Blood Inscriptions

Although the Enlightenment had seemed to bring an end to the widely held belief that Jews murdered Christian children for ritual purposes, charges of the so-called blood libel were surprisingly widespread in central and eastern Europe on either side of the turn to the twentieth century. Well over 100 accusations were made against Jews in this period, and prosecutors and government officials in Germany, Austria-Hungary, and Russia broke with long established precedent to bring six of these cases forward in sensational public trials. In Blood Inscriptions Hillel J. Kieval examines four cases-the prosecutions that took place at Tiszaeszlâar in Hungary (1882-1883), Xanten in Germany (1891-1892), Polnâa in Austrian Bohemia (1899-1900), and Konitz, then Germany, now in Poland (1900-1902)-to consider the means by which discredited beliefs came to seem once again plausible to educated European elites--