A Child of Christian Blood

Murder and Conspiracy in Tsarist Russia: The Beilis Blood Libel

Nonfiction, History, Asian, Russia, Jewish, Modern, 20th Century
Cover of the book A Child of Christian Blood by Edmund Levin, Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group
View on Amazon View on AbeBooks View on Kobo View on B.Depository View on eBay View on Walmart
Author: Edmund Levin ISBN: 9780805243246
Publisher: Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group Publication: February 25, 2014
Imprint: Schocken Language: English
Author: Edmund Levin
ISBN: 9780805243246
Publisher: Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group
Publication: February 25, 2014
Imprint: Schocken
Language: English

A Jewish factory worker is falsely accused of ritually murdering a Christian boy in Russia in 1911, and his trial becomes an international cause célèbre.
 
On March 20, 1911, thirteen-year-old Andrei Yushchinsky was found stabbed to death in a cave on the outskirts of Kiev. Four months later, Russian police arrested Mendel Beilis, a thirty-seven-year-old father of five who worked as a clerk in a brick factory nearby, and charged him not only with Andrei’s murder but also with the Jewish ritual murder of a Christian child. Despite the fact that there was no evidence linking him to the crime, that he had a solid alibi, and that his main accuser was a professional criminal who was herself under suspicion for the murder, Beilis was imprisoned for more than two years before being brought to trial. As a handful of Russian officials and journalists diligently searched for the real killer, the rabid anti-Semites known as the Black Hundreds whipped into a frenzy men and women throughout the Russian Empire who firmly believed that this was only the latest example of centuries of Jewish ritual murder of Christian children—the age-old blood libel.
 
With the full backing of Tsar Nicholas II’s teetering government, the prosecution called an array of “expert witnesses”—pathologists, a theologian, a psychological profiler—whose laughably incompetent testimony horrified liberal Russians and brought to Beilis’s side an array of international supporters who included Thomas Mann, H. G. Wells, Anatole France, Arthur Conan Doyle, the archbishop of Canterbury, and Jane Addams. The jury’s split verdict allowed both sides to claim victory: they agreed with the prosecution’s description of the wounds on the boy’s body—a description that was worded to imply a ritual murder—but they determined that Beilis was not the murderer. After the fall of the Romanovs in 1917, a renewed effort to find Andrei’s killer was not successful; in recent years his grave has become a pilgrimage site for those convinced that the boy was murdered by a Jew so that his blood could be used in making Passover matzo. Visitors today will find it covered with flowers.

(With 24 pages of black-and-white illustrations.)

View on Amazon View on AbeBooks View on Kobo View on B.Depository View on eBay View on Walmart

A Jewish factory worker is falsely accused of ritually murdering a Christian boy in Russia in 1911, and his trial becomes an international cause célèbre.
 
On March 20, 1911, thirteen-year-old Andrei Yushchinsky was found stabbed to death in a cave on the outskirts of Kiev. Four months later, Russian police arrested Mendel Beilis, a thirty-seven-year-old father of five who worked as a clerk in a brick factory nearby, and charged him not only with Andrei’s murder but also with the Jewish ritual murder of a Christian child. Despite the fact that there was no evidence linking him to the crime, that he had a solid alibi, and that his main accuser was a professional criminal who was herself under suspicion for the murder, Beilis was imprisoned for more than two years before being brought to trial. As a handful of Russian officials and journalists diligently searched for the real killer, the rabid anti-Semites known as the Black Hundreds whipped into a frenzy men and women throughout the Russian Empire who firmly believed that this was only the latest example of centuries of Jewish ritual murder of Christian children—the age-old blood libel.
 
With the full backing of Tsar Nicholas II’s teetering government, the prosecution called an array of “expert witnesses”—pathologists, a theologian, a psychological profiler—whose laughably incompetent testimony horrified liberal Russians and brought to Beilis’s side an array of international supporters who included Thomas Mann, H. G. Wells, Anatole France, Arthur Conan Doyle, the archbishop of Canterbury, and Jane Addams. The jury’s split verdict allowed both sides to claim victory: they agreed with the prosecution’s description of the wounds on the boy’s body—a description that was worded to imply a ritual murder—but they determined that Beilis was not the murderer. After the fall of the Romanovs in 1917, a renewed effort to find Andrei’s killer was not successful; in recent years his grave has become a pilgrimage site for those convinced that the boy was murdered by a Jew so that his blood could be used in making Passover matzo. Visitors today will find it covered with flowers.

(With 24 pages of black-and-white illustrations.)

More books from Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group

Cover of the book Villain by Edmund Levin
Cover of the book The Substitution Order by Edmund Levin
Cover of the book Crossing the Threshold of Hope by Edmund Levin
Cover of the book The Gangster We Are All Looking For by Edmund Levin
Cover of the book The Inferno by Edmund Levin
Cover of the book The Bird Is a Raven by Edmund Levin
Cover of the book Bruno, Chief of Police by Edmund Levin
Cover of the book The Letters of Noel Coward by Edmund Levin
Cover of the book A Pale View of Hills by Edmund Levin
Cover of the book The Book of Revelation by Edmund Levin
Cover of the book Going Hungry by Edmund Levin
Cover of the book Rumble Tumble by Edmund Levin
Cover of the book Men We Cherish by Edmund Levin
Cover of the book St. Lucy's Home for Girls Raised by Wolves by Edmund Levin
Cover of the book Jamrach's Menagerie by Edmund Levin
We use our own "cookies" and third party cookies to improve services and to see statistical information. By using this website, you agree to our Privacy Policy