March 1911 Mendel Beilis, charged with murder

March 1911

There is no evidence against a Jewish clerk tried for ritually murdering a Christian boy in Kiev In 1911. But that wasn’t the point.

The Crime scene- produced no clear suspects, police felt pressured to make an arrest. Through a mixture of political agitation and scheming on the part of the authorities, Russian nationalists and those most likely guilty of the crime,

Mendel Beilis, a Jewish clerk at a brick factory near the murder scene, was charged with murder. That the evidence against Beilis was nonexistent was irrelevant to the prosecution, for the accused was on trial not as an individual but as a representative of his tribe- a Jew guilty of ritual murder.

Source: An Alibi for Genocide: The Wall Street Journal