Title: The Damascus affair
First published: 1997
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)
LC classification: DS135.S95 F728 1997