The Strasbourg Massacre of 1349

On 14 February 1349, the free city of Strasbourg marched its Jewish residents to their own cemetery and burned them alive on a wooden platform. A contemporary chronicle records about 2,000 people killed in a single day, among the deadliest single episodes of the Black Death persecutions.

The killing was driven by panic and money as much as by religion. As plague swept Europe, Jews were falsely accused of poisoning wells, though Strasbourg had not yet recorded a single plague death. Days earlier, guilds and nobles had overthrown the town council, which had tried to protect the community. Many of the conspirators owed debts to Jewish lenders, and the new regime cancelled those debts and divided the seized cash.

Those willing to be baptised were spared; the rest were burned.

The massacre was not a spontaneous riot but an organised civic act, decided and carried out by the city’s own authorities. It became a notorious model: across the Rhineland and beyond, dozens of Jewish communities were destroyed in 1348 and 1349 under the same false charge.