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BEJLISES OR THE POLISH REACTION TO KIEV TRIAL (Bejlisy czyli polska reakcja na proces kijowski)

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Zyndul J.

Kwartalnik Historii Żydow

2009

issue 4(232)

397-410

The trial of Mendel Bejlis, which was held in Kiev in the autumn of 1913, was widely commented upon across Europe. In Polish lands, too, and especially in the Russian partition zone, the accusation of an alleged ritual slaying of Andrzej Juszczynski triggered a huge debate in which the question whether ritual murders existed at all was raised every now and then. This discussion never managed to put the lie to the ritual slaying legend even at the level of official discourse. The ranks of Bejlis' Polish defenders, objecting to allegations of ritual murder, lacked men of such authority as Leo Tolstoi, who would demonstrate the absurdity of such allegations. Many newspapers concluded their accounts of the trial with the conviction that the question of the existence of ritual murders remains unresolved. The interpretation of the judgement, emphasizing that a ritual slayer occurred after all, only it was not perpetrated by Bejlis, only enhanced this conviction. Incidentally, this biased interpretation of the ruling has been used to this day as an argument in the anti-Semitic discourse about ritual murders. In the Kingdom of Poland the hysteria did not reach the dimension it reached in Russia itself. The Orthodox Andrzej Juszczynski could not become an object of religious cult. Nonetheless, the recalling of a dormant legend did produce some tens of allegations. None of them led to a trial, although there were some outbreaks of group aggression. A new derogatory term for Jews, namely, bejlises, appeared in colloquial Polish, and as it was forgotten over time that Bejlis was acquitted, all the Jews were again becoming potential murderers of innocent Christian children.

JEWISH TAVERN AS A 'LOCUS DELICTI', OR, AN ATTEMPT AT SPATIAL SITUATION OF RITUAL MURDER (Karczma Zydowska jako 'locus delicti', czyli próba przestrzennego usytuowania zbrodni rytualnej)

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Zyndul J.

Teksty Drugie (Second Texts)

2008

issue 4(112)

200-214

The imaginary crime of ritual murder is committed in an imaginary place, for imaginary purposes and in an imaginary manner. Each consecutive epoch superimposed on it a network of its own representations of the order of the world and the essence of Jewish menace. The imaginary topographic space of ritual murder projected the social space in which Jews functioned. In 18th century, the threat was referred to Jewish tavern or inn and it was therein that the collective imagination tended to situate the place of crime. In most of the alleged cases of ritual murder in the latter half of 18th and the early 19th century, Jewish innkeepers were accused of crimes having taken place in their inns. Those accusations penetrated into literature as well. It was in an inn that the alleged ritual murder is situated in Feliks Bernatowicz's historical novel 'Nalecz'. This image corresponds very well with the one created by 19th-century Polish literature which emphasised the dark side of inn/tavern operations - as the place where peasants were induced to drink and illegal dealings handled.

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1 Kwartalnik Historii Żydow

1 Teksty Drugie (Second Texts)

1 2009

1 2008

2 Zyndul J.

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BEJLISES OR THE POLISH REACTION TO KIEV TRIAL (Bejlisy czyli polska reakcja na proces kijowski)

JEWISH TAVERN AS A 'LOCUS DELICTI', OR, AN ATTEMPT AT SPATIAL SITUATION OF RITUAL MURDER (Karczma Zydowska jako 'locus delicti', czyli próba przestrzennego usytuowania zbrodni rytualnej)