Crusades Almanac | Jewish People Caught in the Crusades

• The Jews of Europe
• Massacres of European Jews
• Was Christopher Columbus Jewish?
• Efforts to help
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The darkest chapter in the history of the Crusades was the treatment of Jews at the hands of Europe's Christians, both in Europe and in the Middle East. What began as distrust and scorn often turned into widespread persecution and slaughter. Many Crusaders left in their wake the bodies of hundreds of Jews as they made their way to the Holy Land. Jews lost their homes, families, property, and lives in a frenzy of anti-Jewish feeling among many European Christians.

For centuries, Jewish people commemorated the horrors they endured during the Crusades. These memories were only partly overshadowed...