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Review: The Accusation — Blood Libel in an American Town

This eye-opening and timely book includes weaving into a local story the larger history of the European blood libel, says Howard Cooper

December 18, 2019 17:56
Four-year old Barbara Griffiths

When four-year-old Barbara Griffiths disappeared in the woods, on a Saturday afternoon in September 1928, in the small town of Massena (pop. 10,000), in upper New York State near the Canadian border, her family organised a search party, called the police and, within a hour, 300 people were combing the area looking for the child.

At the time, a couple of dozen Jewish families lived in the town, mostly Eastern European immigrants, including Edward Berenson’s great-grandparents. Thus the author — born in Massena, like his father before him — has a personal stake in the story of what unfolded next: the first — and, to date, only — occurrence on American soil of the age-old accusation, originating in medieval Europe, of the Jewish ritual murder of a Christian child.

The accusation emerged overnight (it doesn’t require modern social media for unsubstantiated rumours to run wild) though Berenson, in his fine-grained examination of the social, economic and political background to this affair (including his interviews with elderly residents of the town who recalled the events) is careful not to foreclose discussion on who was responsible for the libel: “possibilities include a Greek café owner, an unidentified ‘foreigner’, a French Canadian, and firefighters [who were leading the search] belonging to the Klu Klux Klan”.

On the Sunday morning, two of the town’s Jews — the young, troubled son of the synagogue president, and a man called Morris Goldberg — were interviewed by the Mayor and the police, and in the afternoon, prior to Kol Nidrei that evening, the local rabbi, Berel Brennglass, was hauled in for questioning about Jewish ritual practices.