Editing Blood libel (section)

===19th century===
One of the child-saints in the Russian Orthodox Church is the six-year-old boy Gavriil Belostoksky from the village [[Zwierki|Zverki]]. According to the legend supported by the church, the boy was kidnapped from his home during the holiday of [[Passover]] while his parents were away. Shutko, who was a Jew from [[Białystok]], was accused of bringing the boy to Białystok, piercing him with sharp objects and draining his blood for nine days, then bringing the body back to Zverki and dumping it at a local field. A cult developed, and the boy was canonized in 1820. His relics are still the object of pilgrimage. On [[All Saints Day]], 27 July 1997, the Belarusian state TV showed a film alleging the story is true.<ref>[http://www.vestnik.com/issues/97/0902/win/stonov.htm Is the New in the Post-Soviet Space Only the Forgotten Old?] by Leonid Stonov, International Director of Bureau for the Human Rights and Law-Observance in the Former Soviet Union, the President of the American Association of Jews from the former USSR</ref> The revival of the cult in [[Belarus]] was cited as a dangerous expression of antisemitism in international reports on human rights and religious freedoms<ref>[http://www.4humanrights.org/by/eng/reports/relig2003.shtml Belarus. International Religious Freedom Report 2003] {{webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20070907160230/http://www.4humanrights.org/by/eng/reports/relig2003.shtml |date=7 September 2007 }} Released by the Bureau of Democracy, Human Rights and Labor</ref><ref>[https://2001-2009.state.gov/g/drl/rls/irf/2004/37195.htm Belarus. International Religious Freedom Report 2004] Released by the Bureau of Democracy, Human Rights, and Labor</ref><ref>[https://2001-2009.state.gov/g/drl/rls/irf/2005/51542.htm Belarus. International Religious Freedom Report 2005] Released by the Bureau of Democracy, Human Rights, and Labor</ref><ref>[https://2001-2009.state.gov/g/drl/rls/irf/2006/71370.htm Belarus. International Religious Freedom Report 2006] Released by the Bureau of Democracy, Human Rights, and Labor</ref><ref>{{cite book |url=http://www.foreignaffairs.house.gov/archives/108/91075d.pdf |publisher=[[U.S. Department of State]] |title=Annual Report on International Religious Freedom for 2004 |chapter=Belarus |page=281 |access-date=2010-01-23 |url-status=dead |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20100106153449/http://foreignaffairs.house.gov/archives/108/91075d.pdf |archive-date=6 January 2010 }}</ref> which were passed to the [[UNHCR]].<ref>{{cite web |url=http://www.unhcr.org/home/RSDCOI/450fb0b128.html |title=U.S. Department of State Annual Report on International Religious Freedom for 2006 – Belarus |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20070907060158/http://www.unhcr.org/home/RSDCOI/450fb0b128.html |archive-date=7 September 2007 |website=[[UNHCR]] |access-date=10 August 2013}}</ref>

* 1823–35 [[Velizh]] blood libel: After a Christian child was found murdered outside of this small Russian town in 1823, accusations by a drunk prostitute led to the imprisonment of many local Jews. Some were not released until 1835.<ref>{{cite book |last=Avrutin |first=Eugene |date=2017 |title=The Velizh Affair: Blood Libel in a Russian Town|location=Oxford |publisher=Oxford University Press |isbn=9780190640521}}</ref>
* 1840 [[Damascus affair]]: In February, at Damascus, a Catholic monk named Father Thomas and his servant disappeared. The accusation of ritual murder was brought against members of the Jewish community of Damascus. 
* 1840 [[Rhodes blood libel]]: The Jews of [[Rhodes]], under the [[Ottoman Empire]], were accused of murdering a [[Greeks|Greek]] Christian boy. The libel was supported by the local governor and the European consuls posted to Rhodes. Several Jews were arrested and tortured, and the entire Jewish quarter was blockaded for twelve days. An investigation carried out by the central Ottoman government found the Jews to be innocent.
* In 1844, [[David Paul Drach]], the son of the Head Rabbi of [[Paris]] and a convert to Christianity, wrote in his book ''De L'harmonie Entre L'eglise et la Synagogue'', that a Catholic priest in Damascus had been ritually killed and the murder covered up by powerful Jews in Europe; referring to the 1840 Damascus affair [See above]
* In 1851–53, a case of blood libel took place in [[Surami]], [[Georgia (country)|Georgia]] (then part of the Russian Empire): seven Jewish men, all versed in religious matters, were falsely accused of the murder of a Christian (Georgian) boy for ritual purposes. Local investigators pressed the case for three years before the [[Governing Senate]] in St Petersburg, the Russian Empire's highest judicial organ, convicted and exiled the accused to remote provinces.<ref name=":1">{{Cite journal |last=Ben-Oren |first=Gershon |title=Montefiori ve-yehudei gruzia [Montefiore and the Jews of Georgia] |url=https://www.jstor.org/stable/23423315 |journal=Pe'amim: Studies in Oriental Jewry |publication-date=1984 |volume=20 |pages=69–76 |jstor=23423315 }}</ref> Soviet, Israeli and Georgian scholars agree that the Russian imperial state, especially [[Caucasus Viceroyalty (1801–1917)|Viceroy]] Mikhail Vorontsov, was heavily involved, even manipulated the case to ensure a conviction.<ref>{{Cite journal |last=Shukian |first=M. P. |year=1940 |title=Pravovoe polozhenie evreev Gruzii v XIX stoletii |language= |trans-title= |journal=Trudy Istoriko-etnograficheskogo Muzeia Evreev Gruzii |volume=1 |pages=73–74}}</ref><ref name=":1" /><ref>{{Cite book |last=Mamistvalishvili |first=El'dar |title=Gruzinskie evrei (s epokhi antichnosti do 1921g.) |year=2014 |publisher=D. Baazov Museum of history of Jews in Georgia |location=Tbilisi |pages=210–215 |trans-title=Georgian Jews: from antiquity to the year 1921 |isbn=9789941918964 |oclc=928754220 }}</ref> This conviction greatly influenced the Kutaisi case (1878–80, see below).<ref name=":2" />
* In the [[Kingdom of Lombardy–Venetia|Lombardo-Venetian Kingdom]] in [[Badia Polesine|Badia]], in the [[Province of Rovigo]] on June 25, 1855, a 21-year-old peasant woman from [[Masi, Veneto|Masi]], Giuditta Castilliero, returned after eight days missing and claimed she escaped from a ritual murder. She showed wounds on her arms as evidence of bloodletting, giving evidence to her story of blood libel. She testified that a fellow townsman, Caliman Ravenna, was one of the parties responsible. Ravenna was a wealthy merchant, entrepreneur, district tax collector, moneylender and member of the elite in Badia. He was taken into custody on a charge of public violence, and rumours concerning the matter spread throughout the region. The case was moved to the Court of Rovigo. There, the magistrate and other criminal authorities rapidly reviewed the case and immediately arrested the alleged perpetrator. On July 9, Giuditta Castilliero was arrested for a theft in [[Legnago]] that took place during the days she had been reportedly missing. This contradicted her testimony, and Caliman Ravenna was released on July 14 and welcomed back into his community. Castilliero was charged with slander, a more serious crime than theft, and was sentenced to six years of hard labour. It was believed she had been put up to make the accusation by a criminal network, personal enemies of Ravella.<ref name="D'Antonio" /><ref>Emanuele D’Antonio, ''Il sangue di Giuditta:Antisemitismo e voci ebraiche nell’Italia di metà Ottocento,'' [[:it:Carocci Editore|Carocci]] 2020 {{isbn|978-8-829-00329-7}}.</ref>
* In March 1879, nine Jewish men from the village of [[Sachkhere]] were brought to [[Kutaisi]], [[Georgia (country)|Georgia]] to stand trial for the alleged kidnapping and murder of a Christian girl.<ref name=":2">{{Cite journal |last=Kirmse |first=Stefan B. |date=9 February 2024 |title=Russian imperial borderlands, Georgian Jews, and the struggle for 'justice' and 'legality': blood libel in Kutaisi, 1878–80 |journal=[[Central Asian Survey]] |volume=43 |issue=2 |pages=171–195 |doi=10.1080/02634937.2024.2302581 |doi-access=free |pmid=38903059 |pmc=11188619}}{{Creative Commons text attribution notice|cc=by4|from this source=yes}}</ref> The case attracted a great deal of attention in the Russian Empire (of which Georgia was then a part): "While periodicals as diverse in tendency as ''[[Vestnik Evropy|Herald of Europe]]'' and ''[[Sankt-Peterburgskie Vedomosti|Saint Petersburg Notices]]'' expressed their amazement that medieval prejudice should have found a place in the modern judiciary of a civilized state, ''[[Novoye Vremya (newspaper)|New Times]]'' hinted darkly of strange Jewish sects with unknown practices."<ref>Effie Ambler, ''Russian Journalism and Politics: The Career of Aleksei S. Suvorin, 1861–1881'' (Detroit: [[Wayne State University Press]], 1972: {{ISBN|0-8143-1461-9}}), p. 172.</ref> The trial ended in acquittal, and the orientalist [[Daniel Chwolson]] published a refutation of the blood libel.
* 1882 [[Tiszaeszlár affair|Tiszaeszlár blood libel]]: The Jews of the village of [[Tiszaeszlár]], Hungary were accused of the ritual murder of a fourteen-year-old Christian girl, Eszter Solymosi. The case was one of the main causes of the rise of antisemitism in the country. The accused persons were eventually acquitted.
* In 1899, [[Hilsner Affair]]: Leopold Hilsner, a [[Czech Jewish]] vagabond, was accused of murdering a nineteen-year-old Christian woman, Anežka Hrůzová, with a slash to the throat. Despite the absurdity of the charge and the relatively progressive nature of society in [[Austria-Hungary]], Hilsner was convicted and sentenced to death. He was later convicted of an additional unsolved murder, also involving a Christian woman. In 1901, the sentence was commuted to life imprisonment. [[Tomáš Masaryk]], a prominent Austro-Czech philosophy professor and future president of [[Czechoslovakia]], spearheaded Hilsner's defense. He was later blamed by Czech media because of this. In March 1918, Hilsner was pardoned by Austrian emperor [[Karl of Austria|Charles I]]. He was never exonerated, and the true guilty parties were never found.{{cn|date=April 2025}}