The Berne Trial is a famous trial held in Berne, Switzerland between 1934 and 1935, under an obscenity-related statute involving the plagiarism and forgery of the notorious Protocols of the Elders of Zion. The defendants were financed in their defense by Nazi agents working for the German government, including anti-Jewish activist and Welt-Dienst / World-Service / Service Mondial publisher Ulrich Fleischhauer. The plaintiffs, the Federation of Jewish Communities (SIG), were represented by Georges Brunschvig and Emil Raas.
A verdict in favor of the Federation of Jewish Communities (SIG) was set aside on appeal in 1937 on the purely formal legal grounds that the statute under which plaintiffs sought relief was not applicable. The various findings of the court, regarding the series of events leading to the publication of the infamous Protocols of the Elders of Zion, are now regarded as a treasure trove of archival material for scholars and historians.
A scholarly work on the Berne Trial is Urs Lüthi's Der Mythos von der Weltverschwörung (1992).
Former Israeli judge Hadassa Ben-Itto retired from her bench to study the record of the trial in Berne, and published a book on the results of her research in 2005. She highlights four questions the judge in the case had appointed experts to answer:
- Was the Protocols of the Elders of Zion a forgery?
- Was it plagiarized?
- If it was, what was its source?
- Do the Protocols fall under the term Schundliteratur?
References
- The Lie that Would't Die, The Protocols of the Elders of Zion
- by Hadassa Ben-Itto; pref. Lord Woolf, Lord Chief Justice; for. Judge Edward R. Korman
- (London • Portland, OR: Vallentine Mitchell, 2005)
- ISBN 978-0853035954
- Der Mythos von der Weltverschwörung:
- die Hetze der Schweizer Frontisten gegen Juden und Freimaurer,
- am Beispiel des Berner Prozesses um die "Protokolle der Weisen von Zion"
- (Basel: Helbing & Lichtenhahn, 1992)
- ISBN 978-3719011970
- OCLC: 30002662
- Warrant for Genocide
- by Norman Cohn
- (London: Serif, 1967, 1996)
- ISBN 1-897959-25-7
- An Appraisal of the Protocols of Zion
- by John S. Curtiss
- (New York: Columbia University Press, 1942)
See also
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