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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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