Beilis Case Papers=Dokumenty po delu Beilisa

The collection contains documents relating to the trial of Mendel Beilis (1874-1934) held in September and October 1913. Beilis, a Jewish clerk at a brick factory on the outskirts of Kiev, was accused of murdering a young Ukrainian boy, Andrei Iushchynskyi. The identity of the real persons responsible for the crime were known by police but the government--at that time debating a draft law on abolishing the Jewish Pale of Settlement--sought to convict a Jew and thus to incite mass anti-Semitic pogroms in Russia. Progressive members of the Russian and Ukrainian intelligentsia came out in support of Beilis, who was eventually acquitted by the 14-member jury. The documents cover the two and half-year investigation, the trial itself, and the events around it. The collection contains proceedings of the court, forensic reports, testimonies of all 355 witnesses, speeches by the prosecution and the defense, materials of the investigation, and articles from newspapers.