Things You Didn't Know About Hitler That Will Blow Your Mind

Hygiene Rituals Practiced By Jews Might Have Helped Them Survive The Plague, But It Also Worked Against Them

While Europe's Jewish communities also perished from the plague, their personal hygiene rituals - which included washing their hands - may have prevented them from experiencing as high a mortality rate as their Christian neighbors. Christians, in turn, drew the wrong lesson from this disparity.

Christians claimed Jews couldn't catch the plague and accused them of tainting wells to spread the disease. The communities were vilified, oppressed, and compelled to confess to nefarious deeds they did not commit. According to the Nuremberg Chronicle, in 1348 "all the Jews in Germany were burned, having been accused of poisoning the wells, as many of them confessed."