Catalogue of Czech Television Programmes
The film, directed by Viktor Polesný, describes the events which triggered off the largest wave of anti-Semitism ever recorded in the Czech Lands. It rose in 1899, following the brutal murder of a young girl called Anežka Hrůzová. The anti-Jewish mood was due to a judicial error. The killer did not commit sexual offence. To the local doctors it seemed that there´s not enough coagulated blood on the scene of the crime, and the answer to the question where the “missing” blood had gone suggested itself: it was Easter, the Jewish Passover time, and the Jews had used it in matzos. Unjustly convicted for the murder thus was a young Jew Leopold Hilsner. And it was the future first President of Czechoslovakia professor T. G. Masaryk who, as few others, refused to believe the superstitions about ritual killing. As did Zdeno Auředníček, a young lawyer who defended Hilsner and managed to get the sentence reduced from death to life. Both men never stopped striving for Hilsner´s rehabilitation, which however didn´t come until nearly a hundred years after the crime.
HD | 2 x 85´ | © 2016
director(s): Viktor Polesný
producer(s): Czech Television
scriptwriter(s): Václav Šašek
director of photography: David Ployhar
cast: Jaroslav Plesl, Karel Heřmánek jr., Gabriela Míčová, František Němec, Luboš Veselý, Ondřej Kavan, Martin Myšička, Jiří Plachý, Vilém Udatný, Karel Roden and others
rights available: TV, Video, Internet
original language: Czech
subtitles available: English (parts 1, 2)