CHAPTER XVIII

TWO QUEER HAPPENINGS 1839

A Remittance of Blood. During the Damascus Ritual Murder trial, the French Consul, Comte Ratti-Menton, by whose energy and determination the case was brought to light, received a letter from Comte de Suzannet, who wrote: "Nearly a year ago, a box arrived at the custom-house that a Jew came to claim on being asked to open it, he refused and offered first 100 piastres, then 200, then 300, then 1,000 and at last 10,000 piastres (2,500 francs). The custom-house official persisted, and opened the box, discovering therein a bottle of blood. On asking the Jew for an explanation, the latter said that they had the custom of preserving the blood of their Grand Rabbis or important men. He was allowed to go, and left for Jerusalem."
Comte Ratti-Menton then looked for the chief of the customhouse, but found he had died! His successor, who had been associated with him, only vaguely recollected the affair; but he confirmed that the box had contained several bottles of red liquid and that he thought the Jew who came to claim it was Aaron Stambouli of Damascus who had told him that the substance was an efficacious drug.

The quick death of the chief custom-house officer is not surprising; witnesses of the crimes of the Jews are subject to a sudden demise. But the reader will perhaps be more impressed by the fact that this Aaron Stambouli was one of those subsequently found guilty of the Ritual Murder of Father Thomas at Damascus and condemned!

1888. Breslau, Germany. On 21st July, Max Bernstein, aged 24, a pupil at the Talmudic College, met an eight-year-old Christian boy, Severin Hacke, bought him some sweetmeats and took him to his (Bernstein's) home. There, he stripped the boy of his clothing and with a knife made incisions in a certain part of the child's body, collecting the blood that came from the cuts on a piece of blotting-paper. When the boy was naturally frightened, the Jew told him there was no need for fear as he only wanted a little blood.

The boy went home and said nothing about the matter; but his father, seeing the scars, questioned him and the truth came out.

Bernstein was arrested, and the prosecuting attorney after preventing a manoeuvre on the part of the defending counsel to have the case settled behind closed doors, maintained that this was a ritual case for the extraction of blood for the needs of a Jewish rite.

The Court, however, refused to recognise this, but sentenced Bernstein to three months' imprisonment for having made incisions in the body of the child.

The facts of this case are not disputed by anyone. The Jews, of course, spread the rumour that Bernstein was a religious maniac. Dr. Edmond Lesser of Breslau wrote a report to that effect which the Royal Scientific Committee for the Medical Profession endorsed. This Professor was a Jew, of course. But the reader should note that the report was issued in 1890, and that the Court itself never had any such "expert" propaganda before it!