The Accusation: Blood Libel in an American Town

by Edward Berenson Narrated by Paul Boehmer

Overview

On Saturday, September 22, 1928, Barbara Griffiths, aged 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.

Editorial Reviews

The New York Times Book Review - Judith Shulevitz

…Berenson's book reminds us that what seems inconceivable is nonetheless possible.

Publishers Weekly

07/01/2019

NYU history professor Berenson (Europe in the Modern World: A New Narrative History Since 1500) provides a comprehensive look at a little-known episode of American anti-Semitism in this thoughtful history. In 1928, shortly after four-year-old Barbara Griffiths failed to return home from an errand, rumors circulated in her Upstate New York town that she had been the victim of Jews who intended to use her blood for ritual purposes. That baseless theory was endorsed by both the mayor of the village of Massena and the lead police investigator, who called in the local rabbi for an interrogation. The slander was rebutted when an unharmed Barbara resurfaced the next day, explaining that she’d gotten lost and had fallen asleep in the woods. Berenson uses this incident to explore the origins and history of the blood libel (accusations that Jews used Christian blood for ritual purposes) and the shifting attitudes toward Jews in American history. As this instance did not lead to other similar accusations, the author concludes that “the Massena blood libel ultimately showed that American civilization, at least in relation to its Jewish population, was stronger than many people thought.” Berenson’s study benefits from his having interviewed several people alive at the time, including Griffiths, and wisely avoids sensationalism. Readers interested in the recurrence of anti-Semitism in the U.S. will find food for thought here. (Sept.)

Hasia R. Diner

"The Accusation starts with what amounted to an obscure footnote in regional narratives and a minor curiosity in studies of American Jewish history, and builds upon it a very large, important story. In a richly woven tapestry, Edward Berenson examines the many strands that link early twentieth-century Massena, New York, to the Middle Ages, when Jews found themselves accused of using the blood of young Christians to bake matzo, their ritual Passover bread. Deftly connects the very local to the national and to the global."

Rebecca Schuman

"Edward Berenson’s meticulous, intricate history of the European roots of ‘blood libel’ anti-Semitism—and the single time a small American town fell into its thrall—is a stellar example of the universal importance of historical research. The Accusation isn’t just the story of Barbara Griffiths’ disappearance, and the unfounded claim that shook the small Jewish community in Massena, New York—more importantly, it’s the story of how it happened, and how it could happen again."

Judith Shulevitz

"Reminds us that what seems inconceivable is nonetheless possible."

Steven J. Zipperstein

"An extraordinary—and timely—story expertly told. Edward Berenson, a distinguished historian of modern Europe, opens up a side of early twentieth-century American history that feels both startling and eerily familiar in its mix of ethnocentrism and political toxicity. A lucid, deeply intelligent, and important book."

Cynthia Ozick

"A blood libel in twentieth-century America? In an ordinary American town? In his astonishing study of this tainted fable, Edward Berenson, a distinguished historian with family roots in Massena, New York, uncovers the reason we ought not to be astonished: the blood libel is the lie that never dies. In its multiple mercurial guises, and in the latest headlines, it lives on. The Accusation is not mere history. It is news."

The Daily Beast - Lewis Beale

"As frightening in its own way as prime Stephen King....A warning from the past that can’t be ignored."

Peter Hayes

"This model of micro-history illuminates both the persistence and inconsistency of antisemitism in Western culture through the unlikely prism of an almost forgotten event in a backwater American town during the presidential election of 1928. Berenson’s research ranges widely over time and space, and his narrative deftly blends scholarly generalizations with nitty-gritty historical reconstruction. The highly readable result is a tour de force of insight and synthesis."

Jim Crace

"The Accusation is a gripping and disturbing account, told in calm and measured prose, of how one of history’s most persistent slurs—the Blood Libel against Jewish communities across Europe and the Near East—resurfaced in small-town America in the 1920s. Its focus may be specific, but its relevance is boundless and important: our understanding of immigration, the complexities of xenophobia, and the dangerous tenacity against all reason of racial myths are all enhanced in this fascinating marriage of scholarship and storytelling."

Jerusalem Post - Menachem Shlomo

"Gripping....In describing the events of Massena in 1928, Berenson reminds the reader how vulnerable the minority can be and how quickly a community can turn against one of its very own....Jews and non-Jews must read this book and take the messages from the past to heart, ensuring that old wives’ tales remain just that."

Thane Rosenbaum

"In an improbable age when chants from Charlottesville, ‘Jews will not replace us!,’ and synagogue shootings in Pittsburgh and San Diego evoke darker times of antisemitic violence, The Accusation is a frightful reminder that even in the United States, when the conditions are right, it can happen here. A wonderful and important book that, given current events, leaves its final chapter still unwritten."

Kirkus Reviews

★ 2019-08-19
A native of a village in upstate New York turns in a strange and riveting story of anti-Semitism in an era not far removed from our own.

On Sept. 22, 1928, a 4-year-old girl disappeared into the woods outside Massena, New York. Within hours, writes Berenson (History/New York Univ.; Europe in the Modern World: A New Narrative History Since 1500, 2016, etc.), hundreds of people had assembled to search for her. "Several hours into the search," he writes, "someone—it's unclear who—floated the idea that Barbara had been kidnapped and killed by the Jews." That accusation quickly took root even if Jews were well known as residents in "an ethnically and religiously diverse population" that had once been almost all white and Protestant in the agricultural era but, once industry arrived, introduced an immigrant population, most from neighboring Canada but many from Eastern Europe and Italy. Berenson's grandfather, a chemical engineer from Boston, was a newcomer as well to a town with 20 Jewish families who "suddenly found themselves transported back to the Old World of anti-Jewish hostility from which they fled." When it developed that the "blood libel," the charge that Jews killed Christian children for blood to use in religious rituals, had not been fulfilled and the girl was safe, things slowly returned to something approaching normality—save that there are now only 10 Jews in Massena, and its small synagogue closed in 2012 even as the town has sunk into poverty. In this fluent account, Berenson explores the effect of the incident, the blood libel charge having been common in Europe but altogether rare in the U.S. even in those days of rising fascism. Moreover, he examines the history of blood libel, tracing it to medieval England, which was long used to excuse pogroms and other persecution in an ugly history that culminated in the Holocaust.

An excellent work of scholarly detection, especially timely in an age when the immigrant "other" is under constant suspicion.

Product Details

BN ID:	2940173828934
Publisher:	HighBridge Company
Publication date:	09/10/2019
Edition description:	Unabridged

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