"The Protocols of the Elders of Zion" in Court: The Bern Trial (1933-1935) and the "Antisemitic International"

September 2, 2026

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5 min read

In May 1935, a Swiss judge named Walter Meyer made a personal statement before the Bern district court: “I hope a time will come when nobody will understand why in the year 1935, almost a dozen quite sane and reasonable people racked their brains for 14 days before a Bern court over the authenticity of these so-called Protocols.” He had just ruled that The Protocols of the Elders of Zion was a forgery, a plagiarism, and fell under the law against trash literature. The ruling came at the end of a sensational trial that had lasted nearly two years, pitting Swiss Jewish communities against members of far-right groups who had distributed the booklet. But the courtroom victory did little to stop the text’s global career. As historian Michael Hagemeister explains, the Bern Trial reveals both how hard it is to kill a myth with facts and how the story we tell about the Protocols’ origins may itself be part of the problem.

What the Protocols Actually Say

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What you'll learn

1 (00:36) **The Protocols’ Enduring Influence and the Stakes of the Bern Trial** - Jonathan Brent introduces the talk by noting the Protocols’ role as a 20th-century myth, its use by the Tsar’s secret police, Nazis, Henry Ford, and Hamas, and its relevance in an age of fakes.
2 (05:09) **The Bern Trial: A Fight Over “Trash Literature”** - Hagemeister begins by quoting Judge Walter Meyer’s 1935 verdict that the Protocols are “ridiculous nonsense,” then frames the trial as a nearly two-year legal battle to prove the text a forgery.
3 (07:17) **What the Protocols Actually Say: A Totalitarian Blueprint** - Hagemeister summarizes the text’s content, revealing it as a plan for a Jewish world empire achieved through chaos and culminating in a benevolent, socialist welfare dictatorship.
4 (15:43) **The Protocols as a Mirror of Totalitarianism** - Hagemeister explains how thinkers like Hannah Arendt saw the Protocols as an uncanny anticipation of Nazi and Soviet rule, with the conspirators’ methods mirroring real-world police states.
5 (18:40) **Origins of the Protocols: From a Russian Newspaper to a Global Sensation** - The text was first published in 1903 by the antisemitic Pavel Krushevan in St. Petersburg, but remained obscure until Russian émigrés used it to warn against “Judeo-Bolshevism” after 1917.
6 (21:07) **The Du Chayla Story: A Conspiracy Theory to Explain a Forgery** - Hagemeister introduces the key witness, French Count Alexandre du Chayla, whose dramatic story about the Protocols’ fabrication in the Ochrana (Tsarist secret police) became the accepted narrative, despite being largely unproven.
7 (26:04) **The Bern Trial’s Strategy: Proving Forgery with a Dubious Witness** - The plaintiffs, including YIVO’s Elias Cherikover, built their case around du Chayla’s narrative, hiring Russian émigré experts to testify, even as internal doubts about his credibility grew.

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Show Notes

Between 1933 and 1935, a trial was held in Bern against members of the Swiss extreme right-wing National Front who had distributed “The Protocols of the Elders of Zion,” a widely disseminated antisemitic publication that spread lies about Jews. The real target of the Jewish organizations that initiated the trial, however, was the pamphlet itself, its origin, its dissemination, and its use in Europe's fascist movements.

During the course of the trial, both sides received ample support in the form of material assistance and propaganda. The defendants and their supporters in Nazi Germany were able to rely on an extensive network that had been established in the early 1920s to combat “Judaeo-Bolshevism.” This conspiratorial “Antisemitic International” united German völkisch circles, Italian fascists, Russian monarchists, and French conspiracy theorists. On the other side, the plaintiffs actively sought to expose the “Protocols” as a forgery in the hope that this would counteract their impact.

In this lecture, Michael Hagemeister will use the Bern trial as a case study of Jewish legal self-defense in order to shed light on both the “Protocols of the Elders of Zion” and the concerted efforts against the “Antisemitic International” in the 1930s, which have received little attention from historians.

Read more about Michael Hagemeister's research on The Protocols of the Elders of Zion.

This lecture originally took place on April 10, 2024.

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