Skurz

The blood-murder of Tisza-Eszlár and the events at the Court of justice at Nyiregyháza were still in everyone's memory when a completely similarly fashioned crime occurred on German soil. The accompanying circumstances allowed a further and thoroughly successful increase in Jewish power and influence after the triumph in Hungary to be recognized, insofar as Jewry now knew how to arrange things so that the actual murderers remained unmolested and, instead of them, a non-Jew was brought to the dock.

On 21 January 1884, toward eight o'clock in the evening, the fourteen-year-old Onophrius Cybulla left the house of the Gappa inn in the village of Skurz (governmental district Danzig), where he had been washing up bottles, to make his way to his parents, living in the same locale. Although the young fellow had only a short way home, he didn't arrive at his parental residence.

Witnesses said under oath that Onophrius was lured into the property of the Jewish merchant Boß; in addition, it could be established that on this evening numerous foreign Jews had assembled on the property of Boß, where the whole night long a hive of activity, otherwise unknown, prevailed. The non-Jewish serving-girl had been given a vacation on this evening without having requested it.

In the stable building of the Jewish estate, a messy state of confusion reigned on the following morning; in the stall of Boß and on the manure pile in the yard, liquid and clotted blood was indisputably discovered, and likewise some sacks exhibited blood spots.

The ritual-slaughterer Josephson was observed in the early morning on a bridge located outside the village, with a heavy sack upon his back. Some time later, the dismembered body of the youngster was found under this bridge. It was missing both thighs, and they were never found. The lower legs were lying in the vicinity of the undressed, blood-empty corpse.

(200) According to the opinion of the medical experts, the thighs had been broken off from the pelvic sockets with great expertise and dexterity. With one single cut, the right location, where the separation of the bone was possible, was hit.

Although the murdered boy had been powerfully built and full-blooded, the dead body showed itself to be completely empty of blood. On the neck there was a transverse cut going down to the spinal column, which had brought about death through exsanguination. The abdomen had been slit open.

The autopsy yielded further important particulars: wounds were found on the fingers, hands, on the back, on the nose, on the forehead and on both eyes; on many places of the body there were bloodshot areas. These wounds suggested that the boy had defended himself vigorously. As a result of blows to the head, there had occurred a severe hematoma in the cranial cavity. Aside from this, there were numberless other wounds present, which had first been inflicted on the body. These wounds were smooth-edged and likewise had been most skillfully executed with a very sharp instrument. The dismemberment of the body had to have taken place in a closed room and under full illumination.

At the place of the discovery of the body, there were neither blood spots nor traces of a struggle. According to the findings of the experts, a lust-murder seemed to be totally out of the question; likewise the acceptance of a robbery-murder was ruled out from the start, since the slain boy was completely without means.

The Crime Commissar Richard was ordered from Danzig to Skurz. According to the most fundamental preliminary work, he investigated as the presumed murderers the trader Jews Boß, father and son, as well as the ritual-slaughterer Josephson. Jewish strangers , who were seen on the day of the murder, could no longer be investigated.

The clothes of the Jews were inspected by a chemist, Dr. Bischoff, called in as an expert. On a jacket belonging to Josephson, traces of human blood were discovered, and in addition the physician Dr. Lindenau found impressions of incisors on the left index finger of the ritual-slaughterer.

This doctor speculated that it (201) could be a bite wound. The investigations furnished further indications which heavily incriminated the Jews to an extraordinary degree. Moreover, they constantly got caught in contradictions and made the most unbelievable excuses.

In this critical situation, Richard, the Investigating Commissar up till now, was suddenly recalled without specification of sound reasons. The Prussian Minister of the Interior, von Puttkamer -- we have gotten to know him already -- dispatched Commissar Höft.

The populace knew of Höft, that he saved a large number of Jews from Neustettin from the prospect of judicial condemnation in 1881, when they were charged under the most serious points of suspicion of having set fire to their own dilapidated synagogue with the aid of petroleum -- even the prayer books were soaked through with petroleum -- in order to receive the high amount of insurance.

Then the blame for the arson was laid on the "anti-Semites," who had wanted (it was claimed) to take revenge; therefore the further course of events could not surprise the populace! Next, the Jews in custody were set free. Then the guilty were sought after. Under a suspiciously large levy of the most dubious means, the trial was supposed to be guided along a determined route. Even Höft came to accept that the dismemberment of the body could only have been performed by an expert hand; but this remained the single point in which he agreed with the inquiries of his predecessor.

On 10 May 1884 the old, established, Christian master-butcher of Skurz, Behrendt, who was well known for his attitude of opposition to the Jews, was arrested and held in custody pending trial for nearly one full year! From the start onward, his means had not permitted him to get legal counsel. On 22 April 1885, the proceedings began before the jury court in Danzig, with a great throng of a very highly incensed public. The evidentiary proceedings turned out to be scandalous from the beginning; the Skurz Jews entered court as "prosecution witnesses."

The non-Jewish witness Zilinski made the following statement under oath:

The Jewish ritual-slaughterer Blumenheim had come to him to sound him out. In order to learn what the Jews were up to, he had assumed the pose of being against Behrendt. (202) Thereupon he was invited by Blumenheim to come with him to see a gentleman from Berlin, and to tell the latter all the worst (!) that he knew about Behrendt. The "gentleman from Berlin" had introduced himself as Commissar Höft, who then unrelentingly tried to persuade him that the Jews could certainly not be the perpetrators, etc. Zilinski was supposed to make a statement against Behrendt. On a train trip Höft again insistently demanded that he make statements against Behrendt and not, by chance, against the Jews.

Furthermore, various witnesses stated that on 21 January - thus on the day of the disappearance of the boy -- Behrendt had already arrived at home at about seven in the evening; since he had too freely partaken of alcohol, he had to be undressed and carried into bed; Behrendt first got up again the next morning and went about his work.

The behavior of Commissar Höft explains much, but not everything. We must further take into account that Landgerichtsrat [district court councilor] Arndt was functioning as President of the Court of Justice during the jury court proceedings in Danzig, under whose chairmanship at that time the Neustettin Jews accused of the synagogue arson got an acquittal during jury court trial in Konitz.

As state's attorney the Jew Preuß, of all people, had been appointed in the Behrendt trial! This Jewish prosecutor pled for the guilt of Behrendt and the innocence of his racial comrades Boß and Josephson despite the outcome of the hearing of evidence, which had downright devastatingly exposed the Jewish manipulations, and although Preuß himself had to concede that it couldn't seem odd when the voice of the people was directed against the Jews -- all the more so, when in the year 1879, in the same area a totally similar "mysterious" murder had occurred which still is not cleared up to this day; but the investigation against the Jews had not then been initiated because of this, but on the basis of entirely other indications.

According to the Nationalzeitung [National News], this prosecutor, who indeed (203) had to prove what had driven the accused Behrendt to this crime, stated the following:

Preuß proposed a motion to declare the accused Behrendt guilty of the slaying!

The so-called proof of guilt of this Jew against an innocent man, worn down in a year of custody pending trial and whose business was ruined, who sat on the bench of the accused in place of the Jews Boß and Josephson, in its boundless arrogance, brought about the opposite: the sworn jurors acquitted the "accused" after only one half-hour's deliberation.

After one year's custody in jail Behrendt was released again; his earlier existence was, not least by the intrigues of his Jewish competitors in Skurz, destroyed, and he had to start all over again, almost as a beggar! As a German citizen, the good fortune of the Jewish blood-murderers of Damascus and Tisza-Eszlár -- rehabilitated in every way and economically compensated -- was not to be his lot!

This trial, too, had developed into a farce, a comedy! At Jewish trials of every kind, this theatrical show unworthy of Justice repeated itself so often that the people kept losing more and more trust in it. A contemporary voice, of the Kulturkämpfer Otto Glagau (Zeitschrift für öffentliche Angelegenheiten [Magazine for Public Affairs], Berlin, 1885, Heft [Volume] 118), determined resignedly:

(203) The Jewish-edited Berlin "National"-Zeitung seemed to be not entirely wrong when it was able to triumphantly write in its Number 363 of 5 August 1883, after the conclusion of the ritual-murder trial of Tisza-Eszlár: "If the survey of the investigation of Tisza-Eszlár was described by many in righteous anger as a disgrace of our century, so has the conclusion of the trial made a charge of a ritual religious murder judicially and scientifically impossible for the future." -- In dry words this means: At the command of international Jewry, a charge of ritual-murder has to fail for all future time!

The following ritual-murder cases will establish the proof

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