However, with the beginning of the First Crusade, 1096 a wave of violence rose against the Jews at the hands of the Crusaders throughout France and Holy Roman Empire. There were massacres in Worms, Trier (both now in Germany), and Metz (now in France).
One of the ways the murder of Jews was justified by the accusing of ritual murder, blood libel—of sacrificing Christian children at Passover to obtain blood for unleavened blood—which were entirely unjustified and unfounded. One famous example of such incidents is the murder of William of Norwich.
It is also interesting to note that Nazis later used the same accusations against Jews too. Jews were forbidden to enter trades or professions or own land. Frequently they had to wear a badge or…show more content… Napoleon’s conquests also helped a lot of Jew around the Europe gain a relative degree of freedom and equality. However, all with the enlightenment and French Revolution, the idea of nation states based on national and ethnic identity came to the fore and states came to be divided along the national lines. This again posed the problems for Jews since they were “aliens” as far as ethnicity was concerned. The only thing that really happened was that the focus of anti-Semitism was shifted from religious perspective to ethnic perspective with pseudoscienes claiming the superiority of Aryan races above the other races. The same kind of mentality that later caused both holocaust and spurred and watered the vile and racist tree of colonialism based on the superiority of white man. So much as that by the end of the 19th century there were parties in Germany and Vienna whose political agendas were based on anti-Semitism. For example, “In the 1890s Karl Lueger won the mayoralty of Vienna—a city of diverse culture and many Jews—with his anti-Semitic