7.

The “Blood Libel”

Sadistic murders committed by the Jews to obtain Christian blood have spread out over several centuries, involved many countries and nations, given rise to a huge number of criminal cases, and created a vast literature in all possible languages. Nevertheless, each time a new ritual murder case appears, the Jews and their Christian yes-men give a furious yell: How does one dare to spread such “false libels”? How can one believe such “monstrous and incredible concoctions”?

However, “accusations of murder of Christian children by the Jews have, until now, been repeated and confirmed by investigations so many times that one cannot consider them to be simply a result of prejudice on the part of the Christians anymore,” writes, in his official report on the Jewish blood doctrine, archpriest Sidonsky, a member of the scholars’ commission that was established in connection with the Saratov case. To deny ritual murders, priest Pranaitis concludes, “one would have to assume the bad faith of all judges who have presided over such trials in the course of centuries and passed guilty verdicts... One would have to admit that chroniclers of various countries lied, as if they were in collusion, when they wrote about the completely similar circumstances of misdeeds and often repeated one another in the slightest details.” An analysis of individual ritual murder trials which took place in Western Europe would bury the account under the bulk of its materials. It is sufficient to mention, once again, the part of father Pranaitis’ expert opinion where he attests that, in some trials of this kind, the evidence was absolutely obvious and the culprits were even caught in the act, and some of the guilty verdicts were passed by the jury.

As far as the already examined Russian trials – the Velizh and Saratov cases – are concerned, some comparisons with the case of Andrei Yushchinsky’s murder are necessary here.

In all these three cases, one can clearly see the very characteristic feature of ritual murders, which was invariably present in a whole number of the corresponding Western European trials: The victim cannot be consigned to the earth, so dead bodies of the murdered children were thrown away “as carrion”, even if the murderers had all the possibilities to do what had been necessary for their safety: bury the body. From the perspective of an ordinary murder, such throwing away has no explanation. This is a senseless, insane action of people who had committed the murder, in other respects, in a very well-considered and skilful manner. But as soon as we regard these murders as ritual, we will immediately find the key to the elucidation of what otherwise seems inexplicable. Moreover, we will see that the criminals’ actions, insane for an ordinary murder, were the most reasonable for a ritual murder. Not far from the cave where Andrei Yushchinsky’s body was found, in the same remote and unpopulated Zagorovshchina, there were several abandoned wells, with their tops covered by all kinds of junk, deep and with quite a large amount of water, especially in the spring. The murderers, who showed a complete and clear knowledge of the area, obviously knew about their existence. Drowning the dead body there and heaping it up with the same junk – is it not much simpler and safer than dragging it into the cave? However, from the perspective of the rite, the drowning of a body in the water, in a well, is just as inadmissible as its burial in the ground; it must be thrown away. And in such case, one can think of nothing better than a remote cave. It is true that the smell of the decaying body would have eventually got the attention, but this danger cannot be eliminated at all when a body is thrown away, and, on the other hand, one had all the reasons to hope that, in such secluded place, the body would have remained undiscovered until it fully decayed, and then, the most important piece of evidence, produced by the look of the body and the results of its autopsy, would have been erased without a trace. Who could expect that some boy Ellansky, while playing with a friend, would get into the cave? And this completely accidental event only occurred on the ninth day after the murder.

And are these not the same features as those in the Saratov case? The body of murdered Sherstobitov was taken by the murderers to the Volga. It would seem that it was easier and safer to drown it there in the first ice hole. But no, the dead body was carried to an unpopulated island, which was flooded periodically by high water, to an osier-bed, and left there. When the body was found, it had rotten to such an extent that the autopsy could no longer establish very much. The murderers tried to do the same with the body of another boy who was murdered in Saratov, Maslov, while in Velizh, the body of four-year-old Fedor Emelyanov was thrown by the culprits into a swamp, a bush – almost the same approach.

Numerous wounds found on Emelyanov’s body have a striking similarity with the injuries of Andrei Yushchinsky. It is true that the autopsy report made almost one hundred years ago by a district doctor is, in general, completely unsatisfactory from the modern perspective. However, the description of the wounds as such is exact and clear: “small, round, almost half an inch in depth, similar to those made by large lead shot,” and these were made, in the doctor’s opinion, with “a nail whose sharp end was broken off on purpose.” If that doctor were to do an autopsy on Andrei Yushchinsky, he, most probably, would have made the same, literally identical conclusion for the most of the wounds found on the poor boy’s body. The medical report states that it is very difficult to hit a blood vessel with a piercing tool, and explains that such difficulty is removed if the tool is not a piercing, but a piercing and cutting one – in other words, if the end of such tool (e.g., a small or large awl, or a large nail) is broken off and then sharpened, if some cutting stretch is made on the end of the piercing tool. On the other hand, the chapters dedicated to ritual issues established a difference, from the perspective of the Judaic religious law, between the blood obtained by cutting (it must be covered) and the blood obtained by piercing (it is not necessary to cover it). This evidence brings us to the conclusion that if the victim’s body, after a ritual murder, is thrown away “as carrion”, then the blood during such murder must be obtained by the way of piercing, and since a cutting tool is inconvenient from a technical perspective, we make the natural conclusion that such tool must be sharpened: in such case, the law would be complied with (because the obtained blood could be regarded as obtained by piercing), and the technical difficulty would be removed (because a piercing tool, having been sharpened, is quite convenient to be used to hit blood vessels).

Thus, it turns out that exactly the same method was used both in the murder of Andrei Yushchinsky and, almost one hundred years ago, in the murder of Fedor Emelyanov.

“This deed was done to an undressed child as there was no sign of blood on his shirt at all,” writes the district doctor.

The same was done to Andrei Yushchinsky: he was undressed up to the shirt, and the murderers, as they made the stabs, raised the shirt and pricked the naked body.

“The lips are tightly pressed against the teeth, and the nose – against the mouth... The mouth was tightly tied up,” attests the district doctor about Fedor Emelyanov, and then surmises: “so that his screams could not be heard.”

In the case of Yushchinsky, “on the inner surface of the lips, marks from the pressing against the teeth, with scratches on the mucous membrane, were visible.”

The expert examination firmly established that the boy’s nose and mouth orifices were closed and the strangulation was brought to the moment when convulsions of the whole body appear and the loss of consciousness occurs.

It is much more than what was necessary to secure oneself against the child’s screams. Also, in the case of Emelyanov, it was hardly necessary to “press tightly the nose against the mouth” for that purpose alone, therefore, with regard to this evidence, so similar both in the case of Yushchinsky and Emelyanov, one must bear in mind: 1) the part of father Pranaitis’ expert opinion where he points out the specific, sacrificial and cabbalistic method of killing: “with a shut mouth, like [the death] of an animal which dies with no voice or speech”; 2) the indisputable fact that strangulation (closing, holding of both the mouth and the nose) causes a phenomenon which is quite important for the purposes of exsanguination: a strong inflow of blood to the exterior part of the body.

And the fact that Emelyanov’s murderers paid attention to the “blood circulation” is attested by the same doctor. His report states: “the [child’s] legs were strongly tied up in order to bring the flow of blood even more to the upper parts.”

Fedor Emelyanov was circumcised, and the nails on his hands and feet were cut to the flesh. The victims of the Saratov murders, Maslov and Sherstobitov, were also circumcised, and Sherstobitov’s nails were also cut to the flesh. Andrei Yushchinsky’s body had no traces of circumcision, but on his temple there was found a group of wounds, 13 in number, whose purpose was unclear and could be explained neither by the purpose to kill, nor by the desire to torture or torment, nor by the intention to collect blood from them, and, at the same time, there can be no doubt that those wounds were not inflicted accidentally, but rather on purpose, deliberately. And when the attention was turned to ritual issues, it was found that, according to the Kabbalah, each word has its numeric expression, and number 13 is the expression of the word Ehad, which is the same word that ends the prayer that every pious Jews must say when he passes into eternity, and all power of this prayer lies in this word. Furthermore, the Kabbalah text (Zohar, II, 119a), which establishes, according to the explanation of father Pranaitis, that “their [Am Haaretz’s – non-Jews’] death must be with a shut mouth, like that of an animal”, further says that “every day he must be killed in Ehad in the same way as cattle are killed – with twelve tests of the knife and with the knife, which amounts to thirteen.”

Thus, the unclear wounds which cannot be explained from the perspective of an ordinary murder become fully meaningful from the perspective of a ritual murder: the word which had a huge sacrificial significance for the sadistic murderers was inscribed on the victim’s temple.

I believe that this inscription, done on poor Andrei’s body, is a phenomenon from the same category as the circumcision carried out on Emelyanov, Maslov and Sherstobitov. This is the first act of the ritual murder and the shedding of blood: the bloody initiation of the victim.

The record of the Saratov case contains a testimony of Maria Slyunyayeva that she used to deliver blood from Saratov to Liady to Khatskel Konikov. The investigator, after such testimony, immediately made a sudden search in Khatskel Konikov’s house in Liady, and, under an icon case where a Seyfer Tora (Bible in parchment) was kept, found, in a special drawer, a canvas rag soaked in blood and wrapped in three half-sheets of paper with a printed text in Hebrew. These sheets contained a narrative about the slaughter of the first born of Egypt and sacrificial rites. The explanations of Khatskel Konikov and his people turned out to be obviously made up.

Thus, a Jew kept a canvas soaked in blood, in an environment which indicated that it was an object of religious significance – such was the fact firmly established by the results of the search, to which one should add the evidence accompanying such fact and relating to the reasons for such search.

Now, it turns out that in a work on ritual Jewish murders, published in Greek in Constantinople, which appeared for the first time fifty years before the occurrence of the Saratov case, the described way of use of Christian blood for Judaic rites is the one which corresponds well with the objects found in Liady: according to the disclosures of monk Neophytes, a former rabbi, rags are soaked in blood, and ashes obtained after their burning substitute the blood.

I would like to quote a rather remarkable opinion of a prominent expert on the East, bishop Porphyrius Uspensky. In the materials for his biography, published in 1910 by the Imperial Academy of Sciences, one of the letters written by this remarkable scholar, whose knowledge and honesty cannot be questioned, says (The Materials, vol. 2, pp. 578-580):

“Just like Christian nations have preserved many Pagan superstitions, so the Jews (not all, of course) continue to shed the blood of infants and boys of other nations in accordance with an ancient tradition which demands the redemption of the whole nation in its blood sacrifice... In the East, everybody is sure that murders of Christian boys are distributed by the Jews so that this atrocity is committed, one year, for example, in Solun, the second year – in Damascus, the third year – in Spain or Russia or Wallachia, etc., and that towels soaked in the ill-fated victim’s blood are burned, and their ashes are sent to all the synagogues to be baked in the Passover bread... You judge how difficult it is, then, to expose such horrible crime... I grieve over the existence of such cruelty among the Jews.”

Had the Imperial Academy of Sciences not considered bishop Porphyrius Uspensky a scholar of high authority, it would probably not have published the materials for his biography.

In addition to the evidence about the blood delivery from Saratov to Liady, the Saratov case mentions another place where the correspondence related to the blood delivery was sent: “The written address was: ‘To Lyubavichi petitioner Taupkin’, and below it was written: ‘To be given to the Lyubavichi rabbi’.”

As the Jews had succeeded in snatching the issue of the sect, the blood doctrine, from the hands of the investigation authorities that worked in Saratov, the reference to Lyubavichi lost its fatal significance for them, who became limited in their investigation by the sadistic murders committed in Saratov alone. However, the previous account has elucidated clearly enough the role played by Lyubavichi in the history of Jewish sadistic sects and doctrines. Now, in the Saratov case, in the testimony related to the letter about the blood delivery, it was the locality of Lyubavichi that was mentioned. Furthermore, from the case of Yushchinsky’s murder, it can be seen that the only person that lived at the Jewish brick factory where Yushchinsky had been tortured to death and had nothing to do with the production of bricks was Fayvel Shneerson from Lyubavichi.

I believe there is no need to reiterate the significance of the Shneerson clan both for Lyubavichi and the history of the Hasidism, but I should mention another coincidence that is relevant in this regard: Graetz, in his 12-volume History of the Jews, dedicates a special appendix to Zalman Shneerson, the founder of the Lithuanian Hasidic sect, and heads it as “Shneur Zalman of Liady” (vol. XII, p. 518) while in the text (p. 110), he writes: “Shneur Zalman of Liady (born in Liozna, near Vitebsk, in 1751; died in 1813)... made Lyubavichi the centre of his adherents.”

The Jewish Encyclopedia, quoted in previous chapters, also attests to a tight connection between Zalman Shneerson and Liady. Having mentioned that in late March 1801, as the Emperor Alexander I acceded to the throne, Zalman Shneerson was released from the imprisonment to which he had been subjected under Paul I, the said Jewish source continues: “After that, he [Shneerson] moved to the locality of Liady, where he fully dedicated himself to his scientific works, problems of the streamlining of Hasidic communities, and the spiritual guidance of his followers.” Then, as it proceeds to Zalman Shneerson’s progeny, for the period until 1866, the Encyclopedia writes that “rabbi Khaim Zalman settled in Liady, and rabbi Samuil Shneerson – in Lyubavichi. Their descendants still hold the posts of Tzadiks.” (vol. XVI, p. 58.)

Thus, according to Jewish sources, the progenitor of Shneersons and the founder of the Lithuanian Hasidic sect concentrated his activities in, basically, two localities: Lyubavichi and Liady. At the same time, the Saratov case, during which no research as to the Shneersons or the Hasids in general was made, highlights, as places related to blood delivery, the same two localities – Lyubavichi and Liady.

From other comparisons, one should note the similar traits in the actions of the Kiev and Saratov police. The role of Krasovsky, who shaved and curled the hair of Luka Prihodko, and that of Mishchuk, who resorted to a forgery in order to turn the investigation to a wrong path that would divert the attention from the Jews, were expounded in detail in the first part of this book. It turns out that Saratov police officer Vandyshev did not go far from those Kiev detective police heroes: he, too, was found guilty of a forgery which helped Akulina Dmitriyeva, the servant of the main culprit, Yushkevicher, to be released from prison and disappear, for a long period of time and without a trace, from Saratov; her testimony would have been, especially at first, fatal to this defendant.

The fathers of the boys murdered in Saratov, Maslov and Sherstobitov, “daily asked” the police to make searches in Jewish places, but the police “rejected this suspicion” persistently and made not a single search.

Exactly the same occurred again, sixty years later in Kiev, when Andrei’s grandmother, 70-year-old Nezhinskaya, during the searches made by the police, despite all the obviousness, in their house in Slobodka, “shouted and cried and said: What are you doing?! Why are you searching here?! You should search where people found him... They did not want to search there and would only come to us.”

As far as the Velizh case is concerned, it is true that there is no indication of any direct abuses made by the local police; however, in Velizh, the real investigation also only began when, two years later, a special Imperial Resolution was issued for this effect – and by then, the whole case had been already “committed to the will of God”. This is why I still have the same certainty as the one I expressed very soon after Yushchinsky’s body had been found: the Jews only venture to commit ritual murders when they have all reasons to believe that the police would not be dangerous to them.

At the Beilis trial, the representative of the prosecution, supported by A.S. Shmakov and me, requested to read out the report of the examination of the Saratov case, which had been made during the preliminary investigation by N.A. Mashkevich using the documents of the original proceedings, kept in the archives of the State Council. This request of ours was met with the strongest objections from the representatives of the defense, Karabchevsky and Gruzenberg, and, as a result, the District Court ruled to reject our request on the grounds that the documents which we had requested to be read out “contained witness testimonies on other cases which have no direct connection to the essence of the accusation made against defendant Beilis; that in order to clarify issues of historical and religious nature, experts have been invited in this case, to which, as to academic specialists, the parties can address questions relating to the said cases should such necessity arise.”

To my question, which followed after the court had read this ruling:

– The opinion of the State Council (in the Saratov case) could not be read out as well?

The President replied:

– No, neither the opinion of the State Council, because it contains witness testimonies.

There is no way I can consider this court ruling, which limited dramatically the rights of both the public prosecutor and us, the civil plaintiffs, with regard to one of the most important issues of the whole trial, to be a correct one.

Since Beilis, according to the crime bill, was accused of the murder by religious, sadistic reasons; since the general issue of existence among the Jews of sadistic murders and the blood doctrine (whether it was among a particular sect or among individual fanatics, did not matter here) was to be studied in this case; since a special expert examination of this issue was allowed, then, undoubtedly, the Saratov case had a direct connection to this matter. It could not be denied by the court either, as the latter, having refused to read out the report of examination of the said case, allowed, however, to ask questions relating to its circumstances to experts. This combination is hardly consistent, as, since there is no “direct connection”, there should be no place for such questions either.

The other – apparently, the main – reason brought by the court is just as wrong: according to the court, the documents which were requested to be read out contained witness testimonies, while the witnesses themselves were not summoned into court in the Beilis case. This argument had been put forward persistently by Gruzenberg: “We can only use verdicts in other cases if the persons, whose testimonies are set forth in such verdicts, are summoned into court as witnesses,” asserted, with a reference to cassation practice, Gruzenberg.

Even if one were to leave aside the issue of how correct is, from the aspect of principle or from the perspective of cassation practice, such regulation (which is, to a large degree, disputable and questionable), it must be admitted that it has no application whatsoever in this case. Firstly, the Saratov murders were committed 60 years before the Beilis trial. Therefore, the witnesses whose names appear in the documents of the Saratov trial would have been, by 1913, about 100 years old on average. It is obvious that these papers must be regarded as historical documents of official nature, very important for the historical and dogmatic expert examination that was performed during the trial. Secondly, from the procedural aspect, one must bear in mind that the Saratov trial took place before the judicial reform, when witnesses were not summoned during a judicial investigation and were not subjected to a cross-examination, as they are today. The verdict (or, more exactly, the “opinion”) of the State Council in the Saratov trial, which I asked particularly to be read out, was passed without any witnesses having been summoned into the meeting of the State Council. After the Imperial Approval, this opinion became a law for the said case, and now it turns out that, in order to read it out, the court must summon witnesses which were not summoned by the very institution which issued the official documents to be read out. One can ask experts about the text of the verdict, but one cannot read out the original...

Of course, both the public prosecutor and we, the civil plaintiffs, tried to use, in this direction, the interrogation of the experts, but still, the facts relating to the Saratov case that were established in that way cannot be compared, in terms of strength, depth and solidity of the impression, to the effect which would have had the reading out of the documents of the Saratov trial.

The successful efforts made by the defense in order to not allow this were, undoubtedly, in the interests of the defendant, just as was, for example, the attempt of the defense (futile, though) to prevent the reading out of Feofilaktov’s letter. However, when one tries to claim that at the Beilis trial, the defense pursued not only the goal of acquittal of the defendant, but also the purpose of contributing to a most thorough and unhampered disclosure of the truth in all its fullness, we are justified to doubt as to how the defense’s objections against the reading out of the above-mentioned documents, studied during the preliminary investigation, answered this second purpose...

Generally, the situation of those who yell about the blood libel becomes critical when they have to go from general bombastic phrases about truth and justice to facts and positive information. No wonder that at the Saratov trial, Levison, a former butcher from Weimar and then a professor of the Theological Academy, having taken an oath “on his own impulse”, expressed his “heartfelt wish” that this case would be “destroyed once and for all” should, as he was quite convinced, “the accusation made against the Jews prove to be wrong.”

It would seem that, on the contrary, if Levison was quite convinced that the Jews have been accused wrongfully, then, from his own perspective, the case should have been carefully preserved in every way possible as it would have been, in the future, a striking and unquestionable documentary proof of Jewish innocence. If the accusation is wrong, if the Jews are acquitted, then what is the reason to destroy the case, and moreover, do it so categorically: “once and for all”?

To destroy and forbid! How little these solicitations accord with liberal slogans that are being advanced ostentatiously by the representatives of Jewry whenever an opportunity presents itself! However, each time a ritual murder case occurred somewhere, immediately, without taking into consideration the data of the judicial investigation and without waiting for it to end, fuss was kicked up in the Jewish anthill to the effect that, allegedly, such audacious accusations either had been or must be prohibited.

Apparently, the collections of such prohibitions were even made in advance. Thus, at the Saratov trial, noted scholar Kostomarov, having said that he knows this case closely because he “lived at that time in Saratov and, while in service, was attached to the investigator,” attests to “the discovery in the house of Jew Yankel (Yushkevicher), whose business was the dyeing of furs, of a collection of various historical documents which showed that, in various times and countries, governments issued charters of immunity which prohibited to accuse Jews of shedding children’s blood for religious purpose. It contained Papal bulls, emperors’ decrees, charters of various kings, etc., mostly printed, cut out from publications from various centuries, of various print and in all European languages; a small number was not printed, but rewritten from, as it would seem, rare editions. It was all bound into one book. This book raised big suspicions: one could see that the editor did considerable work in finding those documents, cutting them from various publications and joining them together; and one would wonder why a Jewish manufacturer needed the result of such a scholarly work when, except for that book, only general religious Jewish books were found in his house.” However, as Kostomarov concludes, it all ended with suspicions only, because the investigation commission “did not need this little book anymore as there were more important legal facts.” *)

*) “The Polemic between Kostomarov and Khvolson,” Novoye Vremya, 1879, no. 1172. The complete collection of Kostomarov’s works does not have this article. The complete set of Novoye Vremya numbers from 1879, kept at the Petrograd Imperial Public Library, does not have no. 1172 either. All the other numbers are available, but this one, according to a Library’s certificate, was destroyed by a reader. The very fact that a noted Russian historian, scholar, professor, a man from the liberal, if not radical, camp made a printed objection against the best Jewish authority that denied ritual murders – this circumstance alone is very significant: an eyewitness of what had happened in Saratov could not help but speak...

In the Beilis case, the story of “prohibitions” was also, albeit in totally different conditions, far from successful as far as the interests of Jewry were concerned. On November 30, 1911, an appeal “to Russian society with regard to the blood libel against the Jews” solemnly appeared in newspapers. Having informed that “with regard to the murder in Kiev of boy Yushchinsky, that has not been investigated yet, a false tale of consumption of Christian blood by the Jews has been spread among the people again” and having advised “to beware of those who sow lies,” the appeal attests authoritatively: “Many Popes and spiritual and secular rulers stigmatized the evil superstition and once and for all prohibited the authorities to attach a religious significance to the investigation of murders. In our country, such decree was enacted on March 6, 1817 by Emperor Alexander I and confirmed on January 18, 1835 during the rule of Emperor Nicholas I.” The names of about one hundred people, who had signed the appeal, were printed underneath, with a note that the signing continued. Apparently, prominent people were only chosen: six members of the State Council, several members of the State Duma, professors, writers, etc. It looks like something impressive in terms of influence upon “public opinion” was brewed. However, in this document, which claimed to be strictly serious and was signed by professors of the Petrograd University with rector Grimm at the head, in a document which brings forth very few historical facts and dates anyway, a most gross distortion of the events of domestic history pertaining to the quite recent past was committed. *) It is quite natural that the appeal’s authors had no way to know about the falsification of Papal bulls that had been exposed by Pranaitis, but how could an entire realm of scholars accredit Emperor Nicholas I with something which was diametrically opposite to the reality?

*) The text of the entire appeal and the signatures are produced in the appendix.

The previous account has established on the basis of documents that Emperor Nicholas I did not approve the project that had proposed to confirm the Imperial Decree from March 6, 1817, while the scholars, writers and other prominent persons which fight against an “old lie” try to convince the “Russian society” that Emperor Nicholas I confirmed the Decree from March 6, 1817, when the Monarch, on the contrary, refused to confirm it. Furthermore, how could the appeal’s authors venture, in their denial of ritual murders, to refer to the will of Russian Monarchs in the first place?! Even if one could interpret, in this sense, the Imperial Decree of Emperor Alexander I from March 6, 1817, then such interpretation, quite questionable and arbitrary in itself, would become completely impossible when compared to the subsequent historical event which occurred during the same reign – the actions of Emperor Alexander I with regard to the Velizh case. The attitude of Emperor Nicholas I toward ritual murders is expressed very clearly in the above-quoted Emperor’s Resolution from January 22, 1835; afterwards, during the same reign, a special, rigorous and thorough investigation of the Saratov murders was ordered from Petersburg. Finally, Emperor Alexander II approved the guilty verdict passed by the State Council in the Saratov trial and found the opinion on this subject, given in the special report of the President of the State Council, to be absolutely correct.

Such were the events of the three consecutive reigns which encompassed 80 years and began very soon after a large mass of Jewish population had found itself in Russia as a result of the partitions of Poland. Indeed, those who yell about the blood libel should not refer to Russian Monarchs.

The existence of Judaic sadistic murders was admitted by the popular masses. *) It was admitted by some of the Jews. It was admitted by many scholars and researchers. It was admitted both by Western European courts and, judicially, by the highest state establishment of the Russian Empire. It was admitted by Russian Monarchs. It was certified by both the Orthodox and Roman Catholic Churches.

This is why in appeals such as the “appeal to Russian society”, published on November 30, 1911, the authors have to either use general phrases or resort to statements which are obviously untrue.

However, it does not prevent them from writing in the appeal, with great aplomb: “Beware of those who sow lies.”

*) The extent to which such belief was widespread in the former Poland is attested by the verses of Polish poet Adam Mickiewicz:

“Every one shrieked; all were deafened by the wailing of Zosia, who, throwing her arms around the Judge, cried shrilly, like a child taken at Easter by Jews, when they, to get his blood, having concealed him under curtains, rush to prick the poor child from all sides with thousands of needles!”

(From the poem Pan Tadeusz, vol. 3, chapter 8: “The Foray”, p. 102. Published by M.O. Volf, 1902. In the English translation published in 1917 by J.M. Dent & Sons Ltd., this fragment (Book VIII: “The Foray”, p. 217) is heavily abridged: “...the wailing of Zosia, who, throwing her arms around the Judge, cried like a child pricked with needles by Jews.” The missing part was translated using the Russian text.)

Ritual murders are also admitted, in his verses, by Taras Shevchenko – the same Shevchenko, the solemn celebration of whose anniversary was sought after, in February 1914, by the whole left-wing camp that called Shevchenko a great, purely popular poet of Little Russia.

By the following verses, Shevchenko describes a mother who gave birth to so many children that she does not know what to do with them:

“She gave birth to a lot of children

And does not know what to do with them.

Should she drown them?

Or strangle them?

Or sell them to Jews for blood

And squander the money on drink?”

(Complete Works, 1908, p. 295.)