Jewish Group

On Saturday, September 22, 1928, a little girl named Barbara Griffiths went missing in Massena, a small industrial town in upstate New York. The four year old showed up the next day healthy and unharmed after having gotten lost in the tall grass of farmers’ fields.

“Her clothing was somewhat torn and she was pretty tired and hungry, but otherwise none the worse for her experience,” wrote the local paper, The Observer.

However, before Barbara safely returned, an accusation was made against local Jews that they had kidnapped and killed her to harvest her blood for ritual purposes. It was a blood libel — the only known one in US history.

Within hours of Barbara’s disappearance, the authorities assumed they had a murder case on their hands and summoned members of the tiny Jewish community — including the town’s rabbi, Berel Brennglass — for interrogation.

Historian Edward Berenson has written a new book about this exceptional incident titled, “The Accusation: Blood Libel in an American Town.” Born in Massena into an Eastern European Jewish immigrant family two decades after it occurred, Berenson has known about blood libel since he was a child.

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