Appendix 8

(p. 435)

From the Speech of the Deputy Liebermann von Sonnenberg in the 43rd Session of the German Reichstag of 7 February 1901.

President Count v. Ballestrem cedes the floor to the Reichstag Deputy Liebermann von Sonnenberg:

"... In the Konitz case, we are not dealing with just the purely human sentiment of justice, which desires that there be an atonement for every crime, but with a matter of very far-ranging (436) significance... I wish to state with pure objectivity that large circles among our people, to which very educated people in comfortable circumstances belong in great numbers, have actually come to the point of view: nothing should come of this!

It's believed even in the country that the fear of the Jews even for us is already so great that even the state authorities are not permitted to undertake anything against Jewry... The desire to bring the German government as well into a relationship of dependency, surely is present. Indeed, one need only observe the storm which is presently raised against the Prussian Minister of Justice, because he opposed the plainly mad claims of the Jews and has denied that the fact of the examination having been passed ought to force the Minister to appoint any Jew desired as judge or to appoint him as a Notary. In the entire Jewish-Liberal press, the Minister is now harried and abused; he is blasted from every direction.

Jewry is also at work here according to an old proven method. Herr Rickert [9] need only look up the passages about the Jews in Rome, in Mommsen's Roman history, how they behaved if some governor in the provinces had irritated them, perhaps had been incorruptible. When such a man arrived in Rome after having been relieved of his post, then the alarm was sounded, the rabble stirred up against him, and every means tried to injure him and to make a new office impossible for him. I do not know how the Jewish campaign of agitation against the Herr Minister of Justice will end; perhaps there is also someone at hand as a replacement for him, who is not yet positioned properly (very good!).

The riots of the summer of the previous year (in Konitz) were instigated by Jewish agents provocateurs and agitators, or provoked by extreme Jewish impudence toward the populace (quite correct!). The case of the Jew Zander, for example, who threw a stone through the pane of his own window on the street, demonstrates this for Konitz. Gentlemen, the populace must be protected against such provocations!

But the Jews slip into the role of persecuted innocents at such riots, they scream about violence and they know how to make their screaming heard in very high places. Then troops -- which perhaps earlier had mostly been in place for the cordoning off of the city -- immediately march in on orders from the highest level, and then the saying comes true, that: 'in the presence of weapons the laws are silent,' even without a declaration of a state of siege and martial law. The entire population is overcome with consternation; the witnesses no longer dare (437) to testify openly and hold back their most important evidence. Thus they believe that they have finally laid to rest the story of the murder... In my view, however, the Konitz affair is not permitted to be the cause of a single party, the anti-Semitic party, but rather it must become the cause of all decent people in the entire German Fatherland. The Konitz Alliance for the solution of the murder of gymnasium student Winter [10] consists of people who, by virtue of their social position and by the entire conduct of their lives, can keep away any suspicion of their joining together merely out of virulent desires [for excitement, for Jew-baiting, etc.].

Gentlemen, the German people remained at peace when the wholly similar murder in Skurz found no punishment. The Criminal Commissar Hoeft, who has been the exemplar for the present inquiries of the Berlin Criminal Commissar in Konitz, had freed the Jew who was first accused and taken into custody and brought a Christian master butcher -- everything is repeated! -- before the jury court. The man had to be completely exonerated. And then the case was settled as far as the authorities were concerned. The anti-Semitic movement was not yet strong enough in Germany to interest the German people in the case, as is now the case, thank God. The blood-murder in Skurz has remained unsolved and unrequited to the present day. Neither has anyone heard that further investigations have taken place. When ten years later a similar blood-murder in Xanten excited the world, an exceedingly cunning means was employed to misdirect the case. A notorious individual, who had insinuated himself into the anti-Semitic party, went to Xanten on behalf of an anti-Semitic newspaper and wrote an untruthful brochure which was printed in good faith and earned the editors responsible harsh prison sentences. Thus it happened that the anti-Semitic press was unable to persist in its involvement, and this murder, too, remained unpunished.

Buschhoff, the schächter accused of the crime, was acquitted by the jury court in Cleves, not, perhaps, because they were convinced of his innocence, but rather -- as is not at all very well known -- because a subsidiary question regarding the charge of complicity had not been put, and the jurors considered the evidence insufficient to pronounce him guilty as the perpetrator.

But the Konitz blood-crime, the third such similar crime in Prussia within a period of six years, will not share the fate of Skurz and Xanten. The trials that are still underway, the trial of the Jew Moritz Levy for perjury, which in a few days (438) will play itself out in Konitz, the trial against the Staatsbürgerzeitung, in which 114 witnesses are heard, will see to it that the arousal of the people over the murder of the gymnasium student Winter does not come to rest... yet I have taken the precaution of never stopping in Konitz for 24 hours at a time. It is teeming with Jewish spies, and I did not want to involve myself without necessity in gossip, the defending against which would have made work for me and have cost me time. Thus, not the 'anti-Semitic General Staff, but rather a Jewish Confusion-sowing and Cover-up Committee was established in Konitz after the murder and is still at work there. All the disinformation which has gone out by means of the Jewish newspapers, which consists of pure inventions and which is dispersed into the world, originates with this Confusion- sowing and Cover-up Committee.

The most shameless thing of all, however, is attained in the recent insinuations against highly respected Christian men in Konitz, the District School Inspector Rohde, and the teacher Weichel, whom the Berlin newspapers describe as the murderers, based upon the simple face that house searches were recently carried out also at their residences. Both gentlemen live on a street, you see, where every house and apartment was being searched; clearly no exceptions could be made. Without there having been anything more to it than this simple fact, the Berlin papers reported not long ago that the teacher, Weichel, had already confessed to the murder. This was reported by telegraph from Konitz. This horrible insinuation then circulated through a large section of the Press! Likewise, accusations were disseminated in the most shameless manner by the Berlin and other Jewish papers, against the District School Inspector, Rhode. I would think then, that the authorities, the Ministry of Culture and Education and also the War Ministry -- since Herr Rhode is Captain d. L [des Landstags -- of the provincial parliament] and both gentlemen are on the Board of Directors of the Kriegerverein [Veteran's Association] -- that the supervising ministries should protect their officials and file ex officio charges against all the newspapers in question, so that the severely insulted men do not have to bear useless costs and trouble because of this. Many another important matter may yet result from this trial as well.

Out of sympathy for this House, I will omit today, at such a late hour, unrolling a list of the instances of disinformation which have been broadcast to the world from Konitz in the Jewish interest. I have a thick manuscript about this lying at my place... I will immediately respond to all disinformation speeches which have been made here concerning the Konitz case. All of the German people and probably the Reichstag as well would be in agreement with me in this, that in Konitz the leads ought finally to be pursued for once, (439) which up till now have not been pursued, after all other leads have been shown to be erroneous... It can only be a matter of complete indifference to us (?), to what purpose the blood of the victims in Skurz, Xanten, and Konitz was destined [to be put]. But the evidence cannot be denied, that the bodies or their parts in all three cases were discovered to be completely empty of blood, and in all three cases sound human reason can simply find no other motive for murder than that of obtaining the blood. I have also asked the Director of the slaughterhouse of Konitz, Herr Veterinarian Wendt, for his opinion. He gave me the following information: he has been directing the slaughterhouse for ten years, each year an average of 10,000 animals are killed there, some butchered, some ritually-slaughtered, therefore he has been able to observe the effects on 100,000 animals of butchering and of ritual-slaughtering, and he was able to assure me that he had never seen such a blood-drained piece of flesh as the body parts of Winter... (commotion). Quite amazingly, directly after the murder, five ritual-slaughterers left the area, first the Cantor, Hamburger from Schlochau and then the schächter Heymann from Konitz, of which the one is supposed to have made a million-dollar fortune in America, and the other have gone to Russian Poland. The Jewish ritual-slaughterer Fuchs, who comes from Russia, has gone back to Russia... The fact that Russian Jews were in Konitz, has been judicially established...

The Herr Deputy Stadthagen [11] has described the populace of West Prussia as being at an extraordinarily culturally low level. So that it is not much to be wondered at that such people would believe in ritual-murder... But the country populace of West Prussia stands tower-high in education above a category of people who come into consideration again, at the Konitz murder. I mean the Jewish population, which is streaming in to us from out of Russian Poland, out of Galicia, Romania, etc., and because of our legislation, unfortunately nothing can be done to prevent it." [12]

Copyright 2001 by R. Belser. Reproduction in whole or in part without express written permission of the translator is not permitted. All rights reserved.