Note: Due to the sensitive nature of the topic, I will be breaking my usual habit and publish the commentary under a CC0 license as well - because these stories really shouldn’t be shared without commentary.

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After the rise of the Christian faith, the early Church started to blame “the Jews” for the death of Jesus Christ and assigned them collective responsibility. This point of view was adopted enthusiastically in Germany. Furthermore, since Jews were among the only people legally allowed to lend money at high interest rates during the Middle Ages, powerful people had a lot of incentives to get rid of their debts by getting rid of the Jews they owed money to. Of course killing people because you owed them money was not considered to be socially acceptable on its own even in the Middle Ages, and thus it became common to blame Jews of all sorts of lurid, imaginary crimes. These slanders quickly took on a life of their own and sadly became a firm part of German folklore.

Here are historical accounts that showcase the kinds of slanders that might spread about Jewish communities:

The Persecution of Jews in Constance

Around [the 14th century] the people in the Lake Constance area raged against the Jews (the hated usurers) in an abominable manner, like they did in many other areas, as the superstitions of the time blamed them for all inequities of an immoral and anarchic period. In Constance a Christian was supposed to have sold altar bread to Jews, and a fanatical maid cried: “The body of Christ is defiled horribly by the Jews!” After this, the raging mob grabbed the next Hebrews they encountered and slaughtered them with hatchets as if they were oxen. Twelve were burned, and twelve were thrown into the Rhine. A few distinguished citizens of Constance were noble and brave enough to take care of the other Jews and rescue them. They were berated for having been bribed by the Jews, and the court scribe tells us that no longer had any success in life and that Heaven had punished their defense of the unrighteous with an early death.

Source: Schwab, G. Der Bodensee nebst dem Rheinthale von St. Luziensteig bis Rheinegg. 1840, p. 178f.

Commentary: “Desecration of altar bread” was one of the most common slanders against Jews, and was usually good for riling up a mob despite the preposterousness of the alleged crime. This particular incident seemed to date back early to the 14th century - 1312 and afterwards - but the people of Constance got around to the other two main libels against the Jews during the same period. These include well-poisoning libel (1349) and blood libel, that is to say using the blood of Christian children for alleged “religious rituals” (1390 and 1443). An English-language overview of the history of Jews in Constance can be found here.

At least in this particular instance a few brave people were willing to stand up to the lynch mob, but their fellow “Christians” as well as folklore condemned them all the same. But the story of this text doesn’t end here. I first came across this text fragment within a folklore tale collection which cites Schwab as a source and largely copies the text - but there were some rather curious alterations. I will mark the changes:

About the History of the Persecution of Jews in Constance [according to Schnetzler]

Around the middle of the 14th century [the people in the Lake Constance area raged against the Jews (the hated usurers) in an abominable manner, like they did in many other areas, as the superstitions of the time blamed them for all inequities of an immoral and anarchic time. In Constance] the rumor spread in Constance that a Christian was supposed to have sold holy altar bread to Jews, and a fanatical maid cried: “The body of Christ is defiled horribly by the Jews!” After this, the raging mob grabbed the next Hebrews they encountered and slaughtered them with hatchets as if they were oxen. Twelve were burned, and twelve were thrown into the Rhine. A few distinguished citizens of Constance were [noble and] brave enough to take care of the other Jews and rescue them. They were berated for having been bribed by the Jews, and the court scribe tells us that no longer had any success in life and that Heaven had punished their defense of the unrighteous with an early death.

Source: Schnetzler, A. Badisches Sagen-Buch. 1846, p. 22f.

Commentary: As we can see here, while Schwab does a decent job of providing context and condemning the attacks, Schnetzler removes the context and presents the incident more “neutrally”, which of course condemns the Jews. “It was a rumor, but it might have been true!” is the implication here. Sadly, this is not uncommon in German folklore collections, where Jews are too often portrayed badly without providing either context or condemnation of the slander. Indeed, the Brothers Grimm themselves have a track record of anti-semitism, which shines through in several of the fairy tales and legends they published.

Thus, when reading these and other tales, we should always keep in mind that the folklore collectors were not necessarily neutral observers, and had their own biases. If I spot such biases, I will call them out - but I probably won’t spot all of them.

The Persecution of Jews in Überlingen

In Überlingen the mutilated corpse of a small boy reported missing by its parents was found in a stream. The parents wailed throughout the city and blamed the Jews as being responsible for the desecration. The type of wounds, as well as their opening and bleeding when the corpse was carried past the houses of the Jews seemed proof enough. Under the guise of pretending to save them the frightened Jews were summoned into a high house made of stone, but the citizens set a pyre ablaze which had been secretly set up on the ground floor. The Jews fled from floor to floor, and some of them climbed on the roof. To no avail! The entire house, into which the faithlessness of the Christians had lured about 300 Jews, went up in flames along with its prisoners, who threw down stones, knives, swords, and beams of the burning house into the gaping mob in desperate fury. Some of them jumped out of the windows to escape the fire, but they were caught by the mob and butchered, and their brains splattered against the walls.

Source: Schwab, G. Der Bodensee nebst dem Rheinthale von St. Luziensteig bis Rheinegg. 1840, p. 178.

Commentary: This certainly paints a vivid picture of the fear and desperation of the Jewish victims, as well as the bloodthirstiness of the mob. The deception used to lure the Jews of Überlingen to their doom comes across as a premonition of the various deceptions the Nazis used in the Holocaust - all the way to the fake “showers” in the gas chambers of the death camps.

Jews Defying Forced Conversion

These persecutions, repeated throughout first decades and then centuries, gave rise to outstanding displays of bravery among a people made largely cowed and skittish from those pressures. In the year 1349 a Jew pressured to baptize during the last storm against the Jews set his own house ablaze and, with his two children in his arms, shouted that he wanted to die as a devout Jew. In the year 1390 a Jew fell to his knees in front of the mayor and asked to be burned, for he had sinned against God by leaving his Jewish faith and having been seduced to baptism. As he did not stop pleading, his wish was granted and he was publicly burned on the 20th of September!

Source: Schwab, G. Der Bodensee nebst dem Rheinthale von St. Luziensteig bis Rheinegg. 1840, p. 178f.

Commentary: One can only  imagine the desperation of people who had first been forced to convert by the sword and then forced to live a lie - pretending to follow a faith that they did not believe in. Sadly, this seems to have made no impression on their “Christian” contemporaries - for further pogroms in Constance followed in the subsequent generations.

As a final note, in light of these and the many other stories like this from German history and folklore, it is probably accurate to say that the Holocaust merely represented an aberration in its industrial scale, not in its nature (and thus cannot be dismissed as “bird shit” like members of a certain fascist party have claimed). Germans were all too ready to murder their Jewish countrymen throughout much of the country’s history.

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