Gavriil Belostoksky or Zabludowsky (alternatively Gavrila or Gabriel, Russian: Гавриил Белостокский) (April 2 O.S. 1684-April 20? O.S. 1690) is a child saint in the Russian Orthodox Church. The legend of his death describes a ritual murder which has been described as a blood libel. His cult, revived in Belarus and Russia in 1990s, raised concerns of human rights organizations.
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According to the legend, the six-year-old boy was kidnapped from his home in the village of Zverki, 13 km from Zabłudów, Grodno Uezd (then Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth, today's Poland) during the Jewish Passover, while his parents, pious Orthodox Christians Peter and Anastasia Gavdel (Гавдель), were away. Shutko, a Jewish arendator of Zverki, was accused of bringing the boy to Białystok, poking him with sharp objects and draining his blood for nine days, then bringing the dead body back to Zverki and dumping it in a local field.[1]
In 1755 his relics were transferred to Slutsky Monastery of Saint Trinity (Слуцкий Свято-Троицкий монастырь), Minsk Guberniya, attached was a placard blaming Jews for his death. His cult developed and spread throughout the Russian Empire, and the boy was canonized in 1820. He is considered the patron saint of children.[1] In the 1930s the relics were transferred to the Minsk museum of Atheism. In 1944, they were moved to Grodno, where they stayed until 1992, when they were moved to Białystok (Свято-Никольский собор) where they are still the focus of pilgrimages.[1]
In the 1990s, a number of publications, as well as radio and TV broadcasts in Belarus revived the blood libel. Among the publications that have propagated the ritual murder charges were Soviet Byelorussia and the Orthodox Church's Tsarkounae Slova (Word of Church), which in 1992 advised its readers to "be aware of cruel cults, where human sacrifices are being practiced" and it identified Jewish Hasidism as such a cult.[2]
On July 27, 1997, on All Saints Day, Belarusian state TV showed a film which alleged that the story is true.[3]
According to a report by First deputy of Euro-Asiatic Jewish Congress Dr. Yakov Basin published by the Union of Councils for Soviet Jews (UCSJ) in 1997,
Contemporary accounts, which claim that Jews murdered a boy in a ritual manner in order to use his blood, are resurrecting the medieval canard that Jews use the blood of Christian babies for their ritual purposes during pre-Passover days. On April 11, 1690, a few days before the beginning of Passover, 6 year-old Gavril Belostoksky allegedly was found murdered and drained of his blood in his village of Zverki, which was at the time a Belarusian town, but is now in Polish territory. Soon thereafter, the accusation that he had been murdered by Jews who needed his blood to bake matzoth was spread throughout Belarus. The libel was bolstered in 1844 in Vladimir Dal's book, "Investigation of the Murder of Christian Babies by Jews and the Use of Their Blood." The Russian Orthodox Church canonized Gavril in the 20th century as the patron saint of sick children; he is commemorated in the beginning of each May. Needless to say, no evidence has ever been presented to support this defamation of the Jewish people.[4]
The revival of the cult in Belarus was cited as a dangerous expression of antisemitism in international reports on human rights and religious freedoms[5][6][7][8][9] and were passed to the UNHCR.[10][11]