Black Death massacres

The Black Death reached Europe in 1347 and killed perhaps a third of its people. Jews died of it too, yet they were accused of causing it by poisoning the wells. In September 1348, Jews of Chillon on Lake Geneva in Savoy were tortured into "confessions" that were circulated to other cities. Pope Clement VI issued bulls in July and September 1348 declaring the charge false, since Jews were dying of the plague like everyone else, and forbidding Christians to harm them. Few listened. In January 1349 the Jews of Basel were burned in a wooden house built for the purpose on an island in the Rhine. On 14 February 1349 about two thousand Jews of Strasbourg were burned, before the plague had even reached the city, and the debts owed to them were cancelled. Mainz, Cologne, Erfurt and many others followed.

By 1351 some 60 large and 150 smaller Jewish communities had been destroyed, the greatest catastrophe for Ashkenazi Jewry before modern times. Many survivors moved east to Poland under King Casimir III, shifting the centre of Ashkenaz to Poland and Lithuania for the next six centuries.