13. Jews Were Blamed for the Plague With Deadly Consequences
One of the less known, but deeply tragic, consequences of the Black Death was the pogrom of Jewish communities throughout Europe. Jews in Europe were frequently blamed and targeted for ills that befell communities, but at no time until the Holocaust was this more prevalent and deadly than during the 14th Century outbreak of the plague. While Jews, Christians, and Muslims were all equally likely to be infected by and die of the epidemic, Christian communities took out their fear and hatred and on their Jewish neighbors in particular.
The deadliest pogrom occurred in Strasbourg in what is now France. Many Jews were captured and tortured by city officials until a confession was forced from them. The crime they were accused of: poisoning the city’s wells in order to cause the plague. Thanks to confessions obtained by torture, the city declared their guilt and burned hundreds of Jews alive in the middle of the town. The death toll of the tortures, pogroms and other attacks on Jews is estimated at around 2,000 people. The rest of the Jews remaining in Strasbourg were driven out or fled.
A particularly horrifying and tragic outcome of these pogroms was the fact that the European Jewish population concentrated in Poland during the period due to the welcoming protection of King Casimir III the Great. Not only did he specifically invite European Jews to flee to Poland, but he also offered legal protections that were either nonexistent or not enforced in other countries. However, six hundred years later this condensation of the population would lead to tragedy as Polish Jews were rounded up to begin the Holocaust under Nazi Germany.
You May Interested: How Antisemitism Helped Protect Jews From the Black Death… And Then Got Them Killed.
