Case file · Witch trials
The Beilis affair
After 13-year-old Andrei Yushchinsky was found murdered in a cave in Kyiv in March 1911, the authorities charged the Jewish clerk Menahem Mendel Beilis with ritual murder; a jury acquitted him in 1913.
1911 CE · 50.46, 30.48 · status: hoax
The account
The case was pushed by the Ministry of Justice and the far-right Black Hundreds despite evidence pointing to a criminal gang. It drew international protest and became the last great blood-libel trial of the Russian Empire. Bernard Malamud's novel 'The Fixer' (1966) is based on it.
The sceptical view
The ritual-murder charge was fabricated; the real killers were never tried.