The Accusation: Blood Libel in an American Town

The Accusation: Blood Libel in an American Town

by Edward Berenson
The Accusation: Blood Libel in an American Town

The Accusation: Blood Libel in an American Town

by Edward Berenson

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Overview

A chilling investigation of America’s only alleged case of blood libel, and what it reveals about antisemitism in the United States and Europe.

On Saturday, September 22, 1928, Barbara Griffiths, age four, strayed into the woods surrounding the upstate village of Massena, New York. Hundreds of people looked everywhere for the child but could not find her. At one point, someone suggested that Barbara had been kidnapped and killed by Jews, and as the search continued, policemen and townspeople alike gave credence to the quickly spreading rumors. The allegation of ritual murder, known to Jews as “blood libel,” took hold.

To believe in the accusation seems bizarre at first glance—blood libel was essentially unknown in the United States. But a great many of Massena’s inhabitants, both Christians and Jews, had emigrated recently from Central and Eastern Europe, where it was all too common. Historian Edward Berenson, himself a native of Massena, sheds light on the cross-cultural forces that ignited America’s only known instance of blood libel, and traces its roots in Old World prejudice, homegrown antisemitism, and the resurgence of the Ku Klux Klan in the 1920s. Residues of all three have persisted until the present day.

More than just the disturbing story of one town’s embrace of an insidious anti-Jewish myth, The Accusation is a shocking and perceptive exploration of American and European responses to antisemitism.


Product Details

ISBN-13: 9780393249422
Publisher: Norton, W. W. & Company, Inc.
Publication date: 09/10/2019
Pages: 256
Product dimensions: 5.80(w) x 8.50(h) x 1.00(d)

About the Author

Edward Berenson is a professor of history at New York University. He is the author of Europe in the Modern World and The Statue of Liberty: A Transatlantic Story. He lives in Tarrytown, New York, with his wife, Catherine Johnson.

Table of Contents

Prologue: A Child Disappears 13

Chapter 1 The Accusation 27

Chapter 2 Blood Libel in the Modern World 59

Chapter 3 Who Done It: The Immigrants? 84

Chapter 4 The Massena Case and American Antisemitism 113

Chapter 5 The Election of 1928 153

Chapter 6 A National Affair 177

Epilogue: The Blood Libel in Recent Times 203

Acknowledgments 227

Notes 231

Illustration Credits 257

Index 259

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