T. G. Masaryk and the Jewish Question (Ukázka, strana 99)

to change the relative status of the Czech and German languages in the Czech lands.

The repeal of the language ordinances in October sparked anti-government unrest among the Czech populace, and demonstrations were suppressed by detachments of the army and police. In many cases the riots were directed against the Jewish population. In Prague and in several other Czech and Moravian towns it led to bloody conflicts. The protests against the Jews and the Germans spread to other towns and resulted in deaths, and dozens were wounded.148 There was also an anti-Semitic demonstration in Polná on 29 October, where the gendarmerie were obliged to intervene.149 The anti-Semitic agitation spilled over into the Vienna parliament and the nationalist and clerical press. Long-established Austrian anti-Semitism had put forth its fruit.

At the time of the trial at Kutná Hora in September 1899, at which Hilsner was sentenced to death, Masaryk had spent the entire summer at Bystřice pod Hostýnem and took no interest at all in the proceedings. Before he returned to Prague he received a letter from one of his students, the future writer, historian and sociologist Sigmund Münz. Münz wrote to him of his astonishment at the anti-Semitic reporting of the second trial of Dreyfus and the Polná case in Czech newspapers, including the “liberal” and progressive press.150 Masaryk replied to Münz in a letter which was published by the Viennese daily Neue Freie Presse on 29 September. After commenting on the Dreyfus trial Masaryk writes: “Concerning the trial at Kutná Hora, I don’t want to dwell on ‘ritual murder’.

This is a closed issue, both culturally and historically. But allow me the following comment on this case. Anti-Semites tirelessly portray Jews as the epitome of shrewdness and cunning, so how do these characteristics equate with the brutally frenzied crime in Polná? If some evidently secret society or sect wanted human blood, its insane criminal instinct would lead it to seek its unknown victims – to be abducted alive – in larger towns, not in the countryside. That is my attitude to all of the cases presented 148) J. Kovtun. Tajuplná vražda, pp. 243–251.

149) Ibid., p 263.

150) Ibid., p. 236.

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as ritual murder in the recent period; the murder at Polná goes against all the assumptions that anti-Semites themselves entertain regarding a secretly conducted ritual murder. But if indeed a poor wretch would be found somewhere who would fall prey to anti-Semitic suggestions, this case would also be the fault of anti-Semitism and its vile propaganda.

The way I see it, at the present time anti-Semitic superstition about ritual murder is chiefly of economic significance. The anti-Semites pretend that they want to liberate people from economic vampires, but in fact the people, or popular classes are in fact being prepared by economic fetishism for vampires of every kind, of Jewish and Christian persuasion alike.

As one can see, this anti-Semitic superstition is widespread and international; so it is appropriate for all those opposed to it to act jointly. If the present statement can contribute in some way to achieving this, you may publish it as you see fit. Your obedient servant, T.G. Masaryk.”151 After Masaryk had acquainted himself with the records of the Kutná Hora trial and the medical report of Dr Josef Bulova, as well as the evidence of the investigating judge Baudyš, he wrote a pamphlet Nutnost revidovat proces polenský (The urgent need to review the Polná trial),152 in which he rejected the supersitition about ritual murder: “Certainly a Christian must not maintain that ritual murder results from the spirit of the Jewish religion; after all a Christian accepts the entire Old Testament, and does that have such a spirit? The Talmud doesn’t preach ritual murder either. Nor is there any secret sect practising ritual murder.”153 The Prager Tagblatt published an excerpt from the pamphlet on 7 November, and the entire issue and the pamphlet itself were confiscated. Národní listy, Radikální listy and Katolické listy immediately attacked Masaryk and his proposal for a trial review. Nonetheless, on 9 November Masaryk’s pamphlet was the subject of an interpellation in the Vienna parliament and could thereby be published. It came out in German on 11 November in Die Zeit154 and it was also published in Czech.

151) Ibid., p. 237.

152) Praha, 1899, 16 pp.

153) J. Kovtun. Tajuplná vražda, pp. 270–271.

154) T. G. Masaryk. “Die Notwendigkeit der Revision des Polnaer Prozesses (Interpellation Kronawetter)”, Beilage zu Nr. 267 der Zeit, 11. 11. 1899.

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Masaryk’s pamphlet was not, as Masaryk said, “written for the Jews – it was written for the Czech intelligentsia, so that it might realize how much lack of judgement, lack of thinking […] hot-headed rashness, and actual inhumanity and cruelty, exists among us, and the intelligentsia in particular. It is an amoral situation. […] I demand from intellectual leaders the right to freedom of thought...”

Masaryk ended: “... I will not allow myself to be shouted down and denounced by anyone using baseless legal formalities and crude lies about bribery and other allegations...”155 Masaryk did not oppose the students’ right to demonstrations. He criticised Národní listy, Radikální listy and Katolické listy for the way they wrote about his pamphlet, and how they lied and incited.

The demonstrators had no idea what his concern was regarding the Polná trial. It was not anti-Semitism, but the trial as such.

Masaryk was simply investigating whether the trial was “classic evidence for ritual murder”. It has proved that it wasn’t and was waiting for it to be admitted soon. However, a review of the trial would not solve the issue of anti-Semitism, it would simply show that no ritual murder had taken place at Polná.

Anti-Semitism could take many forms: clerical, Zionist, socialist (Marx), etc. The opposite of anti-Semitism was not philo-Semitism.

Masaryk published his findings after studying the stenographic record, as was his right. He took no orders from anyone in the matter. He raised the issue of the official confiscation in a parliamentary interpellation.

“I won’t allow anyone to crush me, and I will not give in to lies and misconstrued slogans.”156 Masaryk published articles under the titles of “Proclamation” and “The Urgent Need to Review the Polná Trial”. The former stated that Masaryk had written his study of the Polná trial independently, without speaking to or consulting anyone about it.

He had simply received a report from Dr Bulova and studied the 155) T. G. Masaryk. “České veřejnosti”, Čas, 13, 1898–1899, No. 46, 11. 11.

1899, pp. 728–729.

156) T. G. Masaryk. “Ještě slovo o těch demonstracích”, Čas, 13, 1898–1899, No. 48, 25. 11. 1899, pp. 754–755. After the confiscation of the second edition.

It contains what he wanted say on 11 November.

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