Six thousand Jews are killed in Mainz after being blamed for the bubonic plague.

In 1349, as the **Black Death** devastated Europe, fear and desperation helped fuel a wave of violent persecution against Jewish communities. With medieval Europeans having little understanding of how diseases spread, rumours circulated that Jews were deliberately causing the plague by **poisoning wells and water supplies**. These accusations were entirely false, but existing religious prejudice, economic tensions, and antisemitism made Jewish communities convenient scapegoats. Pogroms spread through parts of France, Switzerland, and the Holy Roman Empire, destroying Jewish communities in cities including Strasbourg, Worms, Frankfurt, and Mainz. ([Landeshauptstadt Mainz][1])

On **23–24 August 1349**, violence erupted against the large and historically important Jewish community of Mainz, in present-day Germany. When a mob entered the Jewish quarter, some Jewish residents armed themselves and attempted to defend their community, with medieval accounts reporting that around 200 attackers were killed. The defenders were eventually overwhelmed. Many Jews were murdered, while others died when houses and other buildings in the Jewish quarter were set ablaze; some contemporary accounts indicate that Jewish residents themselves set fire to their homes when they realised escape was impossible. Traditional accounts place the Jewish death toll at approximately **6,000**, although modern scholarship questions this figure, with estimates of Mainz’s Jewish population at the time suggesting the true number may have been closer to several thousand. ([UNESCO World Heritage Centre][2])

The Mainz massacre was one of the most devastating episodes of the **Black Death persecutions**, during which hundreds of Jewish communities across Europe were attacked, expelled, or destroyed. Mainz was particularly significant because its Jewish community had existed since at least the tenth century and was one of the great centres of medieval Jewish religious scholarship, forming part of the influential network of Jewish communities known as **ShUM**, alongside Speyer and Worms. Although Jews eventually returned to Mainz after the massacre, the community never fully regained its earlier position and faced further expulsions and persecution during the fifteenth century. The events of 1349 remain a stark example of how epidemic disease, misinformation, religious hatred, and social unrest combined to produce mass violence against innocent people. ([Landeshauptstadt Mainz][1])

[1]: https://mainz.de/en/angebote-entdecken/kultur/stadtgeschichte/magenza/juedisches-mainz-geschichte?utm_source=chatgpt.com “Jewish Mainz – History | Landeshauptstadt Mainz”
[2]: https://whc.unesco.org/document/184456?utm_source=chatgpt.com “93 1349 August 23 [8 Elul 5109], Mainz”