The Butcher's Tale: Murder and Anti-Semitism in a German Town

Rating:
Summary: One if the best history books
Review: I was recently assigned to read this book for a World Civilizations history course in college, and I was surprised by how interesting it turned out to be.
The author offers historical facts and evidence of a supposed 'ritual murder' in Konitz, a German town. But it reads like a suspense story that makes you want to keep reading to know what happened.
I strongly recommend this book to those interested in anti-Semitism and history.

Rating:
Summary: excellent look at a historical true crime incident
Review: In March 1900 in Konitz, Prussia, two townsfolk find a package containing the upper body of a missing young man. Other body parts wrapped inside packing paper typically used for meat are subsequently found throughout the town. Though the authorities believe the local Christian butcher killed the lad, rumors abound even way beyond the town's borders that the Jews performed an ancient ritual using the blood of Christians in the baking of Passover matzo. Taken seriously by many Christians, riots and other violent acts against the Jewish community occurred.

THE BUTCHER'S TALE is an excellent look at a true crime incident that led to unproved accusations followed by anti-Semitic rioting and acts of violence against the Jewish population. Dr. Helmut Walser Smith provides deep insight into the historical evidence, especially collected in minute detail by the police and uses this anecdotal case to prove the "process" of turning personal bias and local quarrels into a structured vicious attack on a weaker relation in this case the Jews. Generalizations can be drawn from this powerful work that takes a specific medieval belief applied at the beginning of the twentieth century and yet the use of accusing a scapegoat seems so commonplace throughout the world of today.

Harriet Klausner

Rating:
Summary: A History Of An Hysteria
Review: The Butcher's Tale is on the surface the story of the murder of an 18 year old boy in an obscure town in a backwards corner of Germany in 1900. The parts of the book which deal with the discovery of the body and the subsequent investigations read like any report of a murder might, with heavy emphasis on detail and comparisons of witness testimony, etc.

The most important parts of the book deal, however, with the reaction of the townspeople to the murder: an upsurge in anti-Semitic hysteria which eventually forced the government to send troops to keep order. Smith does a good job of analyzing the roots of anti-Jewish prejudice in Germany and Central Europe and provides a fascinating history of the beginnings of the so-called blood libel and desecration of the Host stories, belief in which accounted for much of the anti-Jewish feeling in Central and Eastern Europe from the Middle Ages on. Smith also draws some interesting parallels with the behavior of the German government in 1900, when it actively protected its Jewish citizens, and then in the 1940s, when the Third Reich actively sought to massacre those same citizens.

This book is important because it gives us precious insights into the tendency of human beings, even well educated, civilized humans, to lapse into hysteria and believe the most unbelievable stories about people they once trusted and accepted. Read this book, and remember it the next time you hear rumors about child molesting day care workers, or secret covens of Satanists among us, or other widespread, previously unsuspected, conspiracies.

Rating:
Summary: A History Of An Hysteria
Review: The Butcher's Tale is on the surface the story of the murder of an 18 year old boy in an obscure town in a backwards corner of Germany in 1900. The parts of the book which deal with the discovery of the body and the subsequent investigations read like any report of a murder might, with heavy emphasis on detail and comparisons of witness testimony, etc.

The most important parts of the book deal, however, with the reaction of the townspeople to the murder: an upsurge in anti-Semitic hysteria which eventually forced the government to send troops to keep order. Smith does a good job of analyzing the roots of anti-Jewish prejudice in Germany and Central Europe and provides a fascinating history of the beginnings of the so-called blood libel and desecration of the Host stories, belief in which accounted for much of the anti-Jewish feeling in Central and Eastern Europe from the Middle Ages on. Smith also draws some interesting parallels with the behavior of the German government in 1900, when it actively protected its Jewish citizens, and then in the 1940s, when the Third Reich actively sought to massacre those same citizens.

This book is important because it gives us precious insights into the tendency of human beings, even well educated, civilized humans, to lapse into hysteria and believe the most unbelievable stories about people they once trusted and accepted. Read this book, and remember it the next time you hear rumors about child molesting day care workers, or secret covens of Satanists among us, or other widespread, previously unsuspected, conspiracies.

Rating:
Summary: Felt like I was back in college
Review: The reviews of this book may lead you to expect a true-crime story. It was researched very well and and is, therefore, a meticulous examination of German townspeople at the beginning of the 20th century; but the reviews are more interesting than the book. This is not because the story, itself, is not interesting but because it is told in a dull manner.

If you think, as I did, that this book will tell you why a whole town of Christians would not only believe false stories about Jews but actually make up the false stories, forget it. The author seemed to attempt to do this through his detailed examination, but I still don't know the answer. Maybe no one does.

Even if I had not already read the author's preface, after I read this book I could have told you he is a college professor and had his students critique part of the book. It reads like a term paper, lots of facts but not a page turner. A very interesting story, then, turns out to be a dull book.