Excerpt from book “The Jubilee Murders – Originators and Methods of Mass Murders“.
“This peculiar resistance of the Jews to the noxious effects of contagious disease had already been noted in medieval times, especially during the great epidemics in Europe of the Plague, known then as the ‘Black Death’…”[1]. Aegidius Tschudi (1505-1551), an acclaimed historical writer from Switzerland, said that no Jewish persons in any country fell victim to the plague of 1346-50[2].
“Pneumonia (Pneumocystis carinii pneumonia – author’s note), typhus, malaria, cholera, plague, smallpox … occur more rarely in Jews and in general take a milder course than in the rest of the population. Even during the terrible epidemics of medieval times, it was almost universally observed that the Jews were affected far less often than the Christians”[3].
At the time of the Jewish persecutions in medieval Europe and the plague and other epidemics that followed[4], Jewish communities in Germany usually had their own source of drinking water supplied by groundwater. These were and are known as “mikvot”, and are said to be places where women bathe and purify themselves after menstruation[5].
Before the “plague” of 1347 – 1350, only four „mikvot” were seen between the North Sea and the Alps outside Germany, i.e. in Belgium, the Netherlands, and the Burgundy region of eastern France. These „mikvot” were located in Besancon, Chalon sur Saone, Joinville, and Macon. However, in German-speaking “Aschkenaz”, the “land of displacement”, there were 27, in Andernach, Colmar, Dortmund, Erfurt, Frankfurt am Main, Friedberg, Grünberg (Hesse), Hagenau, Cologne, Kaiserslautern, Limburg, Lüneburg, Münster, Mainz, Nordhausen, Nuremberg, Oberehnheim, Offenburg, Sondershausen,[6] Strasbourg, Speyer, Schwäbisch-Gemünd, Trier, Tübingen, Worms, Würzburg, and Zurich. After the plague epidemic, when Jewish people had returned to the community after the pogroms, another 31 „mikvot” were seen in Ahrweiler, Aschaffenburg, Augsburg, Bonn, Düren, Emmendingen,[7] Deutz, Gaukönigshofen, Georgensgemünd, Göttingen, Hildesheim, Heidelberg, Heilbronn, Kalletal,[8] Kreuznach, Lich, Münzenberg. This list is not complete. “All areas (Jewish central settlements – author’s note) that usually had a cemetery also had synagogues, mikvot (seldom seen, albeit of central importance) […]”[9]. This means that another 28 deep wells must have been converted and added to the list. They probably existed almost every where there was a Jewish community.
According to Jewish tradition, especially after the first Crusade (1096), there was a period of four days at the change of every season when blood was added to the drinking water (rivers, wells, and springs) at sundown[10]. David Agudarham, rabbi in Seville, issued a corresponding warning in 1340. Drinking the water would cause death within a few days, but the water could be made potable by heating it with burning charcoal and immersing a red-hot horseshoe in it[11].
The most important contemporary Jewish witness of the persecutions, Israel Ben Joel Süsslin, wrote that the plague was God’s punishment for the persecution of the Jews[12]. He argued that the Christian persecutors were punished by supernatural means after the pogroms.
The „mikvot” were often referred to colloquially as “cold springs” or “cold wells”. They were uncontaminated water sources that enabled their users to survive or resettle in Silesia, Poland, which were not affected by the epidemics. Non-Jewish persons, on the other hand, were killed off by germs that attacked them in an unnatural manner. This is how 40% of Europe’s Non-Jewish population, 25 million people, came to die of “plague”, for example between 1347 and 1350.
A huge number of mass infections
The “Black Death” killed off an exceptionally large number of people in Europe. However, “there were 32 plague years between 1326 and 1400, 41 between 1400 and 1500, and 30 between 1500 and 1600! … The last major outbreak of plague occurred in India in 1898, where it took the lives of six million people living in Bombay”[13].
Black Death caused by several pathogens
The physical symptoms indicated bubonic plague, pneumonic plague, and other diseases. The lack of solidarity and inconsiderate behavior indicated that mind-altering influences were at work. St. Vitus’ dance in Sicily, around Aachen, in the Rhineland and Cologne could have been caused by neurotoxic substances, e.g. mycotoxins or herpes viruses.
The following suggests mycotoxins as a source of plague:
“If you put a loaf of newly baked bread on a stick over night, and if by morning it is moldy, green and yellow on the inside, and tasteless; if you throw it to the dogs and chickens and they die after eating it, or if the chickens drink the morning dew that has gathered it and perish, you can be sure that the plague is right before your door”[14].
The “plague” was well known to be highly contagious. The Mongolian besiegers of Kaffa, the alleged source of the mass deaths in Europe, catapulted plague-infested corpses into the city, much to the horror of the Genoese inside. Both sides were familiar with plague as a biological weapon.
Many very appropriate measures were adopted:
- Ships were quarantined for 40 days; ships suspected to be harboring plague were shot at with burning arrows.
- Sufferers were isolated, and houses with infected inhabitants could not be entered until 40 days had passed. It was forbidden to attend church services or public gatherings and to take in travelers or goods from regions where plague was suspected.
- Beggars, cripples, gypsies, Jews, and strangers were obliged to collect the corpses and bury them outside the cemetery; an island off Venice was even used for this purpose.
Nevertheless, “the plague spread at a furious pace”. Horses and carts managed to travel around 40 miles a day, the plague 50 miles a day. In October 1347, after the infection in Kaffa, thousands of people died in Messina and then in many places in Sicily[15].
On November 1, people began dying in Marseille, 300 miles to the north with no stop in between. The death toll there rose to 57,000. At the same time, the plague began decimating the population of Genoa, located just as far north, the first city in Italy to be affected[16].
The east side of Italy also succumbed, beginning in February 1348 with deaths in Venice, Lucca, and Pisa far to the north.
How could Pasteurella pestis kill off 25 million people in towns and villages scattered over thousands of miles within just 2½ years?
[1] Fishberg M. Jews A Study in Race and Environment. New York 1911:276
[2] Tschudi A. Chronicon Helveticum. Vol. 1:277. Ed. Iselin JR. Basel 1734
[3] Hoppe H. Krankheiten und Sterblichkeit bei Juden und Nichtjuden. Berlin 1903:18
[4] Niewöhner F. Erst kam der Pogrom, dann die Pest. Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung. Jan 5, 2004:31.
[5] Talmudic law specifies cleansing in running water or basins that can hold at least 10 cubic feet. However, the “mikvot” in Germany are usually complexes 50 feet under surface containing about 2½ cubic feet of standing groundwater. The “mikveh” in Friedberg, Hesse, is located 80 feet underground and is the deepest Gothic construction in Germany. Groundwater barely flows and has a temperature of 17 Fahrenheit. Its high iron content makes it sterile.
[6] Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, Apr 12, 2007
[7] Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung Sept 22, 2005
[8] Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung Aug 29, 2006: 33
[9] Barzen R. Regionalorganisation jüdischer Gemeinden im Reich in der ersten Hälfte des 14. Jahrhunderts. In: Haverkamp A. (ed.) Geschichte der Juden im Mittelalter von der Nordsee bis zu den Südalpen. Teil 1. Hanover 2002:302
[10] Toaff A. Blood Passover. Last Revision. August 1, 2016: 215 – 216
[11] Stuczynski CD. “A Marrano Religion”? The Religious Behaviour of the New Christians of Braganca Convicted by the Coimbra Inquisition in the Sixteenth Centruy (1541 – 1605), Ramat Gan, Bar-Ilan University, 2005, pp 32-35. Cited in Toaff:216 || Abudarhamba-Shalem, by A.J. Wertheimer, Jerusalem, 1963, p. 311 – 312 in Toaff: 215-216, 221
[12] Cluse C. Zur Chronologie der Verfolgungen zur Zeit des Schwarzen Todes. In: Haverkamp A. (ed.) Geschichte der Juden im Mittelalter von der Nordsee bis zu den Südalpen. Teil 1, Hanover 2002:225
[13] Kleio.org Alltagsgeschichte des Mittelalters X.6.1. Die Geschichte der Pest. Retrieved Apr 19, 2017
[14] Nohl J. Der schwarze Tod: Eine Chronik der Pest 1348 bis 1720. Severus Verlag, 2013
[15] Many catacombs were dug in Sicily allegedly to house Christian martyrs.
[16] Herds of horses were kept for non-agricultural purposes in the Camargue in the nearby Rhone delta.