My Irrelevant Defence: Meditations Inside Gaol and Out on Jewish Ritual Murder
Chicago: Pioneer News Service, 1945. Reprint. Arnold Leese’s controversial booklet on Jewish ritual murder published in 1938 after Leese served six months in jail for libel for anti-Semitic content in his newspaper "The Fascist." Leese intended to use the topic of ritual murder in his courtroom defence, but the judge prohibited it. He thus compiled and published this booklet “in the public interest to break the attack on Free Speech that is rapidly developing wherever any criticism of the past or present conduct of Jews is concerned, an attack which relies for its success upon the ridiculous charge that a breach of the peace is likely if the truth about them is spoken!” (Introduction).
Leese explores the Jewish racial urge for human sacrifice citing specific cases throughout history using Jewish and non-Jewish sources to support his claims. Pages 53-54 discuss the kidnapping and murder of Charles Lindbergh’s baby son as a probable case of Jewish ritual murder. Singerman calls the pamphlet, “the most extensive English-language source in support of the charge of ritual murder among the Jews” (p. 108, 0441).
This copy was reprinted in 1945 by Homer Maertz’s Pioneer News Service in Chicago and was the first American edition. On Oct. 6, 1945, Maertz attended a Christian Front rally in NYC where he was arrested along with fellow anti-Semites Ernst Elmhurst and Kurt Mertig for unlawful assembly and disorderly conduct, partly in relation to the distribution of Leese’s pamphlet. The pamphlet was used as evidence against Maertz at his trial, in which the presiding judge, Henry Curran, characterized it as the “most vicious, venomous and bate-inciting I’ve ever seen” (ADL Bulletin for March 1, 1946). Maertz was jailed for a year.
Stapled wrappers (8 ½” x 5 ½”), [7], 2-57, [1] p. Some faint toning and rubbing to wrappers, but about near fine. In SIBA (Singerman Bibliography of Antisemitic Texts). Item #13355
Price: $300.00