von Hellmut Schramm, Ph. D.
1944
a translation by R. Belser of
Der jüdische Ritualmord
Eine historische Untersuchung
At the end of April 1900 -- therefore still in the year of the Hilsner trial -- the following public notice appeared:
"Murder in Konitz. Twenty thousand Marks reward is promised by the Herr Minister of the Interior to any private person who gives crucial information for the investigation of the murderer or murderers of the upper fourth-former Ernst Winter. The decision concerning the payment of the reward is reserved to the Herr Minister.
-- Marienwerder, 27 April 1900. The President of the government."
Since the murderers were Jews, the Herr Minister did not need to worry about the paying out of this prize!
In midsummer of the same year, one Jewish-liberal paper wrote that the Chinese disorder was very inconvenient for the anti-Semites, because the Konitz murder story would be pushed into the background by it and gradually would fall into "forgetfulness." At any rate, a fading away of the public discussion had to be very much opportune for Jewry.
Since the investigation process had degenerated into a public scandal, at the end of November 1900 an "Alliance for the clearing up of the Konitz murder" was formed in Konitz, subscribed to by the Catholic and Evangelical [i.e., Lutheran] clergy and the city councilors of the region, as well as several Landstag and Reichstag deputies. [1]
In an appeal by this alliance, it says that it "appears ever more possible that the mysterious murder will find a solution and punishment." -- For the time being self-help was asked for:
"...and since it is feared that for now the bureaucracy in Germany will be filled increasingly with Jewish and Jewish-legal viewpoints and ideas, thus self-help must be recommended.
"The Konitz murder puts anxiety for the well-being of our children first and foremost in our hearts. Are Christian children still safe from the slaughter?
"Where the power (292) of the state fails, help must be formed from out of the womb of the family. We also turn to the clergy, the teachers, and the father of the family."
The following advice was given in connection with this:
"Parents might want to make known to their children, at the right time for it, the fate of the high school student Winter .
Our children will then, on their own, be careful not to make friendships with Jewish children and enter Jewish houses alone.
The clergy and the teachers might want to warn the populace in the country, in particular young farmhands and milk maids.
In the environs of Konitz, cases have still occurred in the last decades, where serving girls who were in service with Jewish families suddenly vanished without a trace.
At the close of business, when entering Jewish houses is unavoidable, a man should take a companion with him..."
"Should a murder similar to those in Konitz and Xanten happen, the Christian inhabitants of the place should immediately meet in a union for legal protection, which entirely openly works toward the prosecution of the murderers, collects money, and if possible prevents [the outcome] that 'again, nothing comes out of it [the investigation].'
"The union for legal protection has both to keep in touch with the press as well as to warn the populace of the area urgently against banding together [i.e., vigilantism] and committing violence; the latter is if use only to the murderers and their accomplices."
The power of the Jew was complete: the judicial authorities fail to act, the press clearly serves Jewish interests or at least behaves with indifference -- so courageous men with a sense of responsibility got together, issued a summons, and had to ask for private financial support in order to bring about proceedings against Jewish murderers -- German men knew no other way to help themselves, other than to resort to self-help!
A member of the German Reichstag, the German-Social anti-Semitic Deputy Liebermann von Sonnenberg, arranged for a collection of authentic material by an experienced criminalist. At the beginning of the year 1901, the result of these examinations could be presented to the public, which must have been all the more full of significance, when "the Jewish (293) confusion-committee is also recently again busily working" -- as Liebermann von Sonnenberg meaningfully stressed at the start.
The Deputy advised arranging meetings of the people in all Gauen, with the theme Konitz, and that petitions be sent from those meetings to the Chancellor of the Reich, the Reichstag, the Prussian Minister of Justice, and the Kaiser.
The conscience of the German people should not be permitted to have peace until the Konitz blood-murder was atoned for!
The murdered boy, the eighteen year-old high school student Ernst Winter (born on 27 September 1881 in the Church city of Prechlau near Konitz, west Prussia) was attending the gymnasium [= high school] at Konitz since 1894 and lived here as a lodger. His father was a building contractor in Prechlau.
Ernst Winter was popular everywhere and of a clean, life-loving disposition and was very imposing and powerfully built. He was considered the best gymnast of the high school and also had maintained a very good record in the sciences. In the dance class Ernst Winter had become acquainted with the daughters of the Jews Tuchler and Caspary in Konitz. These appear to have had the task of holding the high schooler Winter in Konitz.
Moreover, the circumstance that Winter did not come from the city himself made him especially suitable as a victim, since the inquiries about a non-native student who disappeared were expected to first begin two or three days afterward, as in fact actually occurred.
In any case, Winter was shadowed for a long time, according to plan, [as he went about] his daily routines. On Sunday, 11 March 1900, the day of the murder, Winter attended church in the morning. From there, he made his way to the cigar store of Fischer; (294) for some time he chatted with the proprietor, then he strolled along the market toward his apartment at the house of the master baker Lange for lunch.
For about an hour he went to his room, which he shared with two other high school students; he casually mentioned to them that in the afternoon he was invited to a birthday celebration. An hour later he left the house, never to return. Witnesses saw him for the last time still in front of the house of the Jewish merchant Caspary -- since then he has not been seen alive again.
In the afternoon of Monday, 12 March, the builder Winter in Prechlau received the news that his son Ernst was missing since Sunday afternoon. He immediately went to Konitz and reported to the head mayor Deditius as the police chief in charge.
However, the police took no action. Therefore, the father had to himself proceed to search for his son, vanished without a trace! With the support of the master baker Lange, even the shores of the Mönchsee [= Monk Lake], which bordered the city, were searched. On the afternoon of 13 March the searchers noticed that the ice covering the city basin, in whose direct vicinity the synagogue stood, was conspicuously smashed in one place.
A stick was poked under the ice and a large parcel tied up with brown paper was produced. After removal of the paper, an object carefully sewed in with canvas was found. The seams were undone, and into sight came the torso of a young man, without head and neck, without arms, only the upper body down to the end of the ribs, and the spine was sawed through.
The father Winter recognized the upper body of his son by certain features. Finally the police cordoned off the area. As the first [on the scene], the court physician, the medical advisor Dr. Müller, state's attorney Settegast, and mayor Deditius examined the gruesome discovery.
Witnesses noticed that a Jew had been closely observing the incident the whole time from the synagogue lying directly across the way, and disappeared just when attention was directed toward him.
The interest of the police became more lively from now on -- after two valuable days had passed! They even fished both of the lower parts of the upper body from out of the lake. The body parts were (295) delivered to the city hospital.
On Thursday, 15 March -- therefore four days after the murder -- the right arm was discovered on the gate of the Evangelical churchyard. Some private individuals offered the police their good hunting dogs to search for the parts of the body which were still missing. Police chief Deditius declined. The gentlemen thereupon took up the search alone with their dogs. In fact, in another section of the Mönchsee the right thigh, from which the lower leg had been skillfully detached at the knee, was found in this way.
Four weeks later, on 15 April 1900, on the first day of the Easter holiday, at the other end of the city in the meadow by the city woods, the still recognizable head of the high schooler, with part of the neck, was discovered by children playing.
Excitement in the city was growing -- from the known facts of the case, people drew conclusions about the place of the crime and the perpetrators; only the authorities still noticed nothing. The populace expressed their convictions without concealment: nothing should come of it!
At the end of March, two and a half weeks after the crime, the Police Commissar Wehn appeared from Berlin, to put the Konitz police on the right track. He had brought along the conviction that the murderers in no way were to be sought among the Jews.
He questioned witnesses for months, in order to be able to convict a non-Jewish resident of the murder.
Witnesses who said anything against Jews were badly treated without exception -- one need recall only Xanten and Skurz -- were rudely spoken to, and cross-examined until Wehn believed that they had been caught in contradictions; with that, the "case" involved was then dismissed!
The non-Jewish population of the region summarized their personal opinion about the activity of this Commissar, by saying that this official considered every non-Jew to be a priori extremely untrustworthy, while on the other hand he held every Jew to be a truth-loving and reasonably thinking man!
Consequently, his procedures aroused enormous animosity in the populace.
At their first conference, Commissar Wehn asked a Konitz resident who was a former policeman, (296) and who was still was consulted due to his great experience in criminal investigations -- for this [incident] the witness concerned was available -- :
"Herr Colleague, what do you think about this affair?"
When the latter responded to this by speaking of leads which pointed to the Jews, Wehn declared:
"You believe that the Jews could be the murderers? Then we cannot work together." The police officer was, in fact, no longer consulted!
The following course of a witness interrogation of this Commissar may be put forward as being typical:
A Frau Borchardt wanted to make a statement before Wehn about a conversation she heard of the Jewish family Meyer of Konitz, which concerned the young Winter.
At the end of the protocol, Wehn wrote in his own hand that the witness finally retracted her entire statement which she had just made. But this witness was heard again later, in the jury-court proceedings against the worker Masloff. [2]
She declared with great astonishment that it had not occurred to her at all at that time to retract her statement. Herr Wehn , she said, merely asked her whether she was able to tell him exactly the day of the overheard conversation. This she answered in the negative, but immediately wished to add "I cannot give [you] the day."
But already, at the word "no," Herr Wehn (she said) jumped up and screamed at her:
"Then if you know nothing, see to it that you leave."
-- In spite of these practices, he didn't get anywhere; Wehn wanted to achieve something positive -- for the exoneration of the Konitz Jews. Thus he suddenly came around to the opinion that only homosexuals could have committed the murder.
Cunningly, the Jews knew how to steer suspicion onto a young master tailor whose father, having died a year previously, had been the single open anti-Semite in Konitz -- reason enough to impute all sorts of shameful things to his son now.
Thus wrote the Jew Klausner in his paper, the Israelitische Wochenschrift [Israelite Weekly Letter] (Nr. 27, 1900) explicitly:
"In Konitz things are even worse for the anti-Semites. Here the suspicion is legitimate that the murder was planned in advance and was performed with the intention of putting the blame for it on the Jews.
"The entire behavior of the anti-Semitic spokesmen and of the (297) anti-Semitic press compels [us] to accept this...
anti-Semitism and criminality are identical concepts, insofar as there may well be criminals who are not anti-Semites -- but there cannot be anti-Semites who are not criminals.
"Up until now, the state has not yet reached the realization that it has reason to give special attention to this special criminality. Instead, it grants it seemingly inexhaustible forbearance."
But the young tailor soon dealt with his visible and invisible opponents. He was able to prove that he had made a pleasure trip out of the area with several gentlemen on the day of the murder until the nighttime. By his proposal, all these witnesses were questioned under oath by the investigating magistrate of the district court at Konitz, and he was left in peace from further defamation.
The burial of the murdered gymnasium student took place during the period of activity of this extremely unusual Criminal Commissar. On 22 May, the State Attorney's Office had released the body parts which had been found.
On Sunday, 27 May 1900, an aroused crowd of people numbering many thousands accompanied the remains to the grave at the Evangelical cemetery at Konitz.
The burial of Winter was described by the Jews as an " animal show"! (According to the Germania, Nr. 127, 6 June 1900.)
At around this time appeared the police Inspector Braun, likewise from Berlin, for the further support of the police forces. He shared with Wehn the view of excluding the Jews as perpetrators, but exceeded by far the ruthlessness of his Berlin colleague. For his part, Braun wrote:
"I refrain as a matter of course from [considering] as the motive, the blood-accusation of ritual-murder, raised during the investigations by fanatics or the ignorant, which shames all of Christendom -- since such [an accusation] can originate only from malice or dark superstition."
-- In line with this principle, he conducted his activities, which belong to the most wretched of Jew-friendly maneuvers. After a zealous study of the documents, Braun put together a formal bill of indictment against the German head master butcher and Konitz town councilman Hoffmann and his fourteen-year-old (!) daughter, and handed them over to the State Attorney's Office in Konitz.
The (298) Chief State's Attorney Settegast proposed the opening of the prelimninary investigation against Hoffmann and his arrest! The investigating judge, Dr. Zimmerman, opened the preliminary investigation, after the previously long-standing examining judge, Councilor Schulze, apparently deemed not entirely "reliable," had suddenly been sent to Danzig.
Inspector Braun declared that he would very soon bring the master butcher Hoffmann and his daughter to confess the murder, and there began the shameful doings against an old established and respected citizen and councilor of Konitz, which evoked the greatest outrage in all of Germany.
In his defense statement, [3] Hoffmann described in detail how the Jews and their helpers wanted to stamp him as a murderer by means of artificial agitation. The Braun indictment was also, of course, actually only an expression of that which the Jews had already contrived and been disseminating against the Hoffmann family long before: that Hoffmann had threatened Winter with killing him!
The basis for this claim was the following insignificant incident: On an evening of the winter of 1899/1900, his daughter Anna was standing with two young people in front of the door of her father's place of business, which was located in the busiest part of the city.
This did not please Hoffmann, and he called his daughter inside. Both young men were supposed to have been called louts by Hoffmann -- in any event they immediately removed themselves -- one of them was supposed to have been the young Winter.
A teacher of Winter's, a gymnasium professor, stated that on the evening of the 11th of March, thus on the day of the murder, he had heard the frightful scream of a human being from the synagogue toward half past seven. From this Braun drew the following astute conclusions:
Next to the synagogue was located the wagon shed of Hoffmann; in this shed, between seven and eight o'clock in the evening, Winter and the fourteen-year-old Anna Hoffmann had immoral relations, her father, Hoffmann had surprised them, drawn a large butcher knife and had cut off Winter's head!
(299)
Now the meticulous Hoffmann had no reason at all to
search for his daughter, since at the time in question she was
to be found in the parental apartment!
In his
defense statement, Hoffmann said in the crucial passage:
"...my daughter was still taking a walk in the city, but was already back home again before seven o'clock, in order to prepare supper... We -- that is, I, my daughter, and the other family members, ate supper together toward seven-thirty. My daughter set supper before the apprentices after eight o'clock. After that we all remained at home without interruption and went to sleep. I might remark that I myself did not stir outside of my apartment."
Although witnesses were able to confirm these statements, the charge of homicide was lodged by the State Attorney's Office against Hoffmann and the judicial preliminary investigation and immediate arrest were arranged.
Whatever intrigues besides went on behind the scenes to bring about the proceedings against Hoffmann, have never come completely to light. Only this became known, that Braun was continually in contact with a Jewish agent in Konitz by the name of Rauch.
In any case, the German sector of the populace, for their part, came to the conviction that "the non-Jews in Prussia are still regarded only as second-class citizens" (Liebermann von Sonnenberg).
The great animosity against the authorities, which finally took on riotous form, was explainable in no small part by the fact that nearly all statements made by non-Jews were looked upon as not credible, while Jewish statements were constantly viewed as flawless and as a consequence made use of!
But how did the arrest of Hoffmann occur?
He himself wrote about this:
"On Tuesday, 29 May 1900, both police commissars from Berlin, Braun and Wehn , after they had previously carried out a very thorough house search at my [home], brought me and my fourteen year-old daughter to the police office and charged us both with having committed the murder of the gymnasium student Winter.
Both the Commissars thereby put forth the claim that I had, on 11 March, (300) toward seven o'clock in the evening, missed my daughter, had searched for her, and came upon her in the wagon shed situated near my icehouse on the Mönchsee [Monk Lake], how she was in intercourse with the high school student Winter.
Out of rage over this [I was supposed to have] throttled Winter and stabbed him. This monstrous accusation was put before me. These officials presented this same fairy tale to my daughter and even wanted to persuade my daughter that all had been discovered already, she should only confess it, then a more lenient punishment would be given me, her father."
The daughter, still a child, was supposed to be pressed into [making] an untrue accusation of her own father!
In reality, the goings-on were much more scandalous yet:
Hoffmann and his daughter were treated like criminals ! The daughter was separated from her father in a police guard room from eight until one o'clock, held in custody under the supervision of a police officer and was twice fetched out for interrogation. But there was nothing further to be gotten out of her other than:
"But my God! I know nothing of this, I can say nothing!"
-- Meanwhile, Hoffmann was again led back into his apartment in order to be present at a new, thorough search .
From here, he had to follow the officials to the shed, lying about 200 steps distant from their synagogue. Then Hoffmann , surrounded by a police team, was again transported to the police station, right through the midst of a large crowd of people, to be subjected to a cross-examination there!
In the meantime, the populace of Konitz had banded together at the market in front of the police office and assumed a threatening attitude. Under these circumstances, it seemed advisable to Inspector Braun to no longer keep up the arrest, and he released father and daughter.
Concerning the further course of the day, which signified a disgrace for imperial justice, Hoffmann wrote in his quoted letter:
"On the evening of the same day, the Jews and friends of the Jews spread throughout the whole population [the rumor] that I was supposed to be arrested in the night.
It was clear to me and my friends that it was desired to intentionally provoke unrest in the night thereby, (301) which they succeeded in doing. Up until then, only a few immature fellows had been calling out "Hepp, Hepp" in the streets in the darkness till ten o'clock, and now and then furtively broken a window pane.
At the news of my arrest, however, several thousand adult and mostly married men assembled on their own in order to prevent the blow intended against all Christians by means of the arrest of my person. Each one of the thousands of serious men who filled the streets and squares, was aware that he, just as well as I today, could be made to appear as a murderer tomorrow before Herr Braun. They called out openly to the gendarmes:
'The Jews slaughter our children, the Jews profane our graves, and now even more Christians are supposed to be killed!'
The married men placed themselves in front of the gendarmes and invited them to strike out at them.
Only a people which has the profoundest conviction of my innocence, and which deeply feels the monstrosity of my being made to appear as a murderer, can behave in such a way."
In these critical days, the municipal head authority found it advisable to go out of town. Under the date 5 June 1900, the report appears in the paper: "The mayor has gone on vacation." Just a full month later, on 30 June, the examining judge concluded the preliminary investigation.
The charges of Braun collapsed. On 19 July 1900, the cessation of the proceedings was officially communicated to the master butcher Hoffmann. The grounds for the decision of cessation laid down by the Konitz court should be rendered in their essential points due to their importance:
"According to the medical expert opinion of the district physician Dr. Müller and of the general practitioner Dr. Bleske of 29 June 1900, the murder of the gymnasium student Winter occurred between three and four o'clock and at the latest four-thirty in the afternoon.
Accordingly it appears, however, entirely out of the question that the accused was the perpetrator, because on the afternoon of Sunday 11 March 1900, the accused first stopped in church, and then stopped with his daughter Anna in the house of the master butcher Ziebarth and his wife until after six o'clock.
(302) Moreover, according to the opinion of the experts Drs. Müller and Bleske, it is fully out of the question that the perpetrator committed the crime without deliberation, rather the condition of the body, the manner of dismemberment and manner of the dispersal of the bodily parts indicate that the crime was performed by more than two persons and according to a well thought-out plan. The accused Hoffmann can thus also for this reason not come into consideration as the perpetrator ..."
The Hoffmann episode in the Winter murder tragedy had reached its end. The actual victors here were also the Jews: if they did not succeed, as in the year 1884 in Skurz, in bringing a likewise innocent, non-Jewish butcher to the dock, they could still say: the judicial investigation due to the murder of Winter was not opened against any "of our people," but against a non-Jew, the authorities must think, therefore, the perpetrator or perpetrators are to be found only among non-Jews.
And the actual Jewish and Jewish-slave papers and weeklies wrote in this vein -- but more than anything else, Jewry had achieved one essential result: suspicion had been diverted from the actual murderers for a sufficiently long time, to be able to thoroughly erase the traces of a blood-murder!
The court decision of 19 July 1900 assumed [the existence of] several murderers -- which doubtless was correct. In order to tie up and gag the young, exceptionally powerful Winter in such a manner, in order to be able to cut through the throat of his living body, a larger number of men was required. The murderers had to have found a suitable space with suitable facilities, which could be brightly illuminated.
Instruments and a table had to be prepared in order to dismember the body of the victim. Moreover, packing material for the body parts had to be gotten. -- The murderers also had accomplices in the city of Konitz. This is proved by the subsequent carrying (303) of the arm to the Evangelical churchyard and of the head into the marshy field at the other side of the city.
On the basis of eyewitness statements, which will be yet more closely dealt with in a special section, the murder of Winter can be reconstructed in the following manner:
On the days of the 14th, 15th, 20th and 21st of April 1900, the Jews had their Easter festival, for which non-Jewish blood was needed.
This time Konitz was selected to furnish the slaughtered sacrifice and to provide the location for the ritual-slaughter.
The house and the cellar of the Jewish butcher Adolf Levy, outfitted for the taking apart of animal carcasses and with its double entrances from two streets, was determined as suitable location for this! As can be proved, collections of money "for taking care of expenses" were organized among the Jews resident in Konitz...
The murderers arrived in Konitz from every direction. One Jew came from out of Russia across Strasburg (West Prussia). The itinerary of several other Russian-Polish Jews was no longer able to be determined.
In addition, a number of Jewish ritual-slaughterers or religious officials arrived from various parts of West Prussia and Posen.
The Russian-Polish Jews were likewise ritual-slaughterers or religious officials. In particular, one man was conspicuous, who limped and had smallpox scars on his face. [4]
According to the honor accorded to him by other Jews, he seemed to be a "light of Israel." Already from Saturday evening on, some of the murderers arrived inconspicuously through both of the entrances in the Levy house and lay in wait for the appearance of the victim.
Three young non-Jews did not walk into the trap; only the harmless and unsuspecting Winter, who already was long since enmeshed, entered the Levy premises on Sunday at about six in the evening and was overpowered!
He was kept in a gagged condition up until the ritual slaughtering, carried out at a somewhat later time, and at which all the murderers appeared when darkness fell.
With a knife the schächter cut through the neck and the neck vessels directly to the trunk. After the blood had run completely out of the body, the corpse was properly dismembered.
(304) At the same time, something was going on in the synagogue.
At night, from the 11th to the 12th of March, a light was burning there between 11 and 12 o'clock and a tangle of voices was heard.
-- The same thing had been noticed in Tisza-Eszlár! -- The murderers themselves, in the course of the night and of the following day, again departed from Konitz in all directions with their booty, the blood of Winter.
The conformity of Winter's murder with the ritual-murder of the boy Cybulla in Skurz which occurred in the year 1884 is striking: at both murders the disarticulation of the thighs was performed with the greatest skill, and the opening of the abdominal cavity was also carried out with the most exact concordance, and in particular in both cases with one cut which passed along the right side of the navel; also, the absence of individual parts of the body is characteristic -- these conformities, extending to individual details, allow the presumption that both victims were dismembered by one and the same person, who possessed great expertise and experience in the proper dismemberment of the human body!
At the request of the prosecutor's office, the Berlin physicians Drs. Mittenzweig and Störmer undertook in Konitz the post-autopsy examination of Winter's body parts; both doctors totally agreed with the Konitz physicians, but expanded upon their expert opinion in the most essential point: that the body parts were completely empty of blood! The Berlin physicians determined:
1. that the killing of Winter took place by means of cutting into the neck and cutting through the large vessels of the neck,
2. that Winter met his death through external bleeding from the incised neck vessels,
3. that the cutting up of the body was effected by means of knife and saw by an expert hand and
4. that the complete exsanguination of the parts of the body was already done when the parts were wrapped up and sunk in the lake.
From these findings, the physicians further assumed that the death of Winter had been brought about in such a manner that he initially was brought to the point of suffocation in the first phase by means of the clasping shut of the nose and mouth, and that, in the second phase, (305) his life was taken by the neck cut and removal of blood.
In plain words, the gist of the experts' report read:
Ernst Winter was expertly ritually slaughtered!
The plan for the slaughter of a young man in the city of Konitz and especially in the house of the Jewish ritual-slaughterer Levy was doubtless prepared months in advance according to definite directives. Besides Winter, three young people [5] had been selected and already enmeshed -- but they instinctively sensed danger and escaped slaughter. These were:
1. the farmer H. In January, the Jewish merchant C. said to the unmarried farmer H., a young man in the prime of health, after first inquiring as to whether H. truly was in complete health:
"You have good blood, you are good for it...";
after H. asked what that was supposed to mean, C. replied:
"The blood is costly this year, it's costing us a half million Marks"; [6]
2. the merchant S. in Zempelburg; Moritz Levy visited the young merchant S., from whom the Levys had purchased a bicycle, conspicuously often in the weeks before the murder. At every opportunity, the Jew asked whether S. also was in the best of health, forced himself in close proximity to him for the alleged purpose of comparing the size of their bodies, and urgently requested him several times to come to Konitz, in order to get the money for the bicycle. -- Downright creepy seemed
3. the case of the worker Laskowski of Frankenhagen; Eight days before the murder of Winter, Moritz Levy had purchased a cow from the farmer Grabowicz in Frankenhagen and thereupon demanded especially forcefully, that a young and strapping farmhand, Tucchinski , should deliver the cow in Konitz on the Sunday, 11 March.
On (306) the forenoon of the day of the murder, the 11th of March , when Winter still had not been lured into the trap, both young Levys drove to farmer Grabowicz and heard that not Tucchinski, but rather the worker Laskowski was given the task of getting the cow to Konitz.
The Levys then made the utmost effort to bring about a modification of this arrangement, which was, however, no longer possible. Moritz Levy instructed the worker to tie the animal preferably in the inn and then pick up his fee for driving [the cow]. But he was supposed to come through the rear courtyard door.
Since Laskowski was not familiar with the location, he entered the Levy property through the front door by mistake, and thus escaped the fate which a few hours later was intended for the gymnasium student Winter. The worker Laskowski declared in his statement before the court:
"... I had a great feeling of anxiety at the time, it seemed so eerie to me, the entire bearing of Levy imbued me with a horror, as if they wished to do me evil.
In the room (behind the store) I heard old man Levy murmuring in a conversation with the rest of them. I heard the words: 'Is the matter arranged?... tie the legs... Monk Lake!'
When I heard these words, a mortal terror came over me. I was now asked whether I was married. I said yes, I have five children. I then heard, still in the room there, the words: 'Catch hold soon... wouldn't like to take long...'"
-- That he got to the street again alive, Laskowski owed only to the circumstance that a customer suddenly came in and so the Jews were kept from their attack!
In October 1899, the raft master Steincke from Prechlau, the birthplace of Winter, had a memorable conversation there with the Jewish ritual-slaughterer Eisenstädt. He was buying meat at this butcher's place and came to speak of the Winter family. When he offered the opinion that the gymnasium student Winter was a nice fellow, Eisenstädt said:
"Yes, he's good for slaughtering!"
Steincke, laughing, replied to this:
"Now, he's too young for that, he has hardly any meat!" to which this Eisenstädt responded:
"That doesn't matter, for he's got blood to give!
In (307) itself, one could regard this expression merely as a bad joke; an entirely different aspect is put on it, however, if one considers that Winter was in fact ritually slaughtered some months later, and that Eisenstädt, on the day of the slaughter, the 11th of March 1900, himself appeared in Konitz and returned to Prechlau just on the Monday. He was bringing along a little box with very nasty-smelling contents, a box which disappeared immediately when strangers began to take notice of it!
On the basis of sworn statements by witnesses, it was further determined that, besides Eisenstädt of Prechlau, the following foreign ritual-slaughterers participated in the murder of Winter:
1. the brother of the Prechlau Eisenstädt, the Schlochau Eisenstädt, left the Catholic hospital (Borromäus-Stift) at Konitz on the evening of 11 March, and remained away the entire night, from the 11th to the 12th of March, as could be proved on the basis of the entries in the institution's books! Some days later, he demanded a certification from the sisters of the institution that he had spent the night in question in the hospital (sworn statement of the sisters of the order who were involved);
2. the schächter [ritual-slaughterer] Hamburger from Schlochau arrived in Konitz at noon of 11 March, returned to Schlochau at 8:40 P.M. in the evening on train 212, took a wagon there, drove back to Konitz again, and at his return on 12 March had loaded a box, which he dragged into the forest in the vicinity of the Schlochau Lake. After some time, he came back without this box and climbed into his wagon [which moved off] in the direction of Schlochau;
3. the schächter Haller of Tuchel arrived in Konitz with the noon train from Tuchel on 11 March;
4. the schächter from Czersk likewise arrived in Konitz on 11 March;
5. the schächter from R. (The place name was not written out!). This man had a full beard, but returned without the beard, and with a large bruise on his face;
A few days before the 11th of March, five foreign Jews alighted (308) in Konitz from the noon train. They were received at the train station with conspicuous respect by the synagogue servant Nosseck, and driven to the Jewish Lewinski in Konitz.
Futhermore, on the 10th and the 11th of March respectively, more than ten foreign Jews, probably Jewish religious officials, were noticed in front of and in the doorway of a Jewish inhabitant in Konitz!
The station assistant from Konitz said later, likewise under oath, that not ever before had so many Jews come into the place as on the day of the murder!
On Monday, the 12th of March, witnesses noticed how the Konitz Rabbi Kellermann and the Konitz schächter, who a short time later fled to America, both with top hats on their heads, were inspecting a piece of meat (liver?) in the Rabbi's room, made incisions in it with a knife, and were making microscopic examinations of it.
It must have been a type of religious act, because otherwise the schächter would hardly have kept the top hat on his head in the chamber of his 'superior' -- for the custom, to have the head covered in a ritual space or at a ritual activity, is expressly Jewish" (Schwartz-Bostunisch, Die Fraumauerei [Freemasonry], p. 137).
A woman tailor, K., revealed under oath that on Sunday evening, 17 March, she became an unnoticed witness of a conversation between Rabbi Kellermann and another , probably foreign, Jew who was unknown to her. She clearly heard the following sentences:
"Have you kept something in mind?" -- "That so many devils are crawling around here?" -- "That nothing gets out [about the murder]!"
In addition, the conversations of other Jews were heard, which allowed the conclusion to be made [that there was] far-reaching complicity and knowledge [of the crime]!
As already mentioned, the right arm of the murder victim was discovered on 15 March at the Evangelical churchyard, and the head on 15 April in the meadow at the city woods. Now the Jewish merchant Israelski was seen: as, on the morning of 15 March, toward six fifteen, he was walking to the said churchyard with a sack in which there was a longish object after the manner of [a loaf of] bread, (309) and as he returned, around six forty-five, with the empty sack rolled up.
-- On Good Friday, the 13th of April, the same Jew was seen, as he was walking in the direction of the city woods with a sack in which a round object -- like a head of cabbage, perhaps -- was lying, and as, after some time [had passed], he returned with dirty boots and the empty sack under his arm.
Israelski was charged due to the latter occurrence, but was acquitted by the five judges of the criminal court, among whom the Jewish district judge Bohm was to be found! -- The wife of Israelski said to the bailiff:
"The Russian Jews are gone and my husband is now supposed to be the scapegoat!"
But the chief witness, the worker Masloff, found himself located at the hour of the crime at the murder-cellar, and was able to observe the actions of the murderers outside of the cellar from his own vantage point. His incriminating statements given on 8 June 1900 before the examining judge at the district court in Konitz, Dr. Zimmermann, should be reproduced exactly.
Masloff stated the following to the record:
"On Sunday, the 11th of March, toward ten o'clock in the evening, I was walking home alone from the residence of my brother-in-law Berg. In Danzig Street, I lost the stopper of my snuff glass. I stooped down, it was right in front of a cellar window (of the Levy premises); I heard several voices in the cellar but was able to understand nothing, or even see into the cellar, because it was totally dark and the window appeared to me to be covered.
I went to the next window of the same house, this was uncovered. A weak glow of light penetrated through this. The conversation was being carried on in the cellar; I thought perhaps to be able hear more from the street in the rear and went there. I turned into the Mauerstraße at Hoffmann's [7] and eavesdropped at the individual gate wings.
There, where I was hearing voices behind the gate wing, I knelt down on the ground and listened. I heard the voices of many people, and in between (310) also a gasping sound. In any case, it was a gurgling sound.
After approximately five minutes a door was opened in the interior of the courtyard, and out of the door opening a man stepped into the yard. I clearly recognized this man as that person whom I later got to know as the old Levy. Levy remained standing in the yard with his head stretched forward, in a listening posture.
When Levy had been standing there for about five minutes, two other men came through the door. While old Levy and both of the others were standing there in the yard, there was still further speaking from other people behind them. Also, I now was still hearing the gurgling noise..."
Masloff waited perhaps an hour and a half; after some time this suspicious noise stopped, but the tangle of voices, which had to have originated from many persons, persisted.
"Suddenly the wings of the gates were opened, and three people emerged, two were carrying a bundle, one walked immediately behind them; one of bundle-carriers could have been Pince-nez Levy (nickname of the son of Moritz Levy ).
The people were pulling along the bundle with much effort... They walked along the edge of the street and turned off there toward Monk Lake, where the path went toward the basin and where later the body parts were found..."
Masloff stayed for a short while yet at the yard:
"...while I was at the yard, a jumble of voices penetrated from out of the cellar, and I heard a sound as if [something] in the cellar was being scrubbed."
-- Masloff then left.
On the evening of the same day, toward eleven o'clock, several persons perceived a peculiar odor, as if from incinerated rags, from the synagogue.
At the same time, these witnesses saw a light moving in the synagogue. When a witness informed Commissar Wehn , the latter said:
"There you see again the silly prejudice, the silly fairy tale..."
The Jewish merchant Samuel Rosenthal from Kamin, a little town in the direct vicinity of Konitz, said shortly after the murder of Winter, in the presence of non-Jewish witnesses:
"I'm going to Konitz, then I'll tell [the names of] all who were there at the slaughtering of Winter." (311)
-- On the following day, Rosenthal allegedly committed suicide...
In Polzin (Pomerania) lived a relative of the Konitz Levys. As was proved, he was present in Konitz with them on 11 March. On his return, he brought along a little flask of blood. He was not arrested!
In Prechlau, on 11 June 1900, the father of the victim received a letter whose handwriting pointed to a "leading" Konitz Jew -- but this Jew, too, was not bothered [by the authorities]!
The letter, whose photocopy is still preserved, has the following text (after removal of numerous mistakes in spelling):
"To Herr Winter in Prechlau.
Since the proceedings against H. (Hoffmann is meant!) have begun, we ask that you remain silent, we assure you that nothing will come of the murder.
This affair has already cost us 200,000 Marks. If you, reckoned from today onward, stay silent about your suspicions against us, which we had to deal with that way, you will receive 50,000 Marks.
If you will stay silent, you must immediately have the words 'Be silent, Winter' in the 'Geselligen'-Graudenz [i.e., the personals column of a local paper] and the 50,000 Marks will be sent to you within a month, and from different locations and in various amounts, so that it does not attract attention.
Should you be reasonable, finally, it is to your advantage. -- If you run to Konitz again with this letter, we will learn of it... (illegible!)... and you won't get a penny.
We Jews did it, but we had to do it, let that be a consolation to you!"
On the basis of these prominently demonstrated facts, which represent only a fraction of the events mostly already investigated in the court documents, the father of the murdered boy made application at the State Attorney's office at Konitz in November 1900 to initiate criminal proceedings against the Jewish schächter Levy and his son Moritz for aiding and abetting at the murder of his son.
The procedure of the examining judge, Dr. Zimmermann, against the master butcher Hoffmann, has already been treated in detail; as we recall, at the end of May the proceedings against Hoffmann as the presumptive perpetrator reached a critical point, in that the formal preliminary investigation was opened against this victim of Jewish diversionary tactics!
But after the proceedings had had to be stayed, the investigation was carried on under the designation "Winter murder case."
Since all tracks clearly pointed, totally independently from one another, at the house of the Jewish schächter Adolf Levy, the judicial investigation, with every [attempt for the] sparing of Jewry, had to finally concern itself with the Levy family.
To the greatest shock of town and country, the examining judge, Dr. Zimmermann, adopted a course which ran directly counter to public sentiment.
Thus -- to set out only a few especially characteristic examples of these corrupt "investigative" proceedings -- several witnesses were arrested in the most ruthless manner, and indeed, witnesses who had affirmed under oath facts strongly incriminating the Levy family.
This fate befell first of all the seventeen year-old preparatory student Speisiger. After he had been interrogated five times in total -- of which three times were under oath -- he was arrested under scandalous accompanying circumstances on the grounds of alleged perjury.
The final interrogation, before the district judge Zimmermann, lasted from ten in the morning until ten o'clock in the evening, with a two-hour recess during which Speisiger was locked in the court building!
In the course of this entire day he received no nourishment and was finally arrested at night by the order of Dr. Zimmermann!
On 6 October -- Speisiger had meanwhile sat in custody for a full quarter year -- the Speisiger trial was heard before the criminal court of the Konitz district court; Speisiger was fully exonerated in the course of the trial!
Moritz Levy, questioned as a "witness," was arrested while still in the courtroom, for intentional perjury! (313)
-- At the least, he had succeeded in damaging a young innocent person in the worst way, who was soon supposed to take on a public office. Moreover, this victim was not financially compensated in any way!
The extremely important observations of the worker Masloff should have sufficed by themselves alone for the arrest of the Levys.
Consequently, Masloff had to be silenced, since [attempts at] bribery had had no success!
Zimmermann now tried to wear down the prosecution witnesses by his own methods, in hours-long, continuously repeated interrogations. Even here the witness was arrested, again because of perjury!
In order to intimidate further witnesses who had willingly placed themselves at the disposal [of the court], every effort was made. The family members of the main prosecution witnesses were likewise arrested!
The chief state's attorney, Settegast, filed charges of perjury against:
1. the worker Masloff,
2. Frau Masloff,
3. the sister of Frau Masloff and
4. the mother-in-law of Masloff.
The jury court proceedings against these four non-Jewish accused took place from 26 October till 9 November 1900 before the Konitz jury court. The attempt was made by the defense to bring forward a portion of the evidentiary material which gave indication of the Jewish culpability at the murder of Winter, and with surprising success; for both the jurors as well as the audience became convinced that the murder only could have been committed by Jews for ritual purposes, and indeed, only in the cellar of the schächter, Levy !
The court sessions, one summoned during the day and one at night, amounted to this, that the observations stated by Masloff were quite possible -- the decision given by the jurors was obscured and falsified by the Jewish press, so that the defense counsel of the Masloff family saw themselves forced to bring to the attention of the general public, in a message sent to the Konitzer Tageblatt, (314) the depositions of the Masloff couple, which were true according to the deliberation by the jury. [8]
After the outcome of this jury court proceeding, too -- the women were immediately released, Masloff himself later -- there could be no doubt that, if the authorities had pursued the actual murderers and their accomplices with the same zeal which they had employed against prosecution witnesses, they [the real murderers] would have had to have come promptly to sentence.
But these manipulations had reached the point that a genuine panic broke out among non-Jewish witnesses -- indeed, everyone had to fear that, after the foregoing events, at the very least perjury proceedings would be contrived against him -- if not worse still, as in the Hoffmann case!
The examining judge Zimmerman emerged as a veritable bogey man; in hours-long sessions, witnesses whom he got into his grasp were questioned until they were totally exhausted and intimidated, became tangled into supposed contradictions and stood on the verge of prison!
Next to the Chief State's Attorney Settegast was the Attorney General Lautsch of the West Prussian highland district of Marienwerder as the representative of the prosecution authorities.
For him, as well, the valid theorem was: non-Jews are suspect, Jews, on the contrary, are credible and honorable witnesses!
In the Masloff trial, he did his part at a decisive point [of the trial] of designating the entire Levy family as worthy of belief, although not three weeks previously, at the occasion of the Speisiger trial, a member of this bunch, Moritz Levy, the so-called "Pince-nez Levy", had been taken into custody from the courtroom due to intentional perjury!
And the appearance of this representative of "German" justice profoundly aroused the non-Jewish segment of the population!
And the result of these judicial efforts?
It did not succeed in saddling a non-Jew with the bestial crime, although the infamous tactics of the entire Jewish-inspired proceedings aimed at doing so -- but also, a preliminary investigation against no Jew whatsoever for the murder of Winter was opened, (315) and that was the decisive thing, the actual triumph of Jewish influence and lobbying!
It makes one's face redden still today, that "German" judges, who came from the folk and who had been trained at German schools of higher education for service to these very folk, had, devoid of any healthy sentiment and understanding, succumbed to the Jewish spirit: Xanten, Skurz, Polna, and Konitz signify historic as well as judicial facts, which cannot be contested!
One might be able to let these scandalous trials be buried, if we, as members of a once crippled and bled-out generation, did not realize that these events helped prepare the moral collapse which took place barely two decades later!
Why did nothing come of [the events of] Konitz, either? -- We can formulate the answer in one sentence: because at that time nothing was supposed to come of it!
Besides the Criminal Commissars mentioned, in the course of those memorable months a series of higher -- very much higher -- officials and very learned and secret gentlemen surfaced in Konitz, to "discuss" the case in long, very long conferences, which took place behind locked and guarded doors!
What was being said privately among the essentially illiterate and less secret, honest Konitz citizens, was that the gentlemen:
Ministerial Director Lucas, Privy Supreme Justice Councillor Przewlocka, Privy Councillor Maubach, -- naturally, all from Berlin, -- the Senate President Hasenstein (see!) and the Attorney General Wulff from Marienwerder (West Prussia), tacitly joined in the opinion of the gentlemen:
Deditius, Wehn, Braun, Zimmermann, and Settegast -- to wit, that only the completely "uneducated folk" could accept the "medieval fairy-tale" of blood-murder as their opinion, while legal people were freeing themselves of this prejudice, which, again, means that they had rejected in advance a Jewish perpetration [of the murder]!
That desired stage had been thereby approached, which a Jewish organ dressed in the following words: "By every appearance, the investigation in the matter of the Konitz murder affair is coming (316) to a conclusion.
According to every probability, a criminal case (!) will result as the outcome, which claims a certain interest merely by the method of the murderer and the speculations and debates attached to his person...," therefore a criminal case, which merely claimed "a certain interest," was to remain of this blood-murder to the end!
It's necessary in this connection to bring closer attention to the person and behavior of the Mayor of Konitz, in order to uncover his unwholesome influence, also, on the course of the proceedings. Deditius, earlier Mayor of the Silesian city of Strehlen, had made himself unbearable there by his all too openly displayed Jewish-friendly attitude, and he preferred to favor [with his presence] the West Prussian city of Konitz, as its head.
The fate of the investigation lay to a great -- if not decisive -- extent, in the hands of this man, who, in his capacity as head of the city, also functioned simultaneously as Chief of Police, for the initiative of the discovery of crime was incumbent upon the local police authorities, who were authorized to act independently.
How did Deditius conduct himself now? -- In all of Konitz, everyone was of the opinion that, if this man had immediately initiated measures in a truly expeditious manner, the crime would have been promptly cleared up! Practical suggestions and assistance were ignored or gruffly rejected.
The city of Konitz -- as can be seen from the city plan -- could be thoroughly cordoned off, according to its quite simple and clearly arranged architecture, with the smallest conceivable detachment of troops and without the calling in of outside military help. For this purpose the fire department, the veterans' association, the rifle club, and the local citizens offered their help: Deditius refused it!.
The next step, the house searches, were -- as far as Jewish property was concerned -- conducted sloppily and superficially! After it was unavoidable that the (317) Levy premises, the den of murderers, be inspected, the Jewess Levy, who allegedly was not feeling well, was allowed to remain lying peacefully in bed, although this circumstance had to have been highly suspicious, indeed this Jewess was able to conceal extremely incriminating evidence!
At house searches arranged later, naturally even less was discovered, for one can characterize the first, cursory "visits" as plain warning signals! As we recall, some Konitz gentlemen offered their good hunting dogs to assist the searches, especially for finding the body parts of the murder victim:
Deditius declined with the suggestion that the gentlemen could go in the houses themselves and search with their dogs, if they absolutely wanted to do that! -- one was supposed to believe that the decisions about domestic law were still currently the mayor's!
But the same Deditius personally beat with a whip young people who had given unequivocal public expression to their opinion on the occasion of Hoffmann's arrest, in the police building, after they had first been rendered defenseless!
The same Deditius, without being rebuked, entered extremely subjective comments into the protocol records in his own hand instead of leaving this judgement to the judicial authorities!
For rounding out this portrait the case of a witness interrogation should still be briefly touched upon, which can be described as typical.
-- A respected and honorable Konitz citizen made very important observations on the day of the murder and on the day after, which related to the presence of Polish Jews, ritual-slaughterers, and rabbis in the city of Konitz, as a collusion of several Konitz Jews.
He was relating his observations at a table of his friends, and a listener reported what he'd heard to the court. The citizen concerned was summoned as a witness. In the between-time of only a few days, the secret Jewish intelligence service, which pursued every witness with the greatest attention and so then attempted to deal with him accordingly, had learned of this.
The Jews threatened him with economic ruin; various orders which the witness had received from Jews were cancelled with innuendos which were not to be misunderstood, everything was tried in order to bring injury to the man.
At the police bureau, he was (318) questioned by Deditius and the notorious Commissar Wehn jointly; the Mayor sought to make clear to him -- this time in an adroitly jovial manner, that his observations could have been based upon mere delusions, without the witness even being heard to the end [of his statement]!
This cosy treatment of the matter did not soothe the conscience of this Konitz citizen, and he spoke on. But now Wehn brought out the heavy artillery, without hesitation declared the witness to be biased, his statements to be contradictory, and by no means credible! The witness hardly noted what was written down and merely went home with the conviction that statements against the Jews would not find the expected appreciation from the authorities and moreover, would be very dangerous...
The good will of some duty-conscious Konitz officials, who also once wanted to subject Jewry to a closer inspection, was markedly dampened after these bad experiences, and finally waned entirely.
However, some brave German men, like the anti-Semitic Reichstag Deputy Liebermann von Sonnenberg, mentioned in the beginning, still remained, who possessed the courage to bring up the Konitz blood-murder, even in the Reichtag (which should not be forgotten about him) [9] -- though without result -- and that (to be sure) still small segment of the press which had not lost its sober reasoning and its German qualities.
An extremely noteworthy article appeared there in Germania of 6 June 1900 (Nr. 127), which came into print and consequently a universal Jewish howling (Berliner Tageblatt) ensued. Its text should be given, with omission of the inessential passages.
(319) -- The Germania wrote:
"Soon a quarter-year will have elapsed since the trunk of the murdered Winter was discovered in the Mönchsee [Monk Lake], and the murderer has still not been found, and it has the well-justified appearance, as if he won't be found, too. The present highly unusual circumstances give us reason to subject the story of the murder to a closer examination.
The fear and the worry for the life of our children presses the pen into our hands. We well know that the state cannot stop murders, but we also know that it has the duty to seek out and to punish murderers and to thereby preventively protect the life of its subjects, also the life of Christian children.
After the present outcome in Skurz and Xanten and after the result presumably expected today in Konitz, can we still have confidence that murders of Christian children will be punished and atoned for? From the very start, the investigation has taken an extremely remarkable course;
After everything which has been known about it up till now and which has been reported in the press under the explicit adducing of the facts of the case which today remain uncontested, the proceedings of the investigation show a remarkable disinclination toward [taking] energetic steps, as soon as these steps lead to the Jews."
-- And further:
"Conspicuous, the treatment of all persons who have made statements which incriminated the Jews; conspicuous, the denunciations or attempted damage to all who unselfishly sought to contribute to the solution [of the crime] at official summons; conspicuous the kind treatment of the gravely incriminated Jews; (320) conspicuous the obligingness toward foreign emissaries, who, in the interest of the accused Jews are seeking to give another twist to the case.
Now the case has taken the turn that the universally respected Christian butcher Hoffman is charged with the murder by the assumption of absurd motives. Conspicuous are the even more energetic proceedings against Hoffmann, and conspicuous the thoroughness of the house search carried out at his [place], conspicuous the energy and perseverance with which Hoffmann and his daughter were interrogated.
Were the incriminated Jews and Jewish daughters also taken hold of in that way?"
"The riots which occurred are, first and foremost, to be laid to the account of the Jews -- the Schlochau Jews called Winter's burial an "animal show" --, in the second place, to be laid to the account of the police. Now an effort was made in Konitz to uncover an anti-Semitic agitation.
If the latter, which of course is not illegal, is present, then Jews and the police are its promoters, who are unable to recognize the fruits of their activity, and wish to push off responsibility for it onto others.
We have tried here to openly and clearly show the situation; the result of the entire case is, up to now, unfortunately, objectively an undermining in the people of the consciousness of Law and the security of the Law, just as of the belief in the impartiality of Justice!
Let them not allow themselves to hope that the case can die away, that the people of Konitz will be satisfied with a settlement on the order of Skurz.
Murder must be atoned for. And if the government of the State puts any value in gaining the trust of the populace again, then it's necessary that it is taken out of the hands of the persons entrusted up till now with the investigation, all of them together, above all the Berlin Commissars..."
The Deutsche Volksblatt appearing in Munich described, in an article of 17 June 1900, "The great Death in Konitz," the situation in Konitz in detail and the burial of the victim, and then said in conclusion:
"In Konitz a battalion of soldiers has entered which will put to rest the 'damned hick town' with rifle butts and bayonets. Let peace prevail! The peace of the cemetary!
-- Who, now, is the great Dead One in Konitz? Is it Winter? (321)
No, not he. The other one, a much greater one, whom they have buried there:
It is the faith of the people in Right and Law."
The Liberté, the leading paper of the French-speaking part of Switzerland, wrote at the beginning of January 1901:
"The infamous murder of Konitz is still not atoned for. If it remains without atonement, so will the belief of the German people in the Hebraic blood-ritual be strengthened in the same measure as the trust in justice is diminished..."
And Theodor Fritsch made this judgement in 1911 in the Hammer: [10]
"The murder has remained unsolved up until the present day... The events at the trial were of such an unusual kind, that one must say: the authorities have plainly made desperate efforts, in order not to find the guilty parties."
In September 1901 the proceedings against the Levys were stayed;
in June 1902 the complaint of the father of Winter was finally rejected by the Oberlandesgericht [upper regional court] of Marienwerder "and thereby also the blood accusation against the Jews" (Jüdisches Lexicon III [Jewish Lexicon III]), and in October 1903, in conclusion, Moritz Levy, arrested in the Speisiger trial on account of intentional perjury and sentenced in 1901 to four years incarceration, was "pardoned"!
The Jewish dictionary (III , 842/843) finally notes:
"The truth about the murdering of Winter has, despite a reward of 20,000 Marks offered by the state attorney's office, remained unsolved.
As a result of the arousal of the anti-Semitic mood in Konitz in connection with this murder case, many Jews abandoned the city.
-- That is correct, for up till the year 1903, not fewer than 130 Jews emigrated from Konitz...
But a Jewess had better knowledge of the fate of Winter (322) than those "in charge of" the "Konitz case": Under the headline "Ritual murder solved after 38 years," the Dresden Freiheitskampf [Freedom Struggle] reported in its Nr. 349 issue of 1938:
"Dirschau, 18 December 1938.
-- The murder of the high school student Ernst Winter in Konitz, which aroused enormous excitement and set loose a wave of outrage in Germany and in the entire world around the turn of the century due to the mysterious circumstances which accompanied the crime, has now, after 38 years, been surprisingly cleared up.
At the clearing out of the ground level of a house which was in Jewish possession since 1900, the letter of an accessory to the crime was discovered, from which it emerges without a doubt that Ernst Winter fell victim to a Jewish ritual-murder."
-- The Jew Hartwig had bought this property in Konitz around the turn of the century. The letter, which was found by a fortunate accident when the ground floor of the house was being cleared out, reads:
"Ernst Winter has been sacrificed in Konitz , and woe unto Israel, three times woe, if it does not abandon the blood-sacrifice.
We will remain pariahs as long as it remains. It is indeed murder!...
A Jewess and accessory, but an unhappy one. M 1900."
In 1884, Skurz, 1891, Xanten, 1898 and 1899: Polna, 1900, Konitz -- five ritual-murders on German soil, five thriving human lives, among them two children, made to bleed to death under the hands of Jewish ritual-slaughterers, five ritual-murders remained unrequited, for one cannot, of course, feel that even the comfortable imprisonment of a Hilsner was an atonement.
But what remained unatoned for, that could, in the end, be taken as permitted and was allowed to be repeated!
Or is it supposed to be only an accident that, after the Jewish 'successes' in Skurz and Xanten, three ritual-murders occurred within three years?
We have reached the conviction that all these blood-murders took place according to entirely definite instructions from a secret Jewish headquarters, at the highest level!
From Polna the threads run across Prague to Vienna, from Konitz, as a result of its particular location, directly toward Poland -- to the ghetto of this infernal pestilence!
It cannot be subject to any doubt at all, that the limping and smallpox-scarred Jewish monster of the Polna (323) trial is one and the same person with the limping, ape-like Jew, who was conspicuous in Konitz as much because of his especial ugliness as because of the deference of honor shown to him.
This Jew, whom the tailor Josef Strnad from Polna described very graphically in his recorded witness statement: [11]
"...at once I noticed a strange Jew was approaching us on the street, and when I was able to recognize his face, I stepped toward Cink and said: 'he has a face like an ape'... This Jew had a longer, light-colored coat, black hat and dark pants.
In stature he was rather tall, his face had a dark expression, his black full beard was of middle length, he dragged his right foot behind him..."
is a high Jewish religious official who was the contact man!
Had the authorities in Polna or Konitz quickly seized their opportunity, then this reptile, who made certain of the proper performance of, and provided support for, respectively, the ritual slaughtering of the victim, could have been arrested on the spot and delivered up to closer examination, and they would have been able to find the key to the mystery!
But of course we have gotten to know the system of public regulations -- for here, too, it's a matter of a system, of a plan inspired even down to its details!
Let us think only of Skurz and Konitz:
At the scene of the crime appears, after much precious time has gone by, a police official from Berlin, who takes away the steps of the investigation from the local authorities.
The constitutional authorities, as state's attorney, court, and regional police, have a further function, to be sure: but actually, the whole center of gravity of the investigation shifts and arrives at the hands of the Berlin Commissars. Skurz had its Höft and Konitz its Wehn and Braun.
Regarded objectively and factually, the activity of these gentlemen, particularly in the all-important time after the discovery of the body parts was first made, represents a protective wall, behind which the Jewish murderers and their assistants found time and the possibility of concealing the tracks of their culpability!
And Polna as well! On his own initiative, the chief of the guards Josef Klenovec arrested the murderer Hilsner -- (324) but the Jew Reichenbach, set Hilsner, his racial comrade, at liberty once again...
In Skurz and Konitz German butchers were accused of the horrific crime and placed in custody under unbelievable circumstances. In Skurz, the butcher Behrendt, who was not well off financially, sat in investigative custody innocent for a full year and was economically ruined thereby, the butcher Hoffmann, together with his daughter, was subjected to a shameful interrogation and was supposed to be at least injured socially -- but the opposite happened!
The Jew, on the other hand, as member of the ruling caste and protected by it, remained untouchable.
In old Rome, the philosopher Seneca lamented:
"The customs of this most vile people have already become so strong, that they have spread themselves in all nations; the conquered have impressed their laws upon the conquerors" [12]
The same thing was repeated in the 20th century after Christ: the Aryan man had become a sacrificial animal!
Yet hopeful beginnings of a reaction were already manifesting themselves. We recall the bold speech of the attorney Dr. Baxa in the Polna trial, which for the first time sought out the motives of the terrible crime. Even before the judicial investigative proceedings, the populace spontaneously boycotted Jewish businesses. But Konitz had a decisive effect, for the arousal of the people had reached its zenith.
Is is not to be understood as a warning, when the then Jewish-edited Dresdener Neuesten Nachrichten [ Dresden Most Up-to-date News] on 13 November 1900 wrote:
"... the presence of the military, however, held in check the tendency (!) to riot; on the other hand, in place of the noisy excitement (!) a quiet but for all that not less intensive frustration has entered the picture; it is still fermenting with utter forcefulness in the country, as all who know West Prussian attitudes confirm."
But the Reichstag Deputy Liebermann von Sonnenberg became the advocate for the German cause. In December 1900, he wrote:
"The conscience of the German people is not permitted to find peace!"
(325) On 7 February 1901, he broached the subject of the Konitz blood-murder in the Reichstag. [13]
The "Vereinigung zur Aufklärung des Konitzer Mordes" [14] [Union for the Solution of the Konitz Murder] was created in Konitz by German city councillors, pastors, Landtag and Reichstag deputies, and the first practical measure, the "Self-help for the protection of our children," was propagated strictly within the bounds of the law.
Occasionally there were stirrings in the German press, too: The articles of the Germania and of the Deutsches Volksblatt were already cited.
In the year 1902, the gang of Jews fell upon the Staatsbürgerzeitung [Citizen Times]; its publisher Bruhn and the editor Böttger were sentenced to imprisonment due to "offensive articles" which appeared in connection with the "Winter murder case" -- but both nonetheless entered the Reichstag in 1903 and worked against Jewish interests.
Willi Buch, in his notes which have already been cited above, gives the following vivid picture out of the times around the turn of the century:
"The ritual-murder of Konitz had caused fierce reactions... The anti-Semitic movement had become a genuine people's movement, with all its merits and weaknesses. The Jewish Question was the subject of conversations and kept emotions stirred up.
There was no meeting which wasn't filled up, even to the last seat... Things were very lively, for the most part, due to the almost never absent opponents..."
And in another passage:
"It is very much typical that there was no reform movement since around 1900, which didn't have some sort of relationship to anti-Semitism."
-- It was the time when Edouard Drumont's Verjudetes Frankreich [Judaized France] appeared in the 142nd edition, after the attempt was made in vain to remove the author in a duel, and Henri Desportes published his Geheimnis des Blutes bei den Juden aller Zeiten [Mystery of the Blood of the Jews in all Times] in Paris! (326)
There were always incidents which were suited for shaking the feeling of an absolute certainty of the Jewish control: Judah became more cautious on German soil -- which did not mean, however, that it renounced the further carrying out of the slaughtering of human beings!
For, that among the disproportionately large number of inhabitants designated as "missing" every year, victims of such a crime also could be found, is not out of the question for anyone who has recognized this Jewish fanaticism as historic fact. [15]
Thus the Hammer of Theodor Fritsch reported, under the headlines: "Puzzling Murders and Disappearances of Persons" over and over again about the cases whose solution and further pursuit never was undertaken.
From the notes of the Hammer , we shall select only those which at least allow the strong suspicion of a ritual crime to arise.
1910 On December 29, Helene Brix, who was in service with the Jewish riding equipment proprietor Salomons in Nassenheide near Stettin, vanished without a trace on the day before the final day of her service there. On 22 January 1913, therefore only after more than three years, her mutilated corpse was discovered in the bog at the Neuendorfer Lake.
Head and arms of the body were missing; the father of the girl, who recognized the body as that of his daughter after the examination, (327) asserted that the underclothes were missing, although the parents still knew with certainty that their daughter had been wearing them.
Subsequently, the circumstance was recalled that on the day after the disappearance of his daughter, the father Brix wanted to arrange a search with a police dog, but was prevented since Salomons assured him that a telegram had arrived according to which Helene was in Altdamm.
This statement, whose verification demanded much precious time, subsequently proved to be untrue.
Salomons sold his business soon after this event and went to ground in Berlin. [16]
1911 The farmer's daughter Olga Hagel from Radolin was a servant of the Jewish factory owner Hirsekorn in Schönlanke. At the beginning of September of this year, she visited her parents and complained in bitter words about the behavior of the Jew toward her.
She asked her mother to have her taken away again from this position. Her mother thought it proper that her daughter at least hold out until the end of the year; with this answer, the girl returned -- a few days later she "vanished" without her parents being informed! On 8 September the Jew finally brought himself to inform the police; on 12 September the body of the servant girl was pulled by an owner out of the Breitensteiner Lake, lying 18 kilometers distant.
Her skirts were rolled over her head, on the left temple a finger-long wound gaped. The forensic autopsy took place only on the seventh day after the discovery of the body. The body contained not one drop of blood, the medical expert opinion found in the negative for suicide.
Nevertheless, the state attorney's office of Schneidemühl presumed -- despite the finger-long wound -- despite the skirts rolled up and despite the body being empty of blood -- suicide and did not pursue the "matter" further.
1912 On the first day of Pentecost, early, at three-thirty in (328) Posen in front of the door of the house at 3/4 Schulstraße, the body of the sixteen-year-old merchant's apprentice Stanislaus Musial was discovered. The skull was smashed. The left temple had been drilled through by several knife piercings, both wrists were cut through on the inner side, and one hand was almost completely severed.
The body was empty of blood and washed off with extreme care. Also, the clothes showed only insignificant traces of blood. It was further determined that the murdered youth had been slaughtered in an unclothed condition, then carelessly dressed and set down in the place of discovery. Musial had had a position with the ready-made clothing Jew Max Hirsch in Posen.
The Posen Jewish paper, the Posener Neuesten Nachrichten filed the following scandalous report about his disappearance: That the young apprentice had received over 500 Marks from his master on the day before Pentecost, in order to make a payment. That Musial had presumably (!) had a good time with the money and had then fallen into the hands of a prostitute and had been slaughtered with the help of a pimp!
-- Only a Jewish hack could actually spatter out that sort of garbage! The inquiries immediately initiated showed that the murdered youth had not received a penny from his superior, the Jew Hirsch, but on the contrary merely got handed a letter with the instructions to bring it to Wilda, a suburb of Posen.
After our experiences to this point, we are hardly allowed to go wrong with the assumption that the victim was sent into a prepared trap in the observance of his task! In fact, in connection with this, the Jewish couple Szafranski was gravely accused and taken into investigative custody. The prosecution soon released the couple again, however, since "the investigation has yielded nothing incriminating."
The non-Jewish populace, after decades-long experiences, had their own opinions about this, in that they proceeded to the most effective means of struggle, the boycott of Jewish businesses. This latent anti-Semitism had, in the (329) course of two generations, continually received new impetus due to a whole chain of extremely suspicious murder cases which remained unsolved, so that the Jewish segment of the population in the province of Posen gradually diminished from the year 1835 until approximately 1912 from 54 to 15 per thousand. [17]
1913 On January 27, in Preußisch-Holland, a stranger lured the five-year-old boy Walter Schikowski to so-called Lindenberg; toward six o'clock in the evening an accountant in Weeskenhof on the Crossener road found the unconscious child, nearly frozen from the cold, in the gutter with serious wounds, and brought him immediately to the doctor.
Having regained consciousness, the little boy told that a strange man had first uncovered his upper body, then, when he got set to defend himself, he was thrown to the ground and stabbed with a knife. From then on, the child knew nothing more. His neck and lower body showed several wounds from cuts. All signs indicated that blood had been removed from the victim. The investigations of the authorities petered out.
1913 On 31 March (!), at the fair at Lobsens (Wirsitz district), an approximately 45-year-old Jewish dealer lured a six-year-old girl, Agnes Kador, to himself and vanished with her. On 22 April the body, emptied of blood, with the neck cut through, was found in the meadows near Lobsens.
The populace which was present, in the state of greatest excitement, spoke openly of a new blood-murder. On the day of the kidnapping, numerous foreign, mostly Polish-speaking Jews had been noticed in the near vicinity of the place. The newspapers were cautious in their suggestions, any traces for the presumption of a crime were lacking...
They explained that there could be no question of a blood-murder, since no serious wounds had been found on the body (in spite of the cut neck!). The authorities took no steps to clear up the incident.
The first public announcement of the state attorney's office of (330) Schneidemühl concerning the disappearance of the child first ensued fourteen days after the incident. [18]
A "letter to the editor" relating to the Lobsens case ( Hammer, Nr. 264, page 335) told that at the beginning of the eighties, on the Stubbenwiese at Ascherbude on the Ostbahn, between Filehne and Schoenlanke, the shepherd girl of the forester Bohne was found lying on her belly with her neck cut through and completely emptied of blood.
Then, a poacher was wrongly accused of the terrible crime.
In the first half of the year 1913, the Hanover newspapers alone brought up perhaps a dozen ominous reports of the disappearance without a trace of youths and children; with that, these "cases" were done with:
"One hears and reads no more of it... It seems to be a matter here, too, of events about which the public needs to know as little as possible.
One asks oneself: Where is the state attorney's office? One almost never hears of the punishment for such bloody acts or of further solutions of the occurrences.
Is there not something rotten in the State?" [19]
In the first half of April (!) 1913 the servant Luise Schmidt of Hanover, the boy Waßmann of Elze (Hildesheim) and the worker Julius Schiefelbein of Niederfinow disappeared. The body of the latter was recovered in the Finow Canal at Eberswalde.
The medical examination determined that there were not less than fifteen knife cuts. The affair became all the more mysterious when four masked men made an attempt to steal the body of Schiefelbein, in order, perhaps, to remove the traces of the crime. Also in this case nothing became known about the further results of the investigation!
Furthermore, on the first day of the Pentecost holiday 1913 in Berlin, the dismembered body of the twelve-and-a-half-year-old boy Klähn was discovered. The servant Josef Ritter, who had been in service with the Jew Guttmann, had made himself suspected of the crime. It was striking that also this crime, like that (331) which happened to the apprentice Musial, occurred in the night of the first day of the Pentecost holiday!
In the morning of 14 July 1913, in Ludwigshafen, on the ground located behind the hospital, a sack with the dismembered corpse of a girl was discovered.
The head was separated from the trunk, the legs from the body; the body itself was totally cut up, so that heart, lungs and liver were visible.
The parts of the body had been skillfully cut apart, so that it had the appearance as if an operating surgeon had been at work. The victim had to have been dismembered in a closed space. Traces of blood were totally absent. The murder victim was later identified as the twelve-year-old Elma Kelchner from Ludwigshafen.
These few cases allow us to recognize sufficiently that up until the most recent times sinister powers were at work, which could make bold to still demand, as before, a blood-toll from non-Jewish humanity without they themselves ever having been called to account.
Jewry had so far "emancipated" itself, that it placed itself outside of valid law by virtue of its own secret laws and in this officially recognized exceptional position understood how to evade the workings of universal law; consciousness of law and State were thereby certainly afflicted in their vital nerves!
But once all accompanying circumstances were so positioned that the Jewish murder pestilence absolutely had to be understood in order to avoid people taking steps for self-help, then all those machinations repeated themselves in concentrated form, as we have gotten to know them in the preceding ritual-murder trials.
On Russian soil a drama unrolled for the last time before the outbreak of the World War, which, as a bloody, fateful sign still in the final hour, had been able to open the eyes of the statesmen responsible for its people to a enormous threatening peril; they wanted to or were allowed to see nothing -- and thereby delivered themselves up even to the Jewish ritual-slaughterers!
Copyright 2001 by R. Belser. Reproduction in whole or in part without express written permission of the translator is not permitted. All rights reserved.