Mendel Beilis Trial: Witnesses

This is the summary of the first day of the Mendel Beilis trial, which occurred on 25 September, 1913 on the Julian calendar (“O.S.” which stands for Old Style), 8 October, 1913 on the Gregorian calendar (“N.S.” which stands for New Style).  The Tsarist Empire operated on the Julian calendar, which Britain and its colonies switched from in 1752.  Russia stayed on the Julian calendar until the revolution in 1917 and by then there was a 13 day difference between Gregorian and Julian dates. 

See the transcript translation for this first day.                          

See the chronology of the entire case.

 

 

The trial ran 34 days.  The transcript is 1436 double-column pages long in three volumes, two of testimony and one of closing speeches.  The translation is about 3000 pages long.  There are two reasons for that.

One is that, to help scholars, I obsessively recorded what transcript page material came from, and I started a new translation page with every new transcript page.  Some translation pages have only one line at the top.

I also took up space on some pages with obsessive footnotes on the results of research I did to make sure I transliterated and translated terms correctly, and recorded information I found on forensic issues and works cited to during the testimony.  And I footnoted cross-references between confirming and contradictory testimony from day to day. 

This day occupies pages 3 through 16 of Volume I of the transcript.

No witnesses testified.  The first order of business was establishing what witnesses had actually showed up after receiving a summons. 

See the list of almost 200 people who testified at trial.  The transcript shows that some 215 witnesses were summonsed.

Some of them would never show up.  E.V. Cheberyak and I.D. Latyshev were dead. The former was Andrey Yushchinsky’s best friend Zhenya; he died August 9, 1911.  The latter was one of the murderers; he died March 29, 1913.  N.V. Yushchinskaya was Andrey’s aunt Natalya, his mother’s full sister; she died in 1911 but I don’t know the date.  Zhenya and Natalya’s depositions were read in court, which was legal in Tsarist law.  Latyshev left no deposition and even the confession he signed moments before his death was not read in court.

Some of those who would never show up had been lost track of by the authorities.  They included E.F. Mishchuk, former chief of detectives in Kiev; I.P. Kozachenko, a government agent who sometimes was assigned to a jail cell to play informer; A.A. Pukhalsky who was in jail with Beilis; A.E. Karaev, who trapped one of the murderers into a confession and was sent to Siberia; and Aleksey Vygranov, a detective who worked on the Yushchinsky case with Nikolay Aleksandrovich Krasovsky and left Kiev on September 24 (Julian), never to be seen or heard from again. 

Footnotes to the translation identify these and other important witnesses – or non-witnesses.  Tsarist archives discussed in A.S. Tager’s Tsarist Regime and the Beilis Case from 1934, and Oskar Gruzenberg’s Memoirs, showed that some of those who were still alive were helped to get out of Dodge by the government.  All of them could have blown the government case, mostly because they knew about falsified evidence.

Next there is a discussion of jurors.  In 1913, Russia passed a law changing how prospective jurors were selected.  It weighted selection in favor of peasants and owners of small businesses.  Why such a law wasn’t passed immediately after the 1905 revolution that prompted so many reforms, and was reserved for 1913 when so many reforms had been repealed, is unknown.  Viktor Korolenko and Vasily Shulgin (the latter was editor of the Kievlyanin, a newspaper that supported the monarchy) both believed it was aimed at packing the Beilis jury with obedient muzhiks, which did indeed happen.  On this day, the only remaining juror with a higher education asked to be excused and the judge allowed it over the defense’s protests.

Third, Judge Boldyrev ruled to excuse the expert witnesses from attending the trial until 10 October (Julian).  Witnesses were divided into those who testified to facts, and those with expertise.  (The judge strictly enforced who could testify to what.)  The defense strongly objected to excusing the expert witnesses.  Some of them had been deposed very early in the investigation, and had no idea of subsequent developments, and while they had to listen to the indictment (read on day 2), volumes of material had been condensed into it after their last contact with the facts of the case.  If the experts don’t know the facts of the trial, two things will happen.  One is they won’t know on what the indictment was based, including things that might invalidate what they deposed to.  The other is that they will have to rely for this information on summaries presented to them while they are being questioned, and the summaries may be skewed based on the party asking the question.  In fact, as the trial proceeded, Criminal Prosecutor Oskar Vipper increasingly asked questions that misrepresented previously established facts, including facts on which the prosecution case relied. 

The defense protested about excusing the experts on the first day, on the grounds that quoting out of context is always prone to misrepresenting the full context.

About two thirds of the way through the first-day proceedings the prosecution makes a startling turnaround.  They argue strenuously that jurors have a duty to serve, but in the first phase of the day’s proceedings they dismissed the concept that witnesses have an absolute duty to appear.  This will not be the last time they argue opposite concepts; it always depends on the expediency of the moment.

Judge:  Fyodor Boldyrev

Prosecution:

            Criminal Prosecutor, Oscar Vipper
            Civil Prosecutor Georgy Zamyslovsky
            Private Civil Prosecutor Aleksey Shmakov

Defense:

            Oscar Gruzenberg
            Nikolay Karabchevsky
            Dmitry Grigorevich-Barsky
            Alexandr Zarudny
            Vasily Maklakov

Vipper was a hired gun from St. Petersburg who was not appointed to the trial until March, 1913.   Zamyslovsky was a powerful member of the Duma; he had to take the title Civil Prosecutor because he had never been admitted to the bar.  Shmakov was allowed to play a prosecutorial role after filing a lawsuit against Beilis as a private citizen, seeking damages in relation to Yushchinsky’s death, according to Beilis’ autobiography.

Gruzenberg was hired in October or November 1911 by Arnold Margolin, head of Beilis’ defense committee, along with Grigorevich-Barsky.  Karabchevsky, one of the deans of the Russian legal system, joined the team by the time Beilis was arraigned.  I’m not sure when or how Zarudny got involved, but Vasily Maklakov had the interesting history that his full brother was a rabid supporter of the Black Hundreds who eagerly promoted using Beilis as the victim in this trial.  Nikolay Maklakov signed off on a bribe to one of the prosecution witnesses.

To Day 2, "Indictment"

© Patricia Jo Heil, 2013-2018 All Rights Reserved

Outdoors -- He's Here, He's There

He's everywhere -- so beware!

I heard an outraged squeal outside my front door yesterday morning.  A squirrel had just learned that we have a new male mockingbird on patrol and the free and easy days of scampering everywhere and meddling with everything are over.

I like mockingbirds.  I like their attitude.  Our old mockingbird was a great guy.  My neighbor was out enjoying her back yard with a glass of wine and the mockingbird sat on my fence, blessed her out good and proper, and then flew off when he decided he's told her what was what.

He also called out George Thoroughgood.  I was sunning myself in back, playing CDs and blasting the sound out where I could hear it.  Lonesome George came on -- I don't even remember what the song was -- and the mockingbird took exception to it.  He ran back and forth on my porch between me and the back door, running through his repertoire at top voice, then ran down the walk and finished off in a tree in my back neighbor's yard when George finished.

Squirrels, they can't call their lives their own when there's a mockingbird nearby.  I remember the old mockingbird snatched one of them bald, it had a pink patch on its back where the mockingbird pulled out the hair.  Once our squirrels realize what's going on, I can breathe a sigh of relief because the critters won't be running their claws through my compost right after I plant my veggies in the spring.  The mockingbird will put a stop to that.

There were a pair of nesting mockingbirds in DC near a government building.  They would regularly attack passersby.  But mockingbirds are smart, they know who is local and who isn't, and I'm betting that none of the people who worked in that building ever got attacked.  I never have been attacked by a local mockingbird.

Mockingbirds eat tons of insects while they raise their three broods a year.  If you want to attract them, you need to plant a male and female pair of American holly trees within 100 feet of each other.  Mockingbirds eat the berries in winter.  The hollies pollinate on the wind, not through insects, and they won't pollinate if they're too far away from each other, and you want them to pollinate to make the berries.

Mockingbirds.  If Jews could have totems, mockingbirds would be mine.  Their versatility, their attitude, their going out in the rain when other birds hide, the way they take care of their mates and chicks -- and what they do to the squirrels.  What's not to like?

© Patricia Jo Heil, 2013-2018 All Rights Reserved

Garden -- Flowers

Yes, autumn is the perfect time to pick what to plant.  If you want open-pollinated seeds, spring will be too late because  the seedsmen will be working on making seeds to sell next year.  But even if you are going with hybrids or sets, now is the time to decide what to buy.

Flowers.  You can get more out of your flowers if you plant things that attract bees, birds, and butterflies.  But the hybrids may look nice and not give these critters anything they want.  The old-fashioned open-pollinated flowers will nourish them beautifully. 

Golden cosmos attracts bees and clouded sulphur butterflies, and the seeds attract goldfinches. 
Indian Blanket is splashy and hummingbirds will sometimes visit them.
Bee Balm attracts bees, butterflies, and hummingbirds but mosquitoes hate it, and it has a nice scent.
Korean dill has a lovely fragrance in the late summer and autumn; butterfly caterpillars will eat it without destroying it and it attracts lacewings which destroy the eggs and young larvae of harmful insects.
Amaranth also attracts beneficial insects, and finches like the seeds.
Joe Pye Weed tolerates shade very well and will be swamped by butterflies from the end of July through August.
Butterfly weed, cardinal flower, scarlet sage and Scarlett O'Hara morning glory will bring in the hummingbirds.
Night-blooming stock and moonflower will give you lovely evening fragrance, while
Heliotrope and dame's rocket will scent your garden during the day.
Nasturtium, pansy, and calendula are edible as well as beautiful.

All of these are annuals and will re-seed themselves year after year, so try one thing and then add more as you become convinced that you don't necessarily have that disastrous affliction "black thumb" which killed every plant you ever owned before.

© Patricia Jo Heil, 2013-2018 All Rights Reserved

Fact-Checking -- Exodus 21:24-25

Fact-Checking your urban legends about the Pentateuch, which will be called Torah on this thread from now on, means making you re-think what you believe you know about what Torah says.

All right.  You’ve been meditating on Exodus 21:24-25.  You can repeat it in your sleep.  You know every word.  You’ve looked up every word and you know what it means.

So what does it mean?

Here’s the Hebrew written out in English letters.  This is called a transliteration.  I won’t do it every time but I think it’s worthwhile here.  If you are using my Hebrew language lessons, you will see each verse transliterated and you can learn to do it for yourself but you will get more out of Torah if you learn to read the Hebrew because the lessons will end at some point – unless people beg and plead for me to continue – since I will believe that everybody has learned to fish.

Ayin tachat ayin
Shen tachat shen
Yad tachat yad
Regel tachat regel
Kviyah tachat kviyah
Petsa tachat petsa
Chaburah tachat chaburah

“Tachat” is an important word.  Normally it means “under”.  If you’ve ever heard anybody talk about a tuchis you were hearing the Yiddish version of this word, which means your backside.

Now look at your English version and think of it as saying “under” instead of “for.”

What does that mean?

Not very much, huh?

So if the meaning of tachat isn’t the normal “under,” what do you think of the idea that it also doesn’t mean “for” as your urban legends say.

So what do your urban legends say this means?  I think I know the answer to that.  You were taught that it means “A has to take out B’s eye, if B took out A’s eye.”  And so on.

But that requires a verb.  There’s no verb above.  Tachat is not a verb. It doesn’t have a verbal, that is an action, meaning.

Now, one thing you need to know about Hebrew is, it’s one of those languages that can leave the word “is” out of a sentence and still have a sentence.  So do it.  Think of your English version with the phrase “is under” instead of “for”.  Still doesn’t make sense, does it.

Now go over it again, and plug in “is for”.  What does that mean?

It doesn’t mean “take out.”  “Take out” is an active verb.  “Is for” is not an active verb.

For next time, add Exodus 21:18-19 and 22.  Meditate on them.  Combine them with verses 24 and 25.  We are now expanding your context because the original two verses didn’t mean what you were taught they mean.  They’re too restricted.  They have been taken out of context.  Restoring them to their context will explain to you what Torah really means by those verses.  Get used to it.  I’m going to do this over and over and over, because it’s the first step in learning how to fish.

© Patricia Jo Heil, 2013-2018 All Rights Reserved

Mendel Beilis -- You the Juror

The transcript of the Mendel Beilis trial is extremely long, over 1400 pages including closing arguments.  The translation runs over 3000 pages.  It is very difficult to read and that is due to another standard legal practice in Russia.  Put yourself in the place of a juror dealing with this situation, just for a few minutes.

In 1913 Russia, a criminal trial was an inquiry before a jury into the facts of the case.  It was not preceded by sifting the evidence to make sure that only provable facts were presented at trial.  It did not, as you read last week, eliminate rumor or gossip.  

The inquiry system required going through the material presented in the indictment, putting the named witnesses on the stand, and having them speak their piece.  Then the attorneys asked questions to trip them up or, in a last ditch, appealed to their depositions.  You, the juror, had to evaluate who probably told the truth.

This went to an extreme in the expert testimony, which was the only testimony allowed on the ritual murder charge.  The attorneys were required not to question the expert witnesses as if they didn’t believe the testimony.  They had to ask questions designed to bring out details that, as non-experts, they could not understand.  When it got to the second charge, ritual murder, you, the juror, were perfectly free to decide which witnesses you liked better because it was all a case of he-said, he-said.

In both phases of the trial, the attorneys could not ask questions that were not represented by evidence in the indictment.  There were two exceptions to this rule; if the prosecutors slipped up and asked such a question, the defense could also treat it in their followup (they always got the last word).  The other was that if the witness volunteered information, both parties could follow it up. 

So.  Trial by inqury.  It goes like this.

On day 2, Aleksandra Prikhodko, Andrey’s mother, reveals that evidence in the trial was faked because she was given suspenders that she knew weren’t Andrey’s.  They were adult size and Andrey wasn’t wearing his own suspenders because they were too tight.

On day 7, Gulko the harness maker says he and his tools weren't at the factory when Andrey was killed.  He also says he left his shvaiki, the supposed murder weapon, at the factory at the end of April and just somehow knew he was going to work in future at places where they would give him tools.

On day 9, Gulko’s shvaiki are shown to the jury as physical evidence, but in the afternoon the jury finds out that Mishchuk was tried on a charge of faking this as evidence.

On day 10, Gorbatko, the other harness maker, identifies the shvaiki Mishchuk “faked” as definitely Gulko’s.

On day 14 or 15, Krasovsky says that Gulko’s shvaiki were never involved with the case in the first place.  When he showed them to Tufanov, one of the doctors who performed the second autopsy, that doctor denied they were involved in the autopsy.

On day 22, Tufanov says that for purpose of the autopsy, they bought a set of shvaiki in the Galitsky marketplace to test in Andrey’s wounds to see if they would fit.

Could you remember all of that and take it into consideration during your deliberations with the rest of the jury?  You had to listen to 28 days of this kind of thing, back and forth, true or not, with absolute lying revealed on the witness stand. 

I was there.  I translated every word of the transcript.  There were times I was so tired and my hands hurt so bad from the typing that I just bagged the work for the day.  But at least I could get up and go work in the garden or make a batch of bread or some brownies or go shopping or something.  You, the juror, were condemned to sit there hour after hour, 14 hours a day, for 34 straight days, so you wouldn’t miss a word, true or not.  You were also sequestered.  No newspapers, no plays at the theater, no concerts, no nothing.

I couldn’t keep it straight without notes that I made and then developed into The Anvil, a “murder mystery” version.  Now imagine that you have a 6^th grade education, maybe not even that.  How do you keep track of the players and their lies?

I believe that the kindest evaluation is, that the government relied on this situation when it empaneled 12 peasants, and excused the only prospective juror with a high school education.  The plan was probably that the jury would throw up its hands in confusion and vote the way their masters wanted.  Even with the obvious falsehoods in the testimony.

Didn’t happen.  Half the jury voted to acquit, and half to convict, and Russian law said that required the court to acquit Beilis. 

The urban legend is that on the ritual murder charge, the jury voted their prejudices saying that Andrey’s death was ritual murder, although they couldn’t say who committed it, and after 20 days of evidence that Vera Cheberyak and her gang murdered Andrey -- and none of them were Jews.  Or did they?  For that, you will have to read "Endgame".

In November 1913, Chaplinsky started another ritual murder case in Fastow, 50 miles west of Kiev, and went into the same program of faking the evidence.  Can you say “stupid”?  In February 1914, he and all the other Kiev regional officials who went along with him on this were replaced.  The real murderer, Ivan Goncharuk, was convicted in February 1915.

There is much more to the Beilis case than what I have shown in these introductory posts.  It is so complex that in the posts for the actual translation of the transcript, I include only a summary and a list of witnesses.  Then there’s a link to the translation for the courageous.  Or curious.  Or people who have an interest in the details of the case but can’t read Russian.

The Anvil includes what I think the real story of the murder was, and the story of the "Baron von Munchausen" of the case who was everywhere for the whole time the case went on, and who never testified either by deposition or on the witness stand, for the very good reason that he knew everything.  He got out of town the day before the trial started, and I have no doubt at all that the government helped with that.  You can contact me if you’re interested in reading this version, which is about as long as a Harlequin novel.

We’ll see who is interested in what.

For now, if you get anything out of these summary posts, or the murder mystery, or the translation, I hope it will be that no nation can run anything the way the Tsarist government ran the Beilis case and still claim to have a “legal system” or a “system of justice.”  The demonstrations and strikes that went on through the end of the Beilis trial showed that some Russians felt that way.  The fact that the Romanovs had to get help from foreign troops, and still couldn’t hold onto their throne, showed that far too many Russians felt that way about everything the Romanovs did from 1905 through 1917.  The fact that Russia staged a case all too similar to the Beilis case in 2012, when the punk band Pussy Riot was tried on two charges that weren’t in the Russian criminal code at the time, shows that Russia, among others, still doesn’t get it.
For those of you who read this through to the end, here is the link to "Endgame".

© Patricia Jo Heil, 2013-2018 All Rights Reserved

What if it happened to you?

Emergency planning.  It really came home to me in 2012 and 2013.

I got religion in 2003, I think it was, when Hurricane Isabel hit, a once-in-70-years hurricane for the DC area.  My power was out for 3 days.  My freezer was stuffed so I didn't have to throw anything out.  I had pre-stocked food I didn't have to cook.  I had plenty of projects to deal with. 

But in 2012 we had a derecho while we were also having our hottest weather ever, and later in the summer a water main broke.  A water main also broke in 2013.

So the first thing is, do you have enough water to survive during water system repairs?  Do you have somewhere that you can store enough water for you or your family?

1.  You can go longer without food than without water.  If you don't have emergency water you're asking to die.  Harsh but true.  You need 1 gallon per day per person.  For us in the U.S. that's almost 4 liters.  You won't drink all of it; the 1 gallon per day rule is outdated.  But some of it you will need if you can cook and haven't stocked no-cook food.

2.  You can't use this water to flush the toilet.  You can use non-drinkable water to flush the toilet.  For that you need a bucket.  You need to put 1 gallon of water in the bucket and dump it down the bowl of the toilet in one go.  That will push the dirt out.  Only do this when there is solid material in the bowl.  You know what I mean.

3.  You will have to back off on personal hygiene.  If you work where there is a fitness club, and there's no membership fee for people who work there, and it's not on your water system, you have a built-in alternative.  Otherwise you may only be able to do the basics.  And don't use your drinking water for this, either.

4.  You will not be able to wash clothing.  You may have to find a friend or relative who is not on your water system and get them to let you use their washer.  If you keep up with the laundry and have a couple weeks' worth of underwear, you should be fine.  But you may have to back off of your normal habits to get through it.  You may have to cut your changes in half.

And of course you realize you can't wash your car, water your lawn, or fill your pool when there's a water emergency.  You will probably get reported by your neighbors and have to pay a fine.  The first fine for this in 2013 was $500.  It went up from there.

Remember, I live in D.C., the capital of the world, and this happened here.  Twice in two years.  You can't afford not to think about it.

© Patricia Jo Heil, 2013-2018 All Rights Reserved

DIY -- boiling water

Yes, some people don't know how to boil water.  Nobody ever taught them.  I'm helping some young relatives learn the basics and then explore.

Do you have a stove and a saucepan with a lid and tapwater and two raw eggs?  And some salt?

All right.  Put the eggs in the saucepan now and sprinkle a little salt on them.

Turn on the tap to any temperature and run some water into the saucepan.

Put the saucepan on a burner the same size as its bottom.  Put the lid on top of it.

Find the control for that burner and turn it to 3 and a half.

Walk away for at least 10 minutes.  Take your shower, set up your coffee maker, do some Tai Ji.  You should hear a sound from the stove and if not, pick up the lid and look inside.

The water should be bubbling and the eggs should be bouncing a little.  If not, make sure you turned on the right burner.  I've done that myself.

When the eggs have cooked for ten minutes, pour the rest of the water into the sink and then do one of two things.  Either go take care of something else like dusting the living room or run a little COLD water into the pan and finish fixing your breakfast or packing your lunch.

Now use a cloth or paper towel to hold an egg, tap the blunt end of the egg firmly against a plate or the counter and peel off the shell.

Now you can eat it with salt or pepper.

TRICKS  OF THE TRADE
1.  There are two reasons you put the eggs in the pan before you heat the water.  The first is that you won't burn your fingers.  The second is that you won't drop the eggs and crack the shells.

2.  The salt is so that if the eggshells DO crack while the eggs cook, the eggs will harden up immediately instead of turning into weak egg soup.

I know you can get a half dozen eggs already hard cooked at the store, but you can spend the same amount and get twice as many raw eggs and have some flexibility.  You need a refrigerator to store them in and if that's the problem, I can't say anything more about it. 

But if you have a full-up kitchen, learning how to use it will save money and help you avoid fat, sugar, and chemicals and give you much more flexibility than you get with any restaurant.

NEXT TIME: Mac and cheese.

© Patricia Heil, 2013-2018 All Rights Reserved