Kol Koreh against the anti-Semitic libel in the midst of the "Hilsner Affair". London, 1899

Kol Koreh against the anti-Semitic libel in the midst of the "Hilsner Affair". London, 1899

"Open Message to All Peoples" - Kol Koreh by the Rabbis of London against the anti-Semitic libel of Jews using Christian blood to bake Matzot on Passover - in the midst of the Hilsner affair in which the Jew Leopold Hilsner was accused of murdering the Czech girl Anežka Hrůzová. Hebrew and English. Page by page. London, 1899. Extremely Rare.

"We have learnt, with grief and indignation, that the most hideous calummy which malice and hatred ever invented, is now being again revied against our people. The terrible accusation in made by evil-diposed perdons, and industriously cirulated by the anti-semitic press, that Jews require humen blood for their Passover Ritual or for some other religious, public or secret, and that Christian children are consequently entrapped and slaughtered for that purpose... Unfortunately there are still people who seem to believe this legend of ritual murder, and this belief has lately led to acts of violence  and other persecutions being inflicted on jews in many parts of Austria... We Solemnly, sincerely, and truly declare and affirm that no book ever written by any man professing the jewish religion, is there contained any ordinance or direction relating to the use of humen blood at the passover festival...".

The special Kol Koreh was issued by the rabbis of London following the persecution of the Jews, which was renewed in the midst of the "Hilsner Affair" - the Czech-version blood libel. Anežka Hrůzová, a 19-year-old Czech Catholic girl, lived in the village of Věžnička and worked as a seamstress in the nearby village of Polna. On the afternoon of March 29, 1899, Anežka left her job as usual but did not come home. Three days later, her body was found in the forest, her throat cut and her clothes torn. A short distance away, they found a pool of blood, several bloodstained stones, parts of her clothes, and a rope with which they strangled her to death or dragged her body to where she was found. The incident took place in the midst of Passover, and the authorities and the local population began to claim that the murder was committed by a Jew. Suspicion fell on Leopold Hilsner, a 23-year-old Jew from the town of Polná who often walked in the forest in the area where the body was found, but in fact there was no sign linking him to the murder. Hilsner was arrested and tried at the court in Kuttenberg on September 12-16. He denied the accusations against him. Czech prosecutor Karl Bachs claimed that "there is a group of Jews who kill Christians in order to extract their blood". In fact, the court sentenced him to death for his participation in the murder. At the same time, Prof. Thomas Masaryk came to his defense, publishing a study entitled "The Necessity to Reexamine the Polna Trial" in which he proved the errors and injustices committed in this trial, and blamed the Austrian press, which he called Czech-Austrian Dreyfusiade, which initially took sides against Hilsner. The publication of the booklet flooded the affair and demonstrations for and against began. Thanks to this, an appeal was filed with the Court of Appeal in Vienna, citing technical errors in the trial, and the court ordered the opening of a new trial to be held in Pisek, in order to avoid intimidating the witnesses by the mob and the influence of political unrest. On June 11, 1901, the sentence was commuted by Emperor Franz Joseph to life imprisonment, and on March 24, 1918, Hilsner was pardoned by Emperor Karl. He spent the rest of his life in Velké Meziříčí, Prague,   and Vienna, living from house-to-house commerce and enjoying little support from the Jewish community and Masaryk. In 1928, at the age of 52, he died in Vienna and his tombstone reads: "As an innocent victim of a lie of ritual murder, he was forgotten in prison for 19 years".

Rare, does not appear in the world cat library catalog.

[4] p. 25 cm. Very Good Condition .