Beilis Trial

Menahem Mendel Beilis (sometimes spelled Beiliss;Russian: Менахем Мендель Бейлис, Yiddish: מנחם מענדל בייליס‎; 1874 – 7 July 1934) was a Russian Jew accused of ritual murder in Kiev in the Russian Empire in a notorious 1913 trial, known as the "Beilis trial" or "Beilis affair". The process sparked international criticism of the antisemitic policies of the Russian Empire. Beilis's story was the basis for Bernard Malamud's novel The Fixer, which won both the Pulitzer Prize and the National Book Award.

Menahem Mendel Beilis was born into a Hassidic family, but was indifferent to religion, and worked regularly on the Sabbath and at least some of the Holidays. In 1911 he was an ex-soldier and the father of five children, employed as a superintendent at the Zaitsev brick factory in Kiev.

On March 12, 1911 (under the old Russian calendar), the 13-year-old Ukrainian boy Andrei Yushchinsky disappeared on his way to school. Eight days later his mutilated body was discovered in a cave near the Zaitsev brick factory. Beilis was arrested on July 21, 1911, after a lamplighter testified that the boy had been kidnapped by a Jew. A report submitted to the Tsar by the judiciary regarded Beilis as the murderer of Yushchinsky.

Beilis spent more than two years in prison awaiting trial. Meanwhile, an antisemitic campaign was launched in the Russian press against the Jewish community, with accusations of the ritual murder. Among those who wrote or spoke against false accusations of the Jews were Maxim Gorky, Vladimir Korolenko, Alexander Blok, Alexander Kuprin, Vladimir Vernadsky, Mykhailo Hrushevskyi and Pavel Milyukov.

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