Peter Zimmermann Die Nacht hinter den Wäldern (A Murder in Polna) Deuticke, August 2000, 300 pp. ISBN 3-216-30525-2 In 1899 - some forty years, that is, before the horrors of the Holocaust - the body of a seamstress, Agnes Hruza, was found in the small Bohemian city of Polna. Accused of her death was a Jew called Leopold Hilsner, a cobbler's apprentice, and soon a frightening wave of anti-Semitic feeling was engulfing the whole town. The local police began talking about ritual murder, the courthouse was filled with ordinary citizens baying for the defendant's blood, and after two trials Hilsner was condemned to death, on effectively no evidence, a sentence subsequently commuted to one of life imprisonment. After seventeen years he was pardoned by the Kaiser, and many years later, in 1969, the victim's brother, Johann Hruza, confessed on his deathbed that it was he who had committed the crime. Based on a true story, every detail of this novel is grippingly described, sometimes through the eyes of a contemporary narrator, researching it through secondary sources, and sometimes through extracts from books written at the time. Particularly vivid is a first-hand account of the first of the two trials. But more than merely the narrative of a crime, this book stands out as a study of anti-Semitism, seen from a new angle through the distancing of time and place. Key players in the drama are the journalist Husek, a criminal and virulently anti-Semitic member of the Young Czechs; the barrister, Baxa, who will be representing the victim's family; and Schneider, an opportunist politician in Vienna who exploits the case for his own ends. The mayor of Polna, meanwhile, is promising any persons coming forward with evidence that they will be paid by the newspapers. What with all this, the antagonism of the police, and the Czech view of Jewry as inimical to the national identity, and there is little a well-intentioned judge can do in the interests of a fair trial. So, plus ça change, as history was soon to prove.