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A p p e n d i x 8.
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(p. 435)
From the Speech of the Deputy Liebermann von Sonnenberg in the 43rd Session of the
German Reichstag of 7 February 1901.
President Count v. Ballestrem cedes the floor to the Reichstag Deputy Liebermann
von Sonnenberg:
". . .In the Konitz case, we are not dealing with just the purely human sentiment of
justice, which desires that there be an atonement for every crime, but with a matter of
very far-ranging (436) significance. . .I wish to
state with pure objectivity that large circles among our people, to which very educated
people in comfortable circumstances belong in great numbers, have actually come to the
point of view: nothing should come of this!
It's believed even in the country that the fear of the Jews even for us is already so
great that even the state authorities are not permitted to undertake anything against
Jewry. . .The desire to bring the German government as well into a relationship of
dependency, surely is present. Indeed, one need only observe the storm which is presently
raised against the Prussian Minister of Justice, because he opposed the plainly mad claims
of the Jews and has denied that the fact of the examination having been passed ought to force
the Minister to appoint any Jew desired as judge or to appoint him as a Notary. In the
entire Jewish-Liberal press, the Minister is now harried and abused; he is blasted from every
direction.
Jewry is also at work here according to an old proven method. Herr Rickert
(9) need only look up the passages about the Jews in Rome, in
Mommsen's Roman history, how they behaved if some governor in the provinces had irritated
them, perhaps had been incorruptible. When such a man arrived in Rome after having
been relieved of his post, then the alarm was sounded, the rabble stirred up against him,
and every means tried to injure him and to make a new office impossible for him. I do not
know how the Jewish campaign of agitation against the Herr Minister of Justice will end;
perhaps there is also someone at hand as a replacement for him, who is not yet positioned
properly (very good!).
The riots of the summer of the previous year (in Konitz) were instigated by Jewish
agents provocateurs and agitators, or provoked by extreme Jewish impudence toward
the populace (quite correct!). The case of the Jew Zander, for example, who threw
a stone through the pane of his own window on the street, demonstrates this for
Konitz. Gentlemen, the populace must be protected against such provocations!
But the Jews slip into the role of persecuted innocents at such riots, they scream
about violence and they know how to make their screaming heard in very high places.
Then troops -- which perhaps earlier had mostly been in place for the cordoning off of the
city -- immediately march in on orders from the highest level, and then the
saying comes true, that: 'in the presence of weapons the laws are silent,' even without a
declaration of a state of siege and martial law. The entire population is overcome with
consternation; the witnesses no longer dare (437) to
testify openly and hold back their most important evidence. Thus they believe that they
have finally laid to rest the story of the murder. . .In my view, however, the Konitz
affair is not permitted to be the cause of a single party, the anti-Semitic party, but
rather it must become the cause of all decent people in the entire German Fatherland.
The Konitz Alliance for the solution of the murder of gymnasium student Winter
(10) consists of people who, by virtue of their social position and
by the entire conduct of their lives, can keep away any suspicion of their joining together
merely out of virulent desires [for excitement, for Jew-baiting, etc.].
Gentlemen, the German people remained at peace when the wholly similar murder in Skurz
found no punishment. The Criminal Commissar Hoeft, who has been the exemplar for the
present inquiries of the Berlin Criminal Commissar in Konitz, had freed the Jew
who was first accused and taken into custody and brought a Christian master butcher
-- everything is repeated! -- before the jury court. The man had to be completely
exonerated. And then the case was settled as far as the authorities were concerned. The
anti-Semitic movement was not yet strong enough in Germany to interest the German people in
the case, as is now the case, thank God. The blood-murder in Skurz has remained
unsolved and unrequited to the present day. Neither has anyone heard that further
investigations have taken place. When ten years later a similar blood-murder in Xanten
excited the world, an exceedingly cunning means was employed to misdirect the case.
A notorious individual, who had insinuated himself into the anti-Semitic party, went to
Xanten on behalf of an anti-Semitic newspaper and wrote an untruthful brochure which
was printed in good faith and earned the editors responsible harsh prison sentences. Thus
it happened that the anti-Semitic press was unable to persist in its involvement, and this
murder, too, remained unpunished.
Buschhoff, the schächter accused of the crime, was acquitted by the jury court
in Cleves, not, perhaps, because they were convinced of his innocence, but rather -- as is
not at all very well known -- because a subsidiary question regarding the charge of
complicity had not been put, and the jurors considered the evidence insufficient to
pronounce him guilty as the perpetrator.
But the Konitz blood-crime, the third such similar crime in Prussia within a period
of six years, will not share the fate of Skurz and Xanten. The trials that are
still underway, the trial of the Jew Moritz Levy for perjury, which in a few days
(438) will play itself out in Konitz, the trial against
the Staatsbürgerzeitung, in which 114 witnesses are heard, will see to it that the
arousal of the people over the murder of the gymnasium student Winter does not come to
rest. . .yet I have taken the precaution of never stopping in Konitz for 24 hours at
a time. It is teeming with Jewish spies, and I did not want to involve myself without
necessity in gossip, the defending against which would have made work for me and have cost me
time. Thus, not the 'anti-Semitic General Staff, but rather a Jewish Confusion-sowing and
Cover-up Committee was established in Konitz after the murder and is still at work there.
All the disinformation which has gone out by means of the Jewish newspapers, which consists
of pure inventions and which is dispersed into the world, originates with this Confusion-
sowing and Cover-up Committee.
The most shameless thing of all, however, is attained in the recent insinuations against
highly respected Christian men in Konitz, the District School Inspector Rohde,
and the teacher Weichel, whom the Berlin newspapers describe as the murderers,
based upon the simple face that house searches were recently carried out also at their
residences. Both gentlemen live on a street, you see, where every house and apartment was
being searched; clearly no exceptions could be made. Without there having been anything more
to it than this simple fact, the Berlin papers reported not long ago that the teacher,
Weichel, had already confessed to the murder. This was reported by telegraph from Konitz.
This horrible insinuation then circulated through a large section of the Press! Likewise,
accusations were disseminated in the most shameless manner by the Berlin and other Jewish
papers, against the District School Inspector, Rhode. I would think then, that the
authorities, the Ministry of Culture and Education and also the War Ministry -- since Herr
Rhode is Captain d. L [des Landstags -- of the provincial parliament] and both
gentlemen are on the Board of Directors of the Kriegerverein [Veteran's Association] --
that the supervising ministries should protect their officials and file ex officio
charges against all the newspapers in question, so that the severely insulted men do not
have to bear useless costs and trouble because of this. Many another important matter may
yet result from this trial as well.
Out of sympathy for this House, I will omit today, at such a late hour, unrolling a list
of the instances of disinformation which have been broadcast to the world from Konitz in the
Jewish interest. I have a thick manuscript about this lying at my place. . .I will
immediately respond to all disinformation speeches which have been made here
concerning the Konitz case. All of the German people and probably the Reichstag
as well would be in agreement with me in this, that in Konitz the leads ought
finally to be pursued for once, (439) which up till now
have not been pursued, after all other leads have been shown to be erroneous. . .It can only
be a matter of complete indifference to us (?), to what purpose the blood of the victims in
Skurz, Xanten, and Konitz was destined [to be put]. But the evidence
cannot be denied, that the bodies or their parts in all three cases were discovered to be
completely empty of blood, and in all three cases sound human reason can simply find
no other motive for murder than that of obtaining the blood. I have also asked the
Director of the slaughterhouse of Konitz, Herr Veterinarian Wendt, for his
opinion. He gave me the following information: he has been directing the slaughterhouse for
ten years, each year an average of 10,000 animals are killed there, some butchered, some
ritually-slaughtered, therefore he has been able to observe the effects on 100,000 animals
of butchering and of ritual-slaughtering, and he was able to assure me that he had never
seen such a blood-drained piece of flesh as the body parts of Winter. . .(commotion).
Quite amazingly, directly after the murder, five ritual-slaughterers left the area,
first the Cantor, Hamburger from Schlochau and then the schächter Heymann
from Konitz, of which the one is supposed to have made a million-dollar fortune in
America, and the other have gone to Russian Poland. The Jewish ritual-slaughterer Fuchs,
who comes from Russia, has gone back to Russia. . .The fact that Russian
Jews were in Konitz, has been judicially established. . .
The Herr Deputy Stadthagen(11) has described the populace of
West Prussia as being at an extraordinarily culturally low level. So that it is not much to
be wondered at that such people would believe in ritual-murder. . .But the country populace
of West Prussia stands tower-high in education above a category of people who come into
consideration again, at the Konitz murder. I mean the Jewish population,
which is streaming in to us from out of Russian Poland, out of Galicia, Romania, etc., and
because of our legislation, unfortunately nothing can be done to prevent it."
(12)
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