Menahem Mendel Beilis
|
|
Menahem Mendel Beilis (1874-1934) was a Ukrainian Jew wrongly accused of murder, in a trial, known as the notorious Beilis trial, that sparked international criticism of the anti-Semitic policies of the Russian Empire.
Mendel was born in 1874 to a pious Jewish family. He had little Torah learning and worked regularly on the Sabbath and the Holy Days, with the exception of Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur. In 1911 he was an ex-soldier and the father of five children, employed as a superintendent at the Zaitsev brick factory in Kiev.
On March 12, 1911, a thirteen-year-old Ukrainian boy, Andrey Yuschinsky, disappeared on his way to school. Eight days later his mutilated body was discovered in a local cave.
A vicious anti-Semitic campaign was launched in the Russian press against the Jewish community, with accusations of the blood libel and ritual murder, using human blood for Passover.
Following the Russian Revolution of 1905, Russia was in the grip of a counter-revolution in which the Jews were the major scapegoats. The revolutionary movement was growing in scope and intensity, becoming increasingly unmanageable. The regime of Czar Nicholas II of Russia used the blood libel charge as a convenient political weapon to divert the attention of the masses from the corrupt and repressive policies of the government. Blaming the Jews for all of the ill that beset the empire took pressure away from the government.
In July 1911, a lamplighter testified that the boy has been kidnapped by a Jew and Beilis was arrested on July 21, 1911, and sent to prison, where he remained for over two years. A report submitted to Czar by the judiciary regarded him as the murderer of Yushchinsky.
The trial took place in Kiev from September 25 through October 28, 1913. The chief prosecutor A.I. Vipper made anti-Semitic statements in his closing address.
The prosecution was composed of the government's best lawyers. One prosecution witness, a "religious expert" in Judaic rituals was a Catholic priest Justin Pranaitis, brought from as far as Tashkent. He stated that the murder of Yushchinsky had all the characteristics of ritual murder commanded by the Jewish religion.
Beilis was represented by the most able counsels of the Moscow, St. Petersburg, and Kiev bars: Vassily Maklakov, Oscar Grusenberg, N. Karabchevsky, A. Zarundy, and D. Grigorovitch-Barsky. Two prominent Russian professors, Troitsky and Kokovtzov, spoke on behalf of the defense in praise of Jewish values and exposed the falsehood of the accusations.
The lamplighter on whose testimony the indictment of Beilis rested confessed that he had been confused by the secret police.
After deliberating for several hours, a jury composed of simple Russian peasants found him not guilty. Of the twelve jurors, seven were members of the notorious Union of the Russian People, also known as the Black hundred. There was no single representative of the intelligentsia in the jury.
Later it was determined that on that tragic morning Andrey decided to skip school and visit his friend, Zhenya Cheberyak, whose mother Vera was known to have criminal connections.
The Beilis trial was followed worldwide and the anti-Semitic policies of the Russian Empire were severely criticized.
Beilis with his family left Russia for the Land of Israel. In 1920 he settled in the United States. He died in 1934.
- A popular movie was made based on these events: The Fixer with Alan Bates and Dirk Bogarde in 1968, based on the book by Bernard Malamud.
See also
Reference
- ISBN 1560621664 Scapegoat on Trial: The Story of Mendel Beilis The autobiography.
- ISBN 0876681798 The Beilis Transcripts. The Anti-Semitic Trial that Shook the World. by Ezekiel Leikin