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Very rarely has a ritual-murder trial had as a result the sort of comprehensive literature and
coverage as the proceedings before the jury-court of Cleves on the occasion of the boy-murder
of Xanten. As this literature also gives us important information about the
dominating Jewish influence and the anti-Jewish trends at all levels of society which became
increasingly strong in reaction, but which remained without influence due to lack of unified
leadership, we wish, since what has been written down in the records remains even today
easily accessible to anyone, first and foremost to make use of the stenographic records of
the jury-court hearing at Cleves(1) in composing this
chapter.
On 29 June 1891, Peter-and-Paul Day, a Monday, the cabinetmaker Hegmann of
Xanten on the Lower Rhine was missing his little five-and-a-half year-old son since
ten-thirty in the morning. The mother of the child, later questioned about this by the
President of the court, told on the second day of the hearings (5 July 1892), the
following: "I awakened the child before I walked to church (on Peter-and-Paul's Day, 1891)
and took him from his little bed and then let him down; then I went to church. When I came
back, I put a smock on him, then he went off and I have not seen him again. We drank our
coffee at breakfast about ten-thirty. When I was making the buttered bread ready for the
other children, I said: 'But where is Schängchen' -- that's what we called Johann --
Now it was noon. . . it got to be two o'clock and he still wasn't there. The child never
stayed away past the time [when he was supposed to]."
She looked for her child all day -- her husband was still seriously ill; now and then people
brought her a chair so she could rest. In the evening, toward six o'clock,
(232) the wife of the ritual-slaughterer Buschhoff appeared
and said in response to the lament of the mother: "Pray one Vaterunser [an Our Father, or
Pater Noster], he will probably come back." -- We recall the cynicism of the Jewish
family Scharf in Tisza-Eszlár!
The mother made her way to church again: "I lighted a candle in the church before Saint
Anthony, it was still not burned out when I heard that people came and said the child had
been found. I went home, and it was already full of people. Buschhoff and his wife
also came." -- Frau Hegmann was in the late stage of pregnancy. The Jewish wife
called out: "Comfort her -- she's getting a replacement for it. . ."
The Buschhoffs busied themselves around the Hegmanns' place in the most intrusive fashion.
The ritual-slaughterer Buschhoff [physically] supported the Hegmann father, who a few months
previously had suffered a neurological attack, so that he would not fall off his chair: "My
husband fended him off fiercely, he did not want to be held, he said that it seemed to him
as if Buschhoff had bloody hands and had soiled him with them." The Hegmann father
before the court (second day of the hearing): "Just as Buschhoff laid his hand on my back,
I felt as if a bloody hand were reaching out for my back. . .Buschhoff held me firmly, which
I did not want to allow, I always wanted to get away from him. . . " -- The court chairman:
"You had the thought, then, that he had killed the child and so you developed a dislike for
him?" -- witness: "Yes. He (Buschhoff) was very pushy. . ."
The Buschhoffs still had a fizz powder on their account at the drugstore, and wanted to brew
a strong pot of coffee for the Hegmanns. Frau Buschhoff babbled: "I'll make a good cup of
coffee, and as true as it is that God lives in Heaven, I've taken thirty grams in one
coffee pot!" Frau Hegmann thanked her: "No, I want to have my child back first, I'm
not drinking. . ." Finally the Jews left. The Hegmanns breathed with relief: "Thank God
that we're alone now!" (From the second day of the hearing.)
On this evening, toward six-thirty, the maid of the town councilor Küppers, Dora
Moll, had found the child's body in a passage of the barn, lying on his side with his
little legs spread, and having bled to death from a (233)
frightful cut through the neck, which extended in a circle from one ear to the other and
had run through the soft tissues down to the cervical vertebrae. "I saw something
lying there," explained this witness before the court, "I thought it had been hens and I
would chase them off. When I looked more closely, I saw the body lying there. . .It was
lying with the little legs toward the barn door and with his little head toward the
winnowing machine. . .When I approached more closely, I saw right away that it was the
child of Hegmann. . ." (First day of the hearing).
It struck all witnesses who were called here, that apart from slight traces of blood, there
were no pools of blood or blood spray anywhere to be noted!
The staff physician (retired), Dr. Steiner, who had examined the body on the same
evening in the presence of the court assessor Buchwald and of the mayor
Schleß, and had determined that the [amount of] caked blood (the clotted blood) was
very insignificant, perhaps as much as a small egg, gave the following
expert opinion before the court:
1. All the soft tissues of the neck were cut through, from the right ear through the
throat to the left ear, even the muscles which were located at the cervical vertebrae were
cut through, and the cut penetrated down to the cervical vertebrae.
2. This circular cut was unquestionably performed by a practiced hand with a very sharp
and large instrument.
3. A jet of blood, a sharply delineated wave of blood, appeared to have poured
down over the clothes.
4. The traces of blood which were present were extraordinarily scant: "In my
opinion the blood which was found at the site was not all the blood which flowed out
of the body. I consider it to be that blood which, after the first blood flowed out, still
flowed out after death ensued.
5. No signs whatsoever of an unnatural assault were present. (Dr. Steiner on the first
day of proceedings in Cleves.)
Both of the other witnesses testified as follows:
"After the examination protocol of the body itself had been (234)
recorded, the area closest to the body was dealt with; neither on the winnower nor on a post
which lay in the vicinity, was I able to discover traces of blood. . .we checked with a
lantern and two lamps, in order to absolutely be able to see individual blood traces
but we found none." (Assessor Buchwald on the first days of the hearings.)
"At the inspection of the body we found this terrible cut; we found the child with his neck
cut through from one ear to the other. It looked horrible, it made a frightful impression,
I have to say that in the first moment I said to myself: 'That can only have been done by a
skillful hand that knows what it's doing with a knife; it must have been a very large
knife.' I cannot conceal the fact that I had suspicions about the Jewish butchers
Buschhoff and Bruckmann living in the neighborhood. . ." (Mayor Schleß
on the third day of the hearings.)
Also, the autopsy protocol of the court physicians Bauer and Nüninghoff of
30 June 1891 confirmed the absolute blood-emptiness of the internal organs of
the child's body. Point by point the descriptions read: "Completely void of blood,"
"extraordinarily bloodless," "pale and empty," "empty of blood," "totally void of blood,"
and so forth.
Furthermore, the separate expert opinion of Dr. Bauer of 15 July 1891 had to
concede in its essential points, that the blood volume of the child was evacuated by the
pumping power of the heart in the shortest time, perhaps within one minute, so that "the
body was, in fact, empty of blood. . .With the highest degree of probability, it was
a long, strong, and sharp butcher knife with which the cuts were executed."
Crossways above the chin, there was a smaller cut, the surface of the right side of the
chin was cut through, and the cut continued to the right shoulder of the overalls and the
smock, which was cut through to a hair's breadth, "thread by thread," in this spot. --
People were very puzzled over these unusual features, although the explanation was really
obvious: The child, as he saw the knife coming toward him, in his fear of death,
instinctively tried to protect himself by moving his head backwards, which was in the
clamping grip of the murderer standing behind him, and thereby raised his shoulders, so
that (235) the knife, which was just starting its cut,
first cut into the chin and through the part of the right shoulder protected by the
pieces of clothing!
The lack of blood at the site of discovery had immediately convinced all eyewitnesses that
the the child was first killed at another location and was brought into the barn just
after he bled to death, not least of all for the intention of covering up traces of the
crime and to incriminate others with the murder as much as possible. -- A devilish plan!
The magistrate Riesbroeck of Xanten later stated before the jury-court in
Cleves: "The body gave me the impression that it was not killed there but
rather had been brought there." (First day of the hearings.)
But now the alert ten year-old Gerhard Heister -- described by the chief state's
attorney himself as an "intelligent young man" -- had remarked how on the day of the murder,
toward ten o'clock in the morning, a white, unclothed arm pulled the small Hegmann child
from out of the street and into the Buschhoff shop. We wish to insert the crucial passage
of his examination here word-for-word, due to its particular importance.
President [of the court]: "Do you still know what you saw on the Sunday of
Peter-and-Paul of the previous year?" [Note that Schramm tells us that Peter-and-Paul Day
in 1891 actually fell upon a Monday, so that the President of the court is
probably in error here.]
G. Heister: "I was lying on the stone on the corner of Cleves Street and Church
Street."
Pr.: "Did some children come onto Church Street?"
G.H.: "Yes. There were two boys."
Pr.: "And then one was pulled, by someone's arm into Buschhoff's? Do you know which
child?"
G.H.: "Schängchen Hegmann."
Pr.: Didn't you also see what the others did?"
G.H.: "They ran away. Stephan Kernder ran to his house, and Peter Venhoff
also went to his [own] house."
Pr.: "What was the arm like, that came out of the house?"
G.H.: "It was bare. It came out up to the shoulder."
Pr.: "Did it come from the doorway of the house?"
G.H.: "Yes, out of the doorway."
Pr.: "Do you know out of which house the arm came?" (236)
G.H.: "Out of the house of Buschhoff."
Pr.: "Was it Schängchen who was pulled inside?"
G.H.: "Yes. -- I have never seen Schängchen again."
The mother of Heister had been questioned by the Commissar Verhülsdong. She told him
that her young son had related to her in a quite relaxed way, that he had been sitting on
the curbstone at Cleves and Church Streets and wanted to see whether Papa was walking to
church and by this chance, he saw both his acquaintances Stephan Kernder and Peter
Venhoff with Schängchen Hegmann walk up to Buschhoff's house, and then he
noticed all at once how a hand came out of this house and Schängchen was gone. . .
The aforementioned little five year-old Kernder had been walking hand-in-hand with
Hänschen [Both Hans and Hänschen, like Schängchen, are
diminutives of the Christian name Johann, and the Hegmann child was usually called
by one of these nicknames.] on the street in front of Buschhoff's. He told his mother a few
days after the murder of Hänschen, that he had gone across the street because Frau
Buschhoff had stood behind her door and called out: "Schängchen, will you go out for
me? Come in here!" But the little Hegmann boy resisted, at which she pulled him into the
house. "I and Peter Venhoff, we were left standing there, when Frau Buschhoff said: "Just
go and play." -- The small Stephan then told that Frau Buschhoff had spoken "very rudely."!
(Statement of the father, Heinrich Kernder, on the fourth day of the hearings.) The third
play companion, little Peterchen Venhoff, made such an impression of being intimidated,
that this likewise very important witness could not be questioned!
A gardner by the name of Mölders had been walking by the Buschhoff property around the
same time; he had seen how an arm had been extended from out of the Jewish shop and pulled
a small youngster inside. However, he was unable to recognize the child himself, since he
saw him from the back. "In the direction of the cathedral, the children were in front of
me, and as I was at Buschhoff's, a white arm emerged. A child was pulled inside.
That, I clearly did see . . ."
On the day of the burial of the victim, the Buschhoff couple apparently tried again to
dispense "comforting words" in the residence of the Hegmanns; but thereupon, a scream was
heard (237) directly. -- "Buschhoff and his wife came past our
door and were totally confused, they came out of Hegmann's, and they were completely pale
and didn't say anything. . ." (The witness Mrs. Ventoff on the second day of the hearings.)
The father Hegmann had flung out a single sentence at Buschhoff: "You are the murderer
of my child!" -- Buschhoff had not defended himself. . .
Since no further evidence about the whereabouts of the child [i.e., between the time he
left his mother and the time his body was found] existed, suspicion had to be directed upon
the Buschhoff family. Buschhoff himself was a ritual-slaughterer and at the same time a
"prayer leader" in the synagogue -- his father had been strongly suspected of a ritual-crime
a number of years earlier!
From out of the butcher shop of the Jew, one could come into Küppers's barn directly
by means of back door, which Buschhoff also regularly made use of as a passageway.
The judicial investigation suffered at the very start from great carelessness. The first
state's attorney of Cleves, Baumgardt, sent out an assessor who had been temporarily
transferred to him for training, as investigator; Baumgardt himself came out
for the first time a week later. Already, a short time later, the Board of the Jewish
community, with the Head Rabbi of Krefeld, suddenly appeared unannounced at the
residence of the magistrate Riesbroeck in Xanten and with Jewish pushiness
asked "about the way things stood." But the magistrate told them curtly that he could say
nothing, the documents were in the hands of the state attorney's office (magistrate
Riesbroeck on the first day of the hearings). Now Baumgardt held the opinion
from the beginning, that what was accepted by all circles in the populace of Xanten,
that this was a case of a ritual-murder, was downright nonsense, unworthy of an "educated
man," and -- as he later said -- a "rural superstition." For this state's attorney, it
follows that the accused Jewish butcher, directly after the first report, was completely
innocent, witnesses making statements against Buschhoff were spoken to harshly -- the same
tactics of intimidation were employed later in the Polna ritual-murder trial by the
Jewish examining judge Reichenbach, as also in Konitz! On the contrary, a
house search at the Buschhoffs, in accordance with usual procedures, wasn't even carried
out -- despite extremely suspicious (238) factors! Probably on
the basis of higher instructions, Buschhoff himself demanded his arrest "in order to be able
to prove his innocence"! This maneuver does not appear new to us, since the Jews at some
earlier ritual-murder trials had of course already had this sly idea!
State attorney Baumgardt seemed to want to see nothing. He lost precious time by
pursuing baseless leads in the beginning.
On 30 July -- thus a full month after the blood-murder -- the Crime Commissar
Verhülsdong was assigned to Xanten. He came to be convinced, completely
without prejudice, that the child disappeared on the property of the Jewish butcher, and
moved for the arrest of the Buschhoff family at the state attorney's office. Baumgardt
refused! After almost another two months had gone by, and the entire process had caused
unrest and exasperation in the populace -- thus the Jews had their own "secret police"
-- the criminologist Wolff from Berlin appeared. He too very quickly believed that
the evidence discovered was sufficient to execute the arrest of the Buschhoffs -- as he
later stated as a defense witness in the Oberwinder(2)
trial.
In his report of 6 October 1891, among other things, Wolff spoke of the fact
that the completion of the circumstantial evidence was possible only with the immediate arrest
of Buschhoff, since the latter would take flight across the nearby border "as soon as
he becomes aware of the new state of affairs through recriminations and further
investigation."
The Jews, who had not reckoned with this turn of events, a quarter-year after the murder,
much less than they had reckoned that the Xanten Jewish community itself had proposed
and -- financed (3) -- the sending of this Crime
Commissar, moved heaven and (239) earth. The synagogue director,
Abraham Oster, was at the head of the group of Jews zealously trying to exonerate
the well-befriended Buschhoff. After a short time, they were so sure of themselves that
in the stronghold of Jewry, Frankfurt am Main, money was collected with which to
procure a "new home" for the Buschhoff family -- and actually, Buschhoff was released from
custody on Christmas Eve of still the same year (1891), without the case having been
cleared up through a proper court procedure!
The Kreuzzeitung wrote on 20 January 1892: "But on the side, apparently under
official masks, but without doubt here by order of the synagogue, all sorts of
persons are wandering around in Cleves and Mayen, who likewise played a role
in the derailing of the legal proceedings. Concerning this point and concerning the
dealings of the Rabbi in Crefeld with the chief states's attorney in Cologne
(4) and other persons in Cleves, further revelations
shall still follow as opportunity allows."
Furnished with abundant money, Buschhoff was sent off to Cologne. Protest meetings in
all the larger cities finally succeeded in the investigation against Buschhoff being taken up
anew. A German-Social petition of those days to the Justice Minister von Schelling reads:
"The ritual-slaughterer Buschhoff, strongly suspected of the murder in Xanten,
has been released from investigatory custody, even though the inquiries of Crime Commissar
Wolff have yielded overwhelming circumstantial evidence for his guilt. The
German-Social Association at Eberfeld expresses its regret over this release, since it
(240) might be likely to bring about the perturbations of
consciousness of the Law, caused by the cases of Paasch, Manché, Bleichröder, Liebmann,
Morris de Jong (5) and others, in even higher levels of
society. Therefore the German-Social Association at Eberfeld directs to Your Excellency the
urgent request, that Your Excellency might use your influence to see that the investigation
of this Buschhoff case is taken up again. The German people are entitled to demand that
any appearance of insecurity of the Law and of inequality of the Law be avoided. . ."
On 9 February 1892, as clouds were again gathering above Buschhoff, the Deputy
Rickert, the Chairman of the Verein zur Abwehr des Antisemitismus [literally:
Association for the Warding Off of Anti-Semitism], publisher of the notorious Antisemiten-
Spiegel [Mirror of Anti-Semites], by occupation the Regional Director (retired)
of Danzig, "the meritorious General of the Troops for Protection of Jewry," undertook
without warning a planned and inspired "offensive of exoneration" at a session of the Prussian
House of Deputies, which had been scheduled for entirely other matters. We shall not go
into closer detail regarding his "profound" arguments. Nevertheless, we do give this speech,
which is not without interest as a document of its times, in the Appendix in excerpted
form(6).
On 8 February 1892, Buschhoff had been "arrested" for the second time -- the entire
procedure created the impression on the populace of a contrived and boldly acted comedy! The
examining judge was the very elderly Brixius. But when it leaked out that he had
appointed for the defense of Buschhoff, of all people, the attorney Fleischhauer,
his son-in-law, the prosecution of the supposedly so-difficult law case was handed over to
district councilman Birk. The course of the whole investigation proceeded in a
strangely confused manner right from the beginning. Because of these events, the Prussian
Minister of Justice Schelling was interpellated several times in the house of Deputies and
attacked particularly by the conservative side; but serious recriminations
(241) made due to the halting and unsure trial procedure remained unanswered.
One full year after the crime -- analogous to the Skurz case -- the hearings began
before the jury-court at Cleves (4-14 July 1892). The Chairman of the Court
of Justice was District Court Director Kluth, the charges were to be presented by
the state's attorney Baumgardt -- therefore by the same man who originally rejected the
arresting of Buschhoff and who acted during the course of the trial as his zealous defender.
Moreover, he was given as an assistant for the solving of his task the Cologne Chief
State's Attorney Hamm, so that it was actually superfluous that three more "famous"
defense attorneys (Stapper/Düsseldorf, Gammersbach/Cologne, Fleischhauer
/Cleves) stood ready to assist.
Thus Buschhoff went to trial well-armed! The bill of indictment of 20 April 1892 had
once again summarized all incriminating points which led to the arrest of Buschhoff and read
in a crucial passage: "The Buschhoff family must therefore explain what happened to
the young Hegmann. That they are not able to do this, and that they dispute
at all having pulled the boy Hegmann into the house on that morning and having him there,
makes them extremely suspect."
There were 167 witnesses heard. All of the grounds for suspicion of Buschhoff were fully
confirmed! Aside from the statements of Mölders and the children Heister and
Kernder, which have already been given in another connection, the several days of
the jury-court hearings produced overwhelming evidence!
Shortly before the disappearance of the little Hegmann boy, several witnesses observed
how Buschhoff ducked into his house with a strange, strikingly ugly Jew, who was
carrying a black leather bag and was coming from the train station.
President: "On Peter-and-Paul Day of the previous year, were you walking through
Church Street? When was this?
Witness Peter Dornbach: "Approximately five minutes before ten. I was walking to
high mass. Buschhoff ran into me 25 steps in front of his house with another man, a
stranger, apparently an Israelite. This man had on a defective suit, his
hat (242) was pushed in. He was in a most intimate conversation
with Buschhoff." (Fifth day of the hearings).
Between eleven and twelve o'clock this Jew, who was described according to other witness
statements as "foreign" and "ugly," left the Buschhoff property and went back to the train
station!
On the day of the murder, shortly before ten, the neighbor of Buschhoff, Wilhelm Küppers,
heard a conspicuous clamor of voices through the somewhat obstructing door of the butcher house;
to another [female] witness, these goings-on were "creepy." The cloistered brother van
den Sandt, who was passing by, likewise heard several voices.
After the strange Jew had left Xanten, Buschhoff wandered, apparently without plan or
purpose, through the streets in a terrible state of excitement. Many witnesses, who knew
Buschhoff as an otherwise quiet man, were struck by this extraordinary excitement. Shortly
after eleven o'clock the witness Brandts first met him: "Buschhoff came up to me;
something extraordinary must have happened, he seemed downright out of his mind. . ."
(Second day of the hearings.)
The 72 year-old Peter Kempkes also met Buschhoff: "He (Buschhoff) was running so
fast, was rushing around so, his head was shaking. I thought to myself, he can well have
done it. . ." (Fourth day of the hearings.)
Some hours later Buschhoff had to sign some business papers. His entire body was shaking so
badly "that his hand had to be guided." -- In the evening, shortly before discovery of the
body, he had himself under enough control that he went bowling at an inn -- which he had never
done before -- and bought rounds for people there ("Buschhoff, what's made you so frisky?"),
in order to be able to receive the news of the discovery of the slaughtered child's body
with pretended equanimity.
In the early afternoon, at approximately two forty-five, a strange, younger, Jewish-looking
man was up to something in the garden of Küppers, facing the house of Buschhoff. Unfortunately
the witness involved was not able to describe his appearance more closely. But she declared
with certainty that he had to have been a stranger who was completely unknown to her, and
who stayed in the garden for a long while and, like a sentry,
(243) constantly walked up and down; when he felt himself observed by the witness,
he concealed himself behind the fence palings. ". . .I presume it was a Jew rather than a
Christian; I wanted to see who it was, to me this was quite conspicuous during [the time of]
the worship service." (The witness Windheus on the sixth day of the hearings.) The
individual, without a doubt a Jew who was standing as "a lookout" for what was then
happening, had suddenly disappeared, however, as if vanished from the surface of the
earth!
A short time later, Hermine Buschhoff, the adult daughter of the ritual-slaughterer, went
across the gateway to the barn, and in such a way that she held her right side conspicuously
toward the house of her parents; on this side she was carrying the heavy weight of a long
object which tapered toward the bottom, which was wrapped up in a large gray sack. (The
witness Mallmann on the third day of the hearings.)
Three and a half months after the crime, the policeman Schloer, who occasionally
checked the residence of Buschhoff -- there could be no question at all of a systematic search --
found, right in the very bottom of a kitchen cabinet, a sack which bore a strikingly large
and dark spots. Along with other things, it was brought to the city council building and
spread out on a table. Mayor Schleß said the following about this (on the sixth day
of the hearings): "As Frau Buschhoff later entered the hall to be questioned by the Herr
magistrate Riesbroeck, she was visibly upset and that caught my attention;
she said: 'Herr Mayor! God, have you brought along the old sack that we have used to lay
over the barrels when we smoke [i.e., smoke meats, etc.].' But she wasvery upset
by it, and I told Commissar Wolff about this directly. I did not show her the sack,
she herself found it among the objects which were lying on the table. -- The large dark spots
seemed suspicious to the mayor; he thought they were blood spots! In the trial, Buschhoff
then claimed that they were "pickling spots"! A court chemist and a professor said of it
that there was no longer any point in investigating the sack, it most likely could have
been determined that there was blood there. . .A thorough examination was actually not
performed!
In the late afternoon Buschhoff went into the synagogue, (244)
then afterwards to bowling in a neighboring inn. Before his bowling companions had yet
learned that the little Hegmann child had been found in the barn, the Jew knew all about it:
the thirteen year-old Jewish scion Siegmund came running and whispered something in his
father's ear!
On the way home, Buschhoff questioned his neighbor Küppers in a memorable way,
whether in his barn there "had not been a sharp object, where the child could have fallen
in on it, a knife or something else?" On the following day the property of Buschhoff,
but especially the cellar, was subjected to a thorough cleaning, various laundry was washed.
The door in the back of the butcher shop, going toward the gateway, had been nailed shut on
the evening before the murder and this had been especially noticed by Küppers; now
the nails were removed again. . .
About eight days after the murder, Buschhoff came with Siegmund from the city hall through
the middle gate when the young Jewish boy said something to his father, who was hard of
hearing(7). The witness Roelen, who was walking a few
steps behind the two, heard quite clearly how Buschhoff answered: "Ach, if they have no
proof, they can't do anything to us!" -- When this witness was then later walking past
the property of the ritual-slaughterer, she had dirty water poured on her by the latter!
(Roelen on the fourth day of the hearings.)
But Siegmund was slowly developing, in a way similar to the children of the temple servant
Scharf in Tisza-Eszlár, into an enfant terrible of the Jewish bunch --
only there was no Bary in Xanten! Another Xanten citizen, Anna Mauritz was
walking only two or three steps in front of father and son Buschhoff on Cleves Street.
Suddenly Siegmund, who apparently had complete knowledge of everything, crowed: "Papa, if
only it hadn't happened." Highly embarrassed, the Jewish father pulled his young son close
to him, looked around with dismay, and disappeared around the next corner!
Shortly after the murder occurred, Frau Remy was traveling on the train
(245) from Goch to Büderich to a wedding. "When I boarded the train in Xanten, two
Jewish gentlemen came aboard with me. I was alone in the coupé; we had a few minutes
stopover there. The gentlemen were saying that they were sick of Xanten. The one said: 'Yes,
I would have already have gotten out of there if it had been possible. I would not have been
so stupid; that was the stupidest thing that he did, that he brought it to the barn.'"
But when the two Jews heard the name of the witness [being called] at a station along the way,
they nudged each other and continued speaking in a foreign language.
On the next to last day of the hearings, the schoolboy Hölzgen gave a serious
statement. A year before the youngster was watching, at another Jewish butcher's in the
Mill Street, how a cow was supposed to be slaughtered. He stepped closer without being seen,
so as to "see the thing for once." In the slaughterhouse there were three ritual-slaughterers
present, who were earnestly discussing the death of the Hegmann child: "We need only keep
this secret among ourselves, say nothing, and impress upon Buschhoff, that he doesn't
blurt something out". . ."They've already gotten quite a bit, but that they shall not
get!"
The intelligent youngster went immediately to the mayor, to inform him of the overheard
conversation. The latter advised the witness to write down what he had heard. The young boy
was able to present the paper to the court and read his statement from it! The
ritual-slaughterer Bruckmann called out: "Nothing was spoken about the murder. No,
nothing at all was said about it, nothing at all!"
In spite of all obfuscations, matters had shaped up extremely critically for Buschhoff in
the course of the eight-day questioning of witnesses -- then the doctors were sent in to help --
the same procedure had, of course, been employed in Tisza-Eszlár as well! A faculty composed
of four physicians, after one year advanced the basic -- and for the outcome of the
trial, definitive -- thesis that the traces of blood in the barn, which they admittedly
had not even seen, were sufficient [for them] to maintain that the slaughtering of the
child had taken place in the barn -- therefore, that the place of discovery was the scene
of the crime, while the expert opinion of the staff physician Dr. Steiner, which
had been recorded still on the evening of the day of the murder (246)
had yielded the decisive findings that only very insignificant traces of blood,
considering the condition of total emptiness of blood of the body, had been noted in the
vicinity of the place of discovery, that the child therefore could not possibly have bled
to death in the barn -- nevertheless, the court accepted the opinion of the faculty! The
neck-cut [they said] could have been performed with any sort of knife-like instrument, even
with a pocket knife (!) -- a so-called slaughtering knife, as was found in Buschhoff's
residence -- had not been necessary for this!
And now, in order to exonerate Judaism per se from the suspicion of ritual-murder,
the so-called "expert opinion" of the Straßburg Professor Nöldeke -- we have already
gotten to know him -- was drawn upon. This unusual "expert" appeared on the second day of
the hearing already and admitted on being asked, that "in the laws of the Talmud it
is very difficult to find one's way." Nöldeke gave to understand that he wasn't entirely
well-read, that the Talmud was very voluminous, "it consists of twelve thick volumes,
which one tackles only with the greatest reluctance," but he could still state -- disregarding
all of this -- "As far as I know, there is in this (the Talmud) no evidence
at all for ritual-murder." -- Nöldeke called it "frivolous, through and through,"
"when over and over again it is repeated that the Jews need the blood of Christians for
ritual purposes."
But while the hearings at Cleves were still going on, the "Professor of Hebrew
Antiquity at the German university in Prague," Rohling, directed a dynamic
letter to the Court of Justice dated 10 July 1892, which sharply attacked the brazen
arguments of Nöldeke and described blood-murders as historical truths! In his letter,
Rohling informed [his readers] that the facts of history could not be denied. In spite
of the "castration" of certain rabbinical works, there were still texts here and there,
"which refer to the subject (of ritual-murder) and contain hints which, despite all the
precautions of editing, speak very clearly in light of historical events." -- Because of
its importance, we will give this letter of Rohling in its complete text in the
Appendix!
(247)Finally, in order to shake the statements of the chief
witness Mölders, who had seen how an arm from out of the Buschhoff shop had pulled
a child inside, the state's attorney Baumgardt claimed that Mölders would not even
have been able to see because of conditions at the locale; thereby the chief state's
attorney was casting doubt on the credibility of this chief witness -- a shameful hand-in-hand
working for Jewish interests! A court summons in Xanten [i.e., a trip to the
actual location], however, brilliantly justified the statement of Mölder, as the state's
attorney himself was forced to admit!
This move for the exoneration of Buschhoff had to be regarded as having failed. But something
else was put together! In the later plaidoyer [French: a barrister's speech] the
state prosecutor's office could summarily declare: The most important and least suspicious
exonerating factor for Buschhoff's innocence is the proof of alibi!
How did things stand with this "proof"? -- It had been contrived! A dubious character, the
neighbor of Buschhoff, Ullenboom, described by an out-of-town mayor and by various
witnesses as a liar and a notorious loudmouth, as a boaster and thief, and declared a total
liar by Crime Commissar Wolff, "he has tramped around in every possible factory on the
Rhine; I also got the impression that there was something sexually wrong with him,"
considered to be "half-crazy" by a member of the jury, he appeared as a "defense
witness" for Buschhoff, in that he stated that at the time in question he had stopped
at Buschhoff's with his foster child -- indeed [he said], it could have been the child that
disappeared into the Buschhoff shop! Although he caught himself up in hopeless contradictions
with this statement, so that the chairman of the court himself had to confirm that one of
the witnesses must have committed perjury, and although doubt in the reliability
and/or the soundness of mind of Ullenboom was expressed on all sides, the prosecution
accepted his statements, held him to be merely "easily made nervous" but despite this
"reliable" -- and constructed the proof of alibi with this!
But this masterpiece did not seem even to the state's attorney Baumgardt, to have been
totally fishy! At a crucial passage in his plaidoyer are the significant words, from
(248) which one could infer a great deal:"It has probably not
escaped your notice that the witness Ullenboom is a main witness, perhaps the most
essential witness, and for those who did not really want to believe Ullenboom,
it was very much of interest to prove that he also really was not credible. The witness
Ullenboom has been made to appear totally unbelievable. Indeed, if that were
true of him, then surely the proof of Buschhoff's whereabouts and actions, as they were
essentially represented chiefly by the supporting testimony of the witness Ullenboom,
would have been badly shaken. . ."
The next question before us is: how did the same Court of Justice behave toward prosecution
witnesses? A few examples should suffice: The witness Mallmann incriminated the
Jewish butcher. Thereby he aroused the extreme indignation of the chief state's attorney:
"The most unbelievable of all witnesses is Mallmann, this peculiar man, who always
speaks so hastily and never can be held to one point with his statements, who is afflicted
with such stirring fantasies, that he considers himself called upon to support the charges
against Buschhoff. . .This witness deserves not the slightest belief. . ." These declarations
need no commentary! But on the occasion of the witness being examined to the point of
exhaustion, Mallmann finally lost patience and said to the President: "It seems that you
want to confuse me. I request that the protocol be shown to me!" (Sixth day of the
hearings)
The witness Mölders, an honest, elderly workman with the best reputation -- since
with their best efforts he could not be pronounced mentally disturbed -- was supposed to
be labeled a total drunkard in order to refute his testimony! The disgraceful procedure
which was adopted toward this very important prosecution witness can only be described as
shameful! One brief scene from the courtroom should throw light upon this. Mölders is
giving his testimony on how the child was pulled inside Buschhoff's.
President: "Into which house was the child pulled? Into Buschhoff's?"
Mölders: "Yes." (249)
Pr.: "Did you see that clearly?"
M.: "Yes."
Pr.: "You must reflect, your testimony is very important, you must be able to take
responsibility for this before God and your conscience. Did you see that with complete
certainty?"
M.: "Yes!"
Pr.: "Were you at that time still entirely sober?"
M.: "Yes, I had drunk only a Korn." [The German das Korn has two
meanings in such a context: der Kornkaffee, "corn coffee," a sort of substitute
coffee, like chicory during the Depression; but the word can also refer to German grain
whiskey, like Schnaps. Since the setting is the witness's home in the morning,
it should have been clear to the questioner -- and probably was -- that a coffee-like drink
is meant, and not an alcoholic beverage.]
Pr.: "But you weren't drunk from that, from one Schnaps?"
M.: No. It is rare that, [being] sober in the morning, I drink Schnaps; I
just drink coffee in the morning."
Pr.: That is what I hope, that you don't drink a Schnaps [when you are]
already sober. I mean, if you are drinking one Schnaps, then do you really have
your full faculties. . .?"
Another witness, Anton de Groo who as a former boss of Ullenboom was giving a very
unfavorable assessment of him, was interrupted by chief state's attorney Hamm with
the tactful words: "The man seems sick, he seems to be apoplectic (inclined to strokes)
. . ." On the other hand, Jewish witnesses were "Herren" ["gentlemen"; when used
in addressing a man, this word is similar to our "Sir," but perhaps a bit more respectful.]:
The Jew Isaac is questioned; for the chairman of the court, he is not simply "Isaac" like
"Mölders," "Mallmann" and all the rest of the non-Jewish witnesses, but rather "Herr
Isaac": "Herr Isaac! Do you still recall it?"
It must strike even the most unbiased and naive reader of the protocols, with what particular
politeness the whole band of Jews was treated in this drama before the court, and even
encouraged in their criminality!
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