The Butcher's Tale: Murder and Anti-Semitism in a German Town

Journalists gather in Konitz to cover the case, seeing in it the possibility for a “public sensation […] a spectacle like a Wagnerian opera” (56). One of them is antisemitic newspaper editor Wilhelm Bruhn. Bruhn meets with Gustav Hoffmann and publishes in his newspaper a petition of Hoffmann detailing reasons for his innocence and for Adolf Lewy’s guilt. Appealing to his professional expertise as a butcher, Hoffmann argues that Winter’s murder could only have been done by a kosher butcher, and that Lewy’s house was conveniently placed to carry out the crime. He points a finger at Lewy’s son Moritz as an accomplice in the murder. Hoffmann offers detailed theories about the roles that Bernhard Masloff, Anna Ross, Plath the tailor, and Wolf Israelski might have played in planning and executing the murder and in disposing the body. Hoffmann portrays himself as a victim of a Jewish conspiracy: “The Jews need a Christian butcher on whom to pin their own guilt” (61). Hoffmann’s petition is widely distributed and read in West Prussia that summer, transfixing the minds of local public (68). 

At this point, Smith backs up and covers the testimony offered by the bricklayer Bernhard Masloff.