10. The Black Death was blamed on Jews poisoning the wells
In 1347, Genoese galleys made port in Sicily. This wasn’t an unusual event, except that it’s credited with spreading the Black Death to Europe, a truly horrific plague that killed around 25 million people. People everywhere suddenly broke out in great lumps oozing blood and pus, struggled to breathe, vomited blood, and quickly died. It spread across mainland Europe like wildfire, reaching the UK in 1348 and Scandinavia in 1349. In an age when people looked for God’s hand in everything, many saw the Black Death as a punishment sent to punish mankind’s sins.
Other people had another theory: you’ve guessed it, the Jews did it. In 1348, a group of Jews from Geneva confessed (under imprisonment and torture, naturally) to having poisoned the wells across Europe. But at least they got a ‘trial’: in France, Spain, Switzerland and, of course, Germany, many mobs simply donned weapons and attacked Jewish ghettoes, killing everyone they could catch. Along with general antisemitism, however, it is possible that people blamed the Jews because they seemed immune to the Black Death. Some historians believe that being ostracised in ghettoes meant that many Jewish communities were effectively quarantined.
