Leopold Heller

Birth: https://www.geni.com/documents/view?doc_id=6000000141941587727

The Hilsner Affair (also known as the Hilsner Trial, Hilsner Case or Polná Affair) was a series of anti-semitic trials following an accusation of blood libel against Leopold Hilsner, a Jewish inhabitant of the town of Polná in Bohemia, Austria-Hungary in 1899 and 1900. The affair achieved widespread media publicity at the time.

Contents [show] Background[edit] Anežka Hrůzová was a 19-year-old Czech Catholic girl, living in the village of Věžnička. She worked as a seamstress in Polná, 2 miles (3.2 km) away. On the afternoon of 29 March 1899, she left her place of employment as usual, but did not return to her home. Three days later (1 April) her body was found in a forest, her throat having been cut and her garments torn. Nearby was a pool of blood, some blood-stained stones, parts of her garments, and a rope with which she had been either strangled to death or dragged, after the murder, to the place where the body was found.

The suspicion of the sheriff was first turned against four vagrants who had been seen in the neighborhood of the forest on the afternoon of the day when the murder was supposed to have been committed. Among them was Leopold Hilsner, a 23-year-old Jew, a man of little intelligence, who had been a vagrant all his life. Suspicion against him was based on the fact that he had been frequently seen strolling in the forest where the body was found. A search of his house showed nothing suspicious. He claimed to have left the place on the afternoon of the murder long before it could have been committed; but he could not establish a perfect alibi. Hilsner was arrested, and tried at Kutná Hora on 12–16 September. He denied all knowledge of the crime. The only physical evidence against him was a pair of trousers on which some stains were found, which chemical experts said might have been blood, while the garment was wet as if an attempt had been made to wash it. One witness against him claimed to have seen Hilsner, at a distance of 2,000 feet (610 m), in company with two strange Jews, on the day on which the murder was supposed to have been committed and on the spot where the body was found. Another witness claimed to have seen him come from that place on the afternoon of 29 March and to have noticed that he was very much agitated. Both the prosecuting attorney,[citation needed] and the attorney for the Hrůza family, Karel Baxa, made clear suggestions of ritual murder. Testimony had proved that Hilsner was too weak to have committed the crime by himself. Still he was sentenced to death for participation in the murder, while his supposed accomplices were undiscovered and no attempt was made to bring them to justice.

The prominent Czech nationalist scholar Tomáš Masaryk, professor of the Charles University in Prague, intervened on behalf of Hilsner; he filed an appeal to the supreme court, citing technical errors in the trial. The supreme court ordered a new trial, to be held at Písek in order to avoid intimidation of the jury by the mob, and the influence of political agitation. On 20 September 1899, a few days after the first trial, Hilsner was confronted by hostile fellow prisoners, who showed him some carpenters working in the courtyard of the jail and told him that they were constructing a gallows for him. They demanded the names of his accomplices, and said he could thus obtain a commutation of his sentence. Hilsner, terrified, named Joshua Erbmann and Solomon Wassermann as those who had assisted him. Being brought before the judge on 29 September, he declared that this statement was false. On 7 October, he reiterated the statement, but again recanted on 20 November. Fortunately for those he had accused, they were able to prove perfect alibis, one of them having been in jail on the day of the murder, while the other proved, from certificates of poorhouses in Moravia which he had visited as a beggar, that he could not possibly have been in Polná on that day.

Caricature of the Hilsner Affair, 1900 Meanwhile, Hilsner was accused of another murder. Marie Klímová, a servant, had disappeared on 17 July 1898. A female body was found on 27 October following in the same forest as the body of Anežka Hrůzová. This body had, with great probability, been identified as the missing girl. However, decomposition was so advanced that not even the fact that the girl had been murdered could be established. Hilsner, charged with this crime also, was tried for both murders in Písek (25 October-14 November 1900). The witnesses at this trial became more definite in their statements. Those that at the first trial had spoken of a knife which they had seen in Hilsner's possession, now asserted distinctly that it was such a knife as was used in ritual slaughtering. The strange Jews who were supposedly seen in company with Hilsner were more and more particularly described. When witnesses were shown that the testimony given by them at the second trial differed from that given at the first trial, they said either that they had been intimidated by the judge or that their statements had not been correctly recorded.

Hilsner was found guilty of having murdered both Anežka Hrůzová and Marie Klímová and sentenced to death on 14 November 1900. The sentence was commuted by Emperor Franz Josef to life imprisonment on 11 June 1901 but requests to renew the trial were turned down. Shortly before the end of World War I (24 March 1918) Hilsner was pardoned by Emperor Karl. He spent the rest of his life in Velké Meziříčí, Prague, and Vienna; he died on 9 January 1928 at the age of 52 in Vienna. His conviction was never annulled, and no one else was ever charged with the murders.

Article from 2023 2023 https://jihlavska.drbna.cz/zpravy/spolecnost/19737-umrti-mlade-svad...

Leopold came from a poor family from Polna, which had homestead rights in Velké Meziříčí. He lived with his family in house number 532 opposite the synagogue, where there was a residence for the poor citizens of the municipality.

His mother worked intensively in the Jewish community. Leopold Hilsner was not very intelligent, nor very educated. He graduated from a German Jewish school, and after completing it, he briefly apprenticed as a shoemaker.

As for religion, he was rather lax and even considered converting to Christianity. Hilsner never had any permanent employment, only occasional jobs. He was mainly fed by his mother and often wandered around Polná and its surroundings.

He came out of prison in poor health and lived in Velké Meziříčí, Prague and Vienna, where in the 1920s he made a living as a peddler under the changed name Heller. The Viennese Jewish community supported him financially, as did President Masaryk. In the archives of the presidential office, the Berlin doctor Petr Vašiček found documents that Hilsner had sent Masaryk a fake wedding announcement, according to which he was marrying a teacher in Vienna. At the same time, he asked Masaryk for a financial contribution. The president complied. It later turned out that there was no wedding.

Film
In 1919, the feature film The Hilsner Case was made about the murder of Anežka Hrůzová, with Hilsner himself in the lead role. Czech Television made a film in 2015, which was shown on TV screens for the first time in January 2016 under the title Crime in Polná.