Der Ritualmord (1919)

A jealous girl unleashes a pogrom. “In its atmospheric opening images, the film tells of the initially peaceful coexistence between Christian and Jewish families in a large Russian town with a predominantly rural character. It goes on to depict the brutal conduct of a Russian Cossack detachment as it requisitions the quarters it needs. When the town becomes overcrowded with homeless people, this leads to the most ruthless forced eviction of all the Jewish families […] The official Mulnikow (Wilhelm Diegelmann) takes pity on the family of Chaim Abramowitsch (Leonhard Haskel), head of the Jewish community. Out of her overwhelming gratitude for this act of kindness, the eldest daughter, Manja (Sybill Morel), naturally grows close to the student Sascha (Alfred Abel), Mulnikow’s firstborn son. Vera (Rita Clermont), the sister of the student Dimitri Wronski, is already jealous; she overhears the couple in a tender moment together. Wild emotions flash across her beautiful face. Her wounded vanity seeks an opportunity for revenge. During a large gathering of students at Sascha’s, Vera discovers his interest in informative literature about ritual murders. A small, highly successful interlude—a student outing to the rural tavern run by the Polish innkeeper Czapka (Ludwig Rex)—reveals his sideline: secretly setting snares. It also explains the mysterious disappearance of little Sonja, Mulnikow’s youngest daughter, who gets caught in a snare while searching for tempting berries and is found several days later, half-starved, by the greedy Polish innkeeper. Meanwhile, Vera uses the child’s disappearance to instigate a pogrom. On the basis of a cap found at Abramowitsch’s, she spreads the tale of ritual murder and incites the people to destroy the Jews. Her inflammatory speeches meet with only too much success. With fiendish brutality, the mob pursues, abuses, and kills every Jew it can reach, and finally stones their leader in front of his family, who are forcibly made to watch their breadwinner’s martyrdom. Sascha cannot believe the tale of ritual murder; he broods and searches historical books for truth and enlightenment. What reading a treatise on the subject reveals to him is vividly brought before the viewer’s eyes in wonderfully reconstructed images from the time of Alexander the Great. […] The courageous Sascha finally discovers Sonja, who has been deliberately kept hidden. With the manly resolve of a convinced champion of a good cause, he charges toward the enraged crowd with the little girl at his side. Faced with this clear refutation of the supposed guilt, the crowd drops its stones in shame—the very stones whose force was about to take the old Abramowitsch’s life….” (From Kinematograph No. 668, 1919)