This Day in Jewish History / The people of Erfurt slaughter the Jews

http://haaretz.com/this-day-erfurt-slaughters-the-jews-1.5330366?lts= [login to see] 17
On March 21, 1349, between 100 and 3,000 Jews were killed in the Black Death riots in Erfurt, Germany. From the article:

"As the Black Plague devastated Europe, the popes ruled that the Jews weren’t responsible, but not even their own priests were listening.

On March 2, 1349, the Jewish community of Erfurt was massacred en masse, as part of a wave of onslaughts against Jews that accompanied the Black Death as it progressed across Europe. (Some historical records suggest that the Erfurt Massacre took place on March 21.)

Jews first appeared in Erfurt - today the capital of Thuringia state, in central Germany - in the 11th century; the recently discovered and restored synagogue in the city is the oldest known standing Jewish house of prayer in Europe.

Tax records going back to the 13th century testify to the role Jews played in banking, not only in the immediate region but also across the Holy Roman Empire.

As the bubonic plague swept thru European communities, beginning in 1348, killing as much as half the Continent’s general population, blame for the scourge was sometimes assigned to the Jews, even though they, too, were not immune to the disease. In some cases, their rate of infection was lower because they lived in confined communities and because their hygienic practices were stricter.

Pope Clement VI and his successor, Innocent VI, urged the public not to punish the Jews for the plague. Clement said the Jews bore no responsibility. But local priests sometimes encouraged the slaughter, which also provided an opportunity to loot and pillage the property of the Jews.

Evidence of self-immolation

Estimates of the number of Jewish victims of the 1349 pogrom range from 100 to 1,000. Evidence indicates that some victims chose to set fire to their homes and kill themselves and their families rather than fall into the hands of the rioters.

Yet not many years later, in 1357, Jews once again were permitted to live in Erfurt, and over the next century, the Jewish community there would become one of Germany’s largest and most distinguished, in terms of rabbinic scholarship.

Centuries after the massacre, a number of valuable artifacts belonging to the Jews of medieval Erfurt turned up, having survived both the destruction of 1349 and of World War II, among other things.

In 1879, the oldest known manuscript of the Tosefta, a post-Mishnaic compilation of Oral Law, was found - incomplete and stained with blood - in the library of the Augustinian monastery in town. Found together with it were another 16 volumes of Hebrew texts, including several Torah scrolls."

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