Overview
- Description
- Contains records of various provenances relating to the Protocols of the Elders of Zion trial held in Bern, Switzerland. In 1933, the Alliance of Swiss Jewish Communities (Schweizerischer Israelitischer Gemeindebund - SIG) and the Jewish Community Bern (JGB), as part of its initiative to combat antisemitism, brought a court case against the “National Front” (“Nationale Front”) for distributing the Protocols of the Elders of Zion. The case was based on paragraph 14 of the law governing motion pictures and measures against trashy literature (“Gesetz über das Lichtspielwesen und die Massnahmen gegen die Schundliteratur") and its aim was to prohibit the distribution of the Protocols by proving that it was a forgery. The collection also includes records relating to the Basel trail. At the same time as the trial in Bern, the lawyer Oskar Meyer brought a civil libel case before the court in Basel on behalf of his clients, Jules Dreyfus-Brodsky, Dr. Marcus Cohn and Dr. Markus Ehrenpreis, against the publisher and distributor of the Protocols, Alfred Zander et al. The Basel trial was viewed as an unwanted distraction by the team of lawyers conducting the trial in Bern and was marked by interference on their part. In the end, Oskar Meyer had to agree to a settlement and the Basel trial mostly was forgotten. The files pertaining to the trial in Basel were compiled by lawyer Oskar Meyer. It is not clear how the Basel records ended up as part of the SIG holdings. Additional files pertaining to the trials in Bern and Basel can be found at the AfZ in the Philippe Schwed papers and the Georges Brunschvig papers as well as in the Wiener Collection at the University of Tel Aviv, Israel, and in the Wiener Library in London, England.
- Date
-
inclusive:
1932-1992
Physical Details
- Language
- German
- Extent
-
26,644 digital images : PDF ; 2,79 GB.
Rights & Restrictions
- Conditions on Access
- This material can only be accessed in a Museum reading room or other on-campus viewing stations. Users are required to complete a User Declaration in order to gain access to the collection.
- Conditions on Use
- No publication and copies of the records and finding aids to the 3rd party users without the written permission from the Archiv für Zeitgeschichte (AfZ). The Museum may not transfer the materials or duplicate records thereof or any of the finding aids to any third party, except as permitted in the Cooperation Contract, Article II paragraph 5 herein or as otherwise permitted in writing by the AfZ. The Museum may not publish the reproduction material or finding aid on the Internet, World Wide Web, or any publicly accessible on-line network without the written permission of the AfZ. Contact afz@history.gess.ethz.ch.
- Copyright Holder
- Eidgenössische Technische Hochschule Zürich. Archiv für Zeitgeschichte - Archivleitung
Keywords & Subjects
Administrative Notes
- Holder of Originals
-
Eidgenössische Technische Hochschule Zürich. Archiv für Zeitgeschichte - Archivleitung
- Legal Status
- Permanent Collection
- Provenance
- Source of acquisition is the Eidgenössische Technische Hochschule Zürich. Archiv für Zeitgeschichte (AfZ), Switzerland. The collection was acquired by the Archiv für Zeitgeschichte (AfZ) in 1998 as part of the historical Archive of the SIG and was subsequently catalogued as a separate collection. Original archival signature at source archive: IB SIG Berner Prozess. The collection itself consists of records from various sources. The files pertaining to the trial in Basel were compiled by lawyer Oskar Meyer. It is not clear how the Basel records ended up as part of the Schweizerischer Israelitischer Gemeindebund (SIG) holdings. The files of the trial in Bern were compiled by the SIG, i.e. Saly Mayer and the team of lawyers led by Georges Brunschvig. In a 1963 memorandum to the Claims Conference about holdings of the “Jüdische Nachrichten” (JUNA), Benjamin Sagalowitz mentions JUNA records relevant to the trial in Bern which are part of this collection as well as personal paper collections from the estates of Joseph Messinger, the lawyer Dr. Robert Meyer, and Dr. Georg Guggenheim, the head of the SIG department responsible for education and for opposing antisemitism (“Abwehr und Aufklärung”). The United States Holocaust Memorial Museum Archives received the collection via the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum’s International Archives Project in Nov. 2011.
- Record last modified:
- 2023-06-07 10:47:00
- This page:
- https://collections.ushmm.org/search/catalog/irn44304
Additional Resources
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- See Rights and Restrictions
- Terms of Use
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