Joseph Samuel Bloch

He was appointed rabbi in Rendsburg, Holstein, afterward in Kobylin, Posen (Poznań), and Brüx, Bohemia; and finally he ended his rabbinical career in Floridsdorf, near Vienna.

Taking advantage of this, August Rohling, a Professor of Theology at one of the German universities, published a book, Der Talmudjude (1871), which became a bestseller and was read by hundreds of thousands (one Catholic organization distributed 38,000 copies free of charge).

In 1893, instigated by Josef Deckert, a pastor in Vienna, a baptized Jew named Paulus Meyer declared in the Vaterland of May 11 that a number of Russian rabbis from Lentschna had performed a ritual murder in his presence.

In the name of the children of these rabbis, Bloch at once instituted criminal proceedings against Deckert, Meyer, and the publisher of the paper, and on trial, September 15, a conspiracy was unmasked and the three defendants were sentenced to heavy punishment.

When in 1896 Christian socialism had gained a strong footing in parliament, and the government had commenced to recognize the Socialist party, Bloch was sacrificed and everything imaginable was done to prevent his re-election.