The Damascus affair

Description:

In February 1840 an Italian monk and his servant disappeared in Damascus. Many Jews in that city were charged with ritual murder and tortured until they "confessed." The case turned into a cause celebre across much of the Western world, even becoming a factor in the major diplomatic conflicts of the period. Jews in many countries groped for ways to save the surviving prisoners in Syria and their own good name. A Jewish delegation led by Sir Moses Montefiore and Adolphe Cremieux was sent to the Middle East in the hope of discovering the real murderers. Jonathan Frankel assesses the affair as a factor in European and Jewish politics, as a chapter in Jewish history and historiography, and as the stuff of radically conflicting myths - myths that eventually fed into the extraordinary events of the mid-twentieth century: the Holocaust and the establishment of the state of Israel. This is the first book since the 1840s to analyze the Damascus affair.

subjects: Blood accusation,  Jews,  Ethnic relations,  Persecutions,  Jews, politics and government,  Jews, social conditions,  Jews, history,  Jews, persecutions,  Damascus (syria),  Moordaanslagen,  Joden,  Judenverfolgung,  Damaskus-Affäre

Places: Syria,  Damascus,  Damascus (Syria)