under oath.

The fate of this witness further on might be
taken as proof of the truth of her weighty testimony. First, she was
dismissed without notice by Goldberger; poverty forced her to take
a position with another Jew. As soon as a few days later, she was taken to
the Deutschbroder hospital with grave symptoms of poisoning.
The non-Jewish chief physician, who immediately admitted the pitiable
girl, was called away across county by means of a fake phone call,
while the Jewish assisting physician who was taking his place
transported his victim to death in the shortest time! The forensic autopsy
found an air embolism as well as destruction of the walls of the stomach
by acids. The witness Marie Pernicek had become the victim
of a Jewish Feme [Femen (plural) were unofficial and secret
tribunals held in 14th and 15th century Westphalia]! The cash-book of the
Jewish congregation in Polna for this day lists the following
entry: "Today, 500 Fl. to a devout [member] for a work in the service
of God." -- "The work in service to God was the elimination of the
witness!" (Karl Holz). The mother of the murdered girl, the cottager Marie
Hruza, further testified in court, that unknown men, supposedly
from Vienna and Prague, appeared at her residence in
Wieschnitz under the pretext of examining the completed dresses of
her daughter [recall that the daughter was a seamstress]. While doing so,
they stared sharply at her daughter and commented that she was big and
strong -- evidence that the crime, planned for a long time, had been
systematically prepared for and then, at the order of a Jewish
headquarters, (274) had been carried out! In
both instances [i.e., the two murders] they had made very clever use of
the depraved vagabond Hilsner, who was constantly in need of money.
-- Two days before the murder, the Rabbi of Polna had said to
Hilsner's mother: "Your son is still predestined for something
great!" (Statement of the witness Anna Pokorna.)

On the
day before the crime (28 March) witnesses noticed a long and broad
so-called ritual-slaughter knife in a leather case with Hilsner. On
being asked what he wanted to do with it, he answered evasively. On the
evening before the crime, Hilsner met the witness Josepha
Vytlacil on the Ringplatz [a circular plaza functioning as a
city square]. To begin with he made some references to Agnes Hruza
and then asked the witness whether she was afraid. Upon her replying in
the negative, the Jew stated that he too was unafraid and at that, pulled
a larger knife a little ways out from a leather case which he was carrying
in the inner pocket of his coat. The witness explained that she saw the
knife and the case clearly by the shining of the lantern.

This
knife was delivered to him from outside. Hilsner himself behaved
with extreme impudence and arrogance, entirely sure of himself and of the
general support of World Jewry during the trial in Kuttenberg. The
editor of the Vienna Deutsches Volksblatt, Hanns Arnold
Schwer, to whom we are indebted for essentially laying down the
written record of the trial by means of stenographic recording, described
Hilsner in his time as the "prototype of a wharf punk, of those
impudent Jewish scoundrels whom we in Vienna have also gotten to
know all too well.(5)"

(275)One third of the audience
consisted of press Jews, whose rude heckling was an attempt to repeatedly
disturb the course of the proceedings, especially the testimony of
witnesses which was inconvenient. In accord with time-tested Jewish
tactics, the court was bombarded literally day and night with telephone
and telegraphic inquiries, with letters and interpellations. The World
Jewish press and World Jewish finance worked feverishly, sessions of the
Landstag [regional German legislative body] were called. In order to be
able to deflect the suspicion of murder from Hilsner and to be able
to divert the attention of the World public from a ritual-murder even at
the last minute, the Jewish defense devised the unscrupulous method, by
the liberal use of bribery money, of declaring the bookbinder's assistant
Janda of Polna, who was interned in a Prague mental
hospital, and whose diagnosis, contained in the records over the
course of [an examination of] ten days, revealed without question
serious mental illness, -- of declaring him, on the other hand, to
be normal after one night, so that in fact his arrest and following
imprisonment in Kuttenberg occurred in order to convict him of the
murder! But since even with the best will in the world, nothing could be
done with this mentally ill person, Janda, pronounced "healthy,"
was immediately handed over again to the mental hospital. (From the speech
of Dr. Baxa in the Bohemian Landstag at Prague of 17 May
1899.) In these goings on, the Court Chairman, President Dr.
Jezek maintained his equanimity, so that these disgraceful
maneuvers remained futile, at least until the pronouncement of judgement.
Naturally the Jewish defense counsel Aurednicek pulled out all the
stops in his talmudic repertoire to save his racial comrade. His
ignorance, with which he sought to refute the expert opinion of both
medical men, merely evoked merriment!

After the conclusion of the
presentation of the evidence, after five tumultuous days at trial, which
had overwhelmingly incriminated Hilsner, the private attorney of
the Hruza family, the previously mentioned Dr. Baxa, (276) proved in his sensational speech(6), which
even today still can be described as fundamental and is instructive to
read, that, supported by the expert medical opinion, the usual motives in
murder cases were excluded as the motive in this one. The murderers
had also this time, as in an entire series of preceding cases,
counted upon [the murder] remaining undiscovered. Agnes Hruza
became a martyr. The murderer did not want the life of the girl, did not
want her insignificant possessions, did not want her honor [i.e., rape],
but rather the blood, which was meticulously collected. "From the
hall of the Kuttenberg circuit court, today it resounds beyond into all
Gaue [The Gau is a political district analogous to a
province.], that among human society live human beings who demand the
blood of their fellow men." -- With that, this incorruptible attorney
went to the core of the matter. It is the duty of the authorities
and of the state [he said], it is the duty of all mankind in general, to
discover who these criminals are, in order to reveal this terrible secret!
Polna is not the end, but rather just the beginning of an
investigation to bring light onto this frightful secret, so that all of
non-Jewish humanity could breath a sigh of relief!

How very
much international Jewry had feared this concluding address may follow
from the fact that shortly before, the signal had been given to accompany
the speech with demonstrations of applause in order to cause a clearing of
the courtroom. Thanks to the discipline of the non-Jewish portion of the
audience, the attempt failed. After the disarming performance of Dr.
Baxa, the defense attorney Aurednicek, paid with 15,000 Fl.,
confined himself to weakening the acceptance of a ritual-murder by
referring to papal decrees which described these murders as
improbable!

The judgement of the Court of Justice of 16
September 1899, which condemned Hilsner to death by hanging,
was accepted with thunderous approval by the crowd, excitedly waiting in
thousands before the circuit court at Kuttenberg, but not only
because a Jew had been condemned, but rather one of those accursed
"Germans" -- as, indeed, the Czech anti-Semitism of that time was involved
with an extremely peculiar (277) connection
with anti-German sentiment, since the Jews, who besides bore
"German" names and made use of the German language (mostly in the form of
a downright grotesque gibberish), had not been clearly recognized as being
of the Jewish race. "The natural racial defensive instinct of the
(Czech) people had not yet arrived at full consciousness."(7)

In
the Austrian Reichsrat [state council], in the session of 10
November 1899, the Deputy Schneider explained as follows in regard to
the criminal intrigues of the Jews, staged under pretense of being German:
"In the name of my party and in the name of all my voters from Vienna, and
of all Austrians and Germans, I protest with utmost resolve against the
fact that we Germans are confused with the Jews, or that the Jews are
regarded in any way as being Germans.

It is necessary that this is
said clearly for once, so that the peace between the nationalities
and the understanding among the nationalities might be able to take
root, for as long as this distinction is not made between us and
the Jews, the Jews will always succeed in agitating the [various]
peoples. . ."

One ritual-murderer seemed to have been rendered
harmless forever. Hilsner had behaved in a totally indifferent
manner, he knew already that it would never come down to his being
executed!

Had Jewry, already during the preliminary investigation,
and then especially in the course of the trial, as Hilsner became
more and more incriminated of the murder, tried by every means to
influence the outcome of the proceedings, at the least not to have the
suspicion of a ritual-crime arise -- the implications from earlier,
similarly fashioned crimes were still too strong -- so, now, denunciations
of unbelievable brazenness were staged to remove the confession of
ritual-murder, highly fatal for Jewry, from out of [the awareness of] the
world and to declare Hilsner to be an honorable man. Already,
during the preliminary investigation, a very dubious role had been played
by the Jewish (278) examining judge
Reichenbach. This Jew had managed to at first set the arrested
Hilsner at liberty again, until his final securing had to occur.
Witnesses who had voluntarily reported in order to set down important
statements and facts in the murder case, were shouted at by him and shown
the door. On the other hand, he applied himself to be provokingly obliging
toward the Polna Jews. One of the main prosecution witnesses, the
shoemaker's helper Franz Vesely in Polna, raised the serious
reproach during the jury-trial in Kuttenberg, that his statements,
recorded in the protocols, had been subsequently falsified. -- Faithful to
the Jewish principle: Not the murderers, but the murdered or his/her
relatives are guilty, this same Reichenbach could dare, even after
pronouncement of the judgement, to accuse the mother of Agnes
Hruza, sick at heart from the terrible blow of fate, as well as the
sister and the brother, the mason Johann Mauer, of the horrible
crime. The circumstance, that Agnes, as a consequence of the
miserable economic conditions, wanted to give up her position in a sewing
shop in Polna, and hire herself outside of town as a maid, was
interpreted by the Jews as a matter of her having disputes at home which
could have (!) gradually taken on the form that the family wanted to "get
rid" of the girl! At the funeral of his sister, Johann Hruza is
supposed to have "always conspicuously carried" one hand "in his pocket"
(Nußbaum, page 86). This hand was "scratched" -- this untrue claim soon
had to be taken back -- also, the mother had had a blue mark! This was
approaching the Masaryk construction: the girl had not been
murdered at the place where the body was discovered, but elsewhere, then
had been packed in a vehicle and driven away! -- And the fact of
the cut to the neck? This was just performed on the body later, "in
order to charge the Jews with a ritual-crime"! (Masaryk and Bulova.)

All was in the best of order: The Jew Reichenbach had
greedily seized upon these "discoveries." In a brutal manner he arranged a
house search at the Hruza family residence, walls were scraped bare, (279) floor boards ripped up, clothing confiscated,
in order to uncover traces of blood! The relatives of the murdered girl
were actually arrested! After their arrest, the ritual-slaughterer of
Polna broke into the property of the Hruzas, to produce "blood
traces" later with a brush and cow blood (recorded witness
statements!).

The wife of the mason Hruza, who was looking
forward to her confinement [i.e., childbirth], and whose condition was
powerfully affected as a result of the frightening excitement, lapsed into
seizures when her husband was led away by the local gendarmes. In
the evening she gave birth to a girl, and in the morning both mother and
child were dead -- they, too, became victims of the Jewish Feme!
The Jewish daily papers brought out the headlines: "Hilsner is innocent!"
or: "A beastly mother assassinates her own child!" -- The mother of the
unfortunate Esther Solymosi had also been accused of the homicide
of her child!

The daily papers which reported on the Polna
trial in an objective manner or which had pointed out the brutal
behavior of the Jew Reichenbach, were ruthlessly confiscated and sentenced
to high fines, while the Jew-friendly press was permitted to publish
falsehood upon falsehood unmolested, or shameless libels about even the
jurors and the court. -- "The most recent events which have taken place in
this affair are apt to stand Austrian justice on its head" -- that is the
theme of an interpellation of some deputies to the royal and imperial
Minister President Count Clary in the session of the Prague House
of Deputies of 21 October 1899. The representative of the
prosecution, state's attorney Dr. Schneider-Swoboda, Kuttenberg, was
relieved of office, in connection with the Hilsner trial, because
of "unjudicial conduct" and as punishment pensioned off at half retirement
salary. The Reichsrat Deputy Professor Schlesinger asserted
on this account to the Justice Minister that consequently no Jew would any
longer be permitted to be condemned by a judge. . . that Jewry stood
above the courts and was able depose judges who had become
troublesome to it. . . that the higher court authorities had debased
themselves to the point of becoming legal myrmidons serving Jewish
leaders. . .(Petition to His Excellency the Lord Justice Minister (280) on 25 October 1899). The Court Chairman
in Kuttenberg, circuit court President Councilor Dr. Jezek
fared likewise. A slanderous, purely tendentious announcement of some
rabbis from Brünn, Prague, and other places sufficed at the
Justice Ministry in Vienna, so that disciplinary proceedings on
account of supposedly non-objective conduct were initiated against a
proven and highly respected judge! Futhermore, he was reproached with
having tolerated the presence of the "mob" (what was meant was the
non-Jewish portion of the public, composed mostly of high and the highest
circles!) in the courtroom! "In view of this event of the royal and
imperial Ministry of Justice, contrary to law and crying out to the
heavens. . .the undersigned pose the question: How can the Ministry of
Justice justify these unlawful occurrences. . .?" (Interpellation of the
Deputy Breznovsky and comrades of 26 October 1899.)

The Jury-Court Trial of Pisek
(25 October - 14
November 1900)

The body of Hruza had been completely drained of
blood; since at the scene of the crime itself there was no pool of blood,
the blood had to have been collected, as is done with a slaughtered beast.
But where did it go? Two (female) witnesses observed on the day of the
murder (29 March 1899), how a Jew (the so-called "bent" Jew, one of
the accomplices of Hilsner who remained unknown) was carrying a
vessel wrapped in a waxed linen cloth out of the residence of the
Polna Rabbi Goldberger in a state of extreme excitement.
About one and a half months after the murder -- therefore the middle of
May -- the post office confiscated a small package mailed by the Jewish
cantor Moriz Kurzweil in Goltsch-Jenikau to the Rabbi
Goldberger in Polna, which had been declared as a "perfume
shipment." But the shipment contained a small bottle in heavily perfumed
cotton padding, which was filled with small brownish-red balls that gave
every appearance of being pulverized blood. In order to be certain,
the district court at Polna sent the extremely suspicious contents
to Prague for analysis; but the result of the (281) examination was never sent! Already at that
time, at the turn of the century, the medical faculty was strongly larded
with Jews.

The defense counsel of the Jews, Aurednicek, had
stated before several witnesses that the judgement against Hilsner
would be annulled by the Cassations Court [a court which heard appeals] in
Vienna and that a further trial against him would not occur! It
should be mentioned in this connection that Aurednicek, accompanied
by the Rabbi of Kuttenberg, had presented a petition to the
Kaiser [Emperor] in Vienna. Jewry was so sure of itself in
Old Austria, that it regarded even a sentence of death, pronounced against
a racial comrade after a protracted trial, as not able to be implemented!
Of what use, then, was a proposal formulated in an interpellation of 21
October 1899 by some courageous deputies, that "suitable precautions
be taken that baptized and unbaptized Jews be able to practice no
influence at the Cassations Court!"

Upon the "nullification
complaint" of the Jewish defense counsel, the Cassations Court in
Vienna called in a "higher expert opinion" from the Czech medical
faculty in Prague. This -- we already know all we need to know
about the university expert opinions of those years, when we recall
preceding trials -- had to likewise determine that the neck wound,
performed with a sharp instrument, was the fatal wound, and that suicide
or murder at another location was from the start excluded, since in this
respect the case was so clear that a demonstration was unnecessary. The
killer was standing -- we cite this verbatim! -- "at the moment when he
made the cut, behind Agnes Hruza; a situation in which the cut can
be produced." A noose had been thrown over the victim beforehand. In this
point, the faculty expert opinion concurred fully with the expert opinion
of the court physicians; but the latter were able at the scene to find
only totally insignificant, strictly limited traces of blood, which more
resembled blood spray (Dr. Prokeš, according to the trial
stenography), while the Prague professors, although they were not
at all in a position to determine this subsequently, believed that the
blood found corresponded to the presumed blood loss, and the expert
opinion of the court physicians was incorrect (Nußbaum, page 2).
For: "there is a lack of positive knowledge and critical abilities (282) only too frequently, especially in expert
opinions of local medical men. . .They are often simple country
doctors, who, cut off from the progress of medical
knowledge, conduct a practice in coarse style and possess not
even the remotest expertise necessary for difficult forensic cases,
which indeed here only the specialist can lay claim to; they (the
country doctors) were selected by the court because others were not
obtainable. . ." (Nußbaum, page 52). We recall previous trials:
"uneducated" officials, who were so coarse as to pursue tracks which
indicated Jews, were as quickly replaced as "simple," "primitive," country
doctors, who had discovered that a human body which had died from a
horrible cut neck had been drained of blood!

The Cassations Court
in Vienna annulled the Kuttenberg judgement of 16 September
1899 and referred the trial to the jury-court at Pisek after
one year's time (25 October - 14 November 1900). Here in
Pisek, now, "the assumption of a ritual-murder was excluded
officially, consequently the ritual-slaughter knife no longer makes any
sense". . ."All in all: The assumption that Hilsner could have
committed a ritual-murder of Agnes Hruza, is plainly
absurd. That the state's attorney admits, even if for the first
time in Pisek -- before the Cassations Court no less, by the way --
explicitly and without reservation. But what motive is supposed to
have impelled Hilsner to the horrible crime?" -- Nußbaum adds
ingenuously (8).

Even
the motive of the crime seemed to have been described by the expert
opinion of the faculty(9): "The
motives could be various. The possibility must be taken into consideration
that the murder and the handling (!) of the body. . .is the act of a
person haunted by sexual perversity."

The girl fell victim
to the "perverse-sadistic" inclinations of some sort of debauched person
-- the high-school boy Winter in Konitz in the same year was
also put down as the victim of perverse company! -- This "motive" was
greedily grasped in the Jewish newspapers!

(283) But they had miscalculated: To be sure, the
acceptance of a ritual-murder was dropped, since in Pisek
the earlier expert opinion of the court doctors was totally ignored after
the entry of the faculty expert opinion -- this Jewry could no doubt log
as a success. But this court also heard the proof for the murder of
Marie Klima. Leopold Hilsner was once again -- and indeed,
because of a proven double murder -- condemned to death by the
rope!

Before the circuit court at Pisek, too, on 14
November 1900, the day of the pronouncement of judgement, a crowd
which numbered in the several hundreds had gathered. The jury was greeted
with cheers. When the attorneys of the private [parties] concerned,
Baxa and Pevny, appeared, the crowd broke through the
barrier and -- according to the contemporary description of the
Prague Bohemia -- prepared a celebratory reception for them;
they wanted to carry the advocates to their hotels upon their shoulders!
Both defense counsels of Hilsner, Aurednicek and
Vodicka, were able to be saved from violence only by a police
escort. On seeing them, the crowd broke out into ear-splitting cries of
Nieder! [Down with them!]. The same thing happened to the Germans
present, as previously in Kuttenberg, especially to the German
correspondents -- but perhaps they also knew that correspondents and Jews
were, in general, identical concepts! -- In the courtyards of both
barracks, the military stood in readiness, and even in the circuit court
building numerous officers appeared. The calming words of Dr. Baxa
succeeded in dispersing the crowd and restoring order after a short
interval. But Aurednicek was avoided in future by his Czech clients
and saw himself forced to remove to Vienna with his
practice!

The mother of Hilsner, however, developed a new
line of business for herself: with an instinct peculiar to her race, she
understood the situation brought about after the sentencing of her son
Leopold, who had succumbed to a "crime against justice," and
conducted a flourishing begging-letter business! (This designation
originates from A. Nußbaum himself!)

"Appeal, appeal!"

(284) If it was thanks only to
the presence of mind of non-Jewish men that Jews remained unscathed, yet
Jewry behaved all the more provocatively, at their head the Chief Rabbi
Güdemann in Vienna. In the Austrian capital and in all great
cities of the monarchy, he had circulated in hundreds of thousands of
copies a multilingual leaflet, in which he implored the gentiles "in the
name of Christ and the Virgin Mary" to demand the release of the good,
innocent Hilsner! He possessed the amazing impudence to write at
the end of this effusion, word for word: "If you still wish to be
Christians, think of your mother Mary, whose son was also nailed to the
cross! They also want to murder Leopold Hilsner, a poor mother's
son! Christendom, show now that you are deeds and not just words!" -- We
have been able to turn up no pastoral letter which denounced this
blasphemy. The church kept silent about it. The frenzy of the world press
was all the more fierce. In parliaments, it came to uproar and scandalous
scenes. Yet judges and attorneys had remained incorruptible and stood by
their pronouncement of judgement. In this critical situation, the savior
of Jewry arose: the half-Jew Thomas Garrigue Masaryk, former
professor of the Prague academy and leader of the Czech People's
Party, had had from the beginning a close relationship to Jewry at his
disposal; during his time as a student in Vienna he had lodged in
the Leopoldstadt, which was chiefly inhabited by Jews, and had finally
become a tutor to the Jewish families of Schlesinger and
Stern (A. Rosenberg, Protokolle der Weisen von Zion
[Protocols of the Elders of Zion]): he moved predominantly in
influential Jewish circles, to whom he especially owed a debt of
gratitude. Therefore he was the man suited to take on the "case" in the
perspective of Judah. Although he had neither been at the scene of the
horrible crime nor gone through the revealing court hearings, he
"analyzed" the Polna murder in a brochure in order to, as it says
in the foreword, to "make up for the disgrace which the Czech press has
brought upon Bohemia and Austria by its acceptance of a ritual-murder"
(Münchener Neueste Nachrichten [Munich Latest News], 8
November 1899, page 2). (285) He wrote
further: "I admit it openly, that the condemnation of Hilsner has
affected me deeply. Me, I who feel a warm affinity and love for the
Übervolk [Super-Folk] of the Jews, which continually distinguishes
itself from other peoples by its high ethics. . .charges,
witnesses, judges and doctors have fallen victim to the suggestion of
ritual-murder. Even if Hilsner had committed the murder, which
I will never believe, this is still far from being a ritual-murder,
but rather an act of self-defense, the spontaneous explosion of that
accumulated suffering and of that torment which have been done to the
Jewish people in the cruellest manner for centuries." From this point on,
he managed, as the result of his "investigations," to accuse the mother of
the murdered girl, which the examining judge Reichenbach had
already attempted to do. Masaryk concluded: "For Hilsner,
innocently condemned to death, I demand an appeal! That this appeal
will come, of that I have no doubt!"

"Appeal, appeal, so the whole
Jewish band and their helpers, as in the Dreyfuß trial, now screamed in
the murder trial of Polna, . A creature of the Jews, Professor
Masaryk in Prague, has composed a brochure full of the most
lying accounts about the ritual-murder of Polna, from which the
Munich organ of the Alliance Israélite, the Neueste
Nachrichten, has published an excerpt. While this paper buried all
information up till now about the trial, it dedicates the widest space to
the shameful work of Masaryk, for the Jewish lies are supposed to be
brought to the people!" (10)

This
denunciatory piece of agitation writing of Masaryk was
enthusiastically grasped by the international Jewish press and published
in excerpts in all large cities: in Vienna, Berlin,
Paris, London, Budapest, and New York; the
subsequent confiscation of this infamous pamphlet could change nothing.
The Münchener Neueste Nachrichten, after the Berliner
Tageblatt [Berlin Daily] the influential organ at that time of
the AIU for Germany, printed one full page from this brochure! Theodor
Fritsch wrote in his Handbuch der Judenfrage [Handbook of the
Jewish Question]: (286) "Upon all trials in
the world which concern a Jew, it (the AIU) seeks to win determining
influence. Like an invisible power, it was evident everywhere. .
."

As "supplement and reinforcement" of his brochure, in the year
of the Pisek pronouncement of judgement Masaryk's book,
Die Bedeutung des Polnaer Verbrechens für den
Ritual-Aberglauben [The Meaning of the Polna Crime for the
Ritual-Superstition] followed. It states in conclusion: "I wanted to
conclude these Polna studies with the wish that they would
contribute to the rooting out of the ritual-superstition. During my
work it became clearer and clearer to me: the ritual-superstition is a
charge against the Bohemian people. The Jews of Bohemia and of the
Bohemian lands in general belong to the elite, not only of the
Austrian [Jewry], but of Jewry in general. -- How can one impute barbaric
ritual-murder to them! And if such an educated and morally
high-standing group of Jews as these of Bohemia -- if they had a
ritual-murder sect in their midst -- then how barbaric would the general
condition of the culture of us Christians have to be, in which such a sect
could have developed and kept itself?! The more one reflects about the
ritual-superstition, the more absurd and dangerous it must appear for our
people. Only an energetically conducted unbiased appeal of the
trial can remove the cultural, religious, medical, and judicial stain of
shame from Kuttenberg.!"

"Three famous scholars of the Law,
the criminal law instructors Professor Dr. Franz von Liszt,
Confidential Justice Councilor (Berlin), Professor Dr. G. Stoß (Vienna),
and the former President of the Chief District court of Vienna, His
Excellency Dr. von Krall, expressed themselves for the necessity of
the appeal of the trial,. . . the important attorney-at-law Dr.
Nußbaum in Berlin and Professor G. Masaryk in Prague
demonstrate in weighty books the untenability of the sentence, also
the Czech poet Machar stands up for Hilsner. . .In the house
of Deputies the well-known, conscientious Reichsrat Deputy Dr.
Julius Ofner -- likewise an important expert in the law -- along
with his comrades, directs an interpellation simply radiant in its
contents and composition to the Justice Minister, on 28 January
1907, for the reopening [of the case] according to § 362 StPO.; on
26 May 1907 the bold (287) advocate of
the mother of Hilsner, Dr. Elbogen, gave an
electrifying talk at the Verein zur Abwehr des
Antisemitismus [literally: Union for the beating back or fending off
of anti-Semitism] about this [case], on 18 March 1908, [there was]
a recent [meeting] in the Sophie Hall in front of a large public, which
was invited by a distinguished Committee appointed by the Union
'for defense,' after an appeal to the public conscience written by
it in December 1907, in the form of a petition to His
Majesty, had been transmitted to all readers as a supplement by the
Neue Freie Presse [New Free Press]."(11)

With
this we once again see the good society of Europe presented!

These
Jewish-free masonic powers, even if they had not arrived at full
development for certain reasons during both trials, had achieved total
success afterward. If we are also no longer informed today about
the details, so Hilsner was actually at first pardoned to
serve life-long imprisonment! Here he did not have it so bad. He, the
illiterate, got assigned a so-called "intelligence-cell" and was presented
with kosher food. Now and then he received visits from girls. But that an
authority had at all dared to condemn the Jewish vagabond and
ritual-murderer Hilsner, deeply offended the Berlin Jew
Nußbaum. In concluding consideration of both "cases" of
Hruza/Klima, he wrote in 1906 as follows in his
"criminal-psychological examination" on the Polna ritual-murder
trial, which was furnished with a "foreword" by the Franz v. Liszt
already named above because of the "scientific content of the account":
"On the whole, one must account the Hilsner trial as the saddest
aberration of the modern administration of justice. Among ritual-murder
trials, among which, despite the evasive etiquette, it belongs without
question, it is the most deplorable because it alone led to the
legally valid condemnation of the accused. The administration of justice
at any rate did not execute the judgement -- a clear sign that it
mistrusted the verdict of the jury -- but commuted the [sentence] of the
double-murderer to life-long (288)
imprisonment. Hilsner thereby kept his life. Thus he can and must
be helped. . .But it is not a matter here just of Hilsner. A
victory of justice would remain a shining landmark far beyond the
individual case: it would help save the adminstration of justice in the
future from the same aberrations. And more than anything else:
a horrible error of justice has been committed -- to atone
for this is an inescapable moral duty"

Nineteen years later,
after the collapse of the Danube monarchy, the "Übervolk" of the
Jews paid its trusted man his Judas reward: Masaryk, as a
high-degree Freemason, became President of the Czech-Slovakian republic,
god fathered by the Jews and Freemasons. The time was past when the Prague
students were still able to demonstrate against the scandal-writings of
Masaryk, so that he had to break off his lectures for some time;
forgotten, too, that incident about a year after the Polna trial,
when Masaryk was "coarsely insulted" in a small Bohemian city where
he was recognized (Nußbaum, page 6). Masaryk followed his "moral
duty" from now on: one of the first "acts" of the newly-baked President
was the release of Hilsner from prison. The latter was still to
enjoy a decade of freedom under the pseudonym Heller, with the best of
health, and supported by ample financial means. The inscription of his
"tomb of honor" in the Jewish Central Cemetary in Vienna
reads: "Leopold Hilsner (Heller), died 8 January 1928 in his
51st year. As the innocent victim of the ritual-murder lie he
languished 19 years in jail."

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Konitz
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Contents

Copyright 2001 by R. Belser.
Reproduction in whole or in part without express written permission of the
translator is not permitted. All rights reserved.