Marissa Miller

In 1899, a Jewish man named Leopold Hilsner was accused of raping and murdering a young Catholic girl in the small village of Polna in southern Bohemia. Immediately after the murder, a great deal of anti-Semitic press surrounded the case and fomented riots and acts of violence against the Jewish community throughout the Czech lands. During this time, the outspoken Tomáš Garrigue Masaryk, a philosophy professor at the time and future first president of Czechoslovakia, protested the charges that were brought against Hilsner and espoused his support for the Jewish people. Although Hilsner was still convicted of murder, Masaryk’s public defense was a harbinger of future relations between the Czech Republic and the Jewish community – and the future state of Israel. (more…)