Dr. Albert Rosenfelder, who was the
prosecutor in this case, was later sent to Dachau
Jews, Nazis, and the Law:
The Case of Julius Streicher
by Dennis E. Showalter
"The Great Nuremberg Ritual Murder
Trial" began on 29 October 1929. The Centralverein's lawyers
had built a case in two areas. The first charged Streicher, his
associate Karl Holz, and Der Sturmer with presenting certain
unsolved deaths as possible ritual murders. The tone of the articles
in question, the plaintiffs declared, attacked all Jews through
misinterpreted or misapplied Talmudic quotations - a clear attack
on Judaism as a religion. The second category of charges involved
the repeated assertions in Der Sturmer that Jews could commit
perjury in gentile courts and were not required to respect gentile
laws concerning property.
Expert Centralverein witnesses traced the origins of both lines
of argument, demonstrating that they were purely theoretical
legal devices dating from previous millennia. On the other hand,
it was possible to cite quotation after quotation from Jewish
law prohibiting perjury and dishonesty under any circumstances,
condemning such behavior as punishable before God and threatening
one's place in the World to Come. Streicher countered with his
own stable of witnesses and citations, making a surprising amount
of the defense presentation himself, without the frenzy that
usually accompanied his public presentations.
In its decision, the court stressed the difficulty of evaluating
exact meanings of certain sections of Jewish law, particularly
when presented in translation. The judges agreed that it was
difficult to determine the exact extent to which specific arguments
in the Zohar, the Talmud, or the Torah might be considered valid
in contemporary German society. They also conceded that the defendants
gave the impression of being extraordinarily well-read in Jewish
law and its esoterica. These very facts, however, worked to their
condemnation. A man with the specific knowledge Streicher had
manifested day after day in court should be well aware that he
could not hope to use material dating from the Middle Ages to
describe behavior patterns in the Weimar Republic. He should
also be aware that the meanings of the passages cited were by
no means as plain as Der Sturmer asserted week after week.
The accused were, in short, guilty as charged of libeling the
Jewish religion under Paragraph 166 of the Weimar Penal Code.
Streicher and Holz might leave the court to the accompaniment
of a cheering, singing crowd of over 400 people, but the original
verdict stood on appeal. Streicher was sentenced to two months
in prison, Holz to three and a half months. The sentences represented
a sharp reduction from the prosecution's recommendation of eight
months for Streicher and ten for Holz. The court justified its
decision on the grounds that the defendants had not acted from
the "dishonorable" motive of personal gain. As was
the case in earlier, similar decisions, the lighter sentences
were not meant to suggest that Jews were fair game, but to indicate
the political nature of Streicher's anti Semitism. In effect,
it was possible, the court ruled, to punish him for going too
far in specific instances. The validity and the acceptability
of his general political position, however, were not appropriate
matters for the law to settle.
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