Mendel Beilis

Blood Libel: the Life and Memory of Mendel Beilis

One of the great trials of the twentieth century was the 1913 blood-libel trial of Mendel Beilis in Czarist Russia. Beilis, a Jew, was arrested in 1911 by the Czarist secret police. He was accused of ritually murdering a Christian boy in order to use the boy's blood to bake matzah for Passover. Beilis was jailed for over two years, under horrible conditions, while awaiting trial. He heroically resisted all pressure to implicate himself or other Jews. In 1913, after a dramatic trial that riveted the Jewish people and much of the rest of the world, Beilis was acquitted by an all-Christian jury.  
 
This book includes the gripping memoir of Mendel Beilis, The Story of My Sufferings, in its first complete English translation. Also included is an essay claiming that Bernard Malamud plagiarized from Beilis's memoir in writing his Pulitzer Prize-winning novel The Fixer.