One of the greatest calamities which befell mankind was the bubonic plague, or the Black Death, as it was known during the Middle Ages. The Jews were known to have brought this plague to Europe and to have wiped out one-fourth of the population but the gentiles believed that the Jews had done it out of malice.
In this instance, the Jewish parasite came perilously close to destroying its gentile host, but it was not deliberate. The story of how the plague came to Europe has been researched by the scholar, Jacques Nohl. He writes that a group of Jewish traders from Genoa and Venice had established a settlement in the Crimea, at a place called Kaffa. Here the Jews stored furs and jewels and other valuables which they had obtained in trade, until Genoese merchant ships could carry them back to Europe. Knowing of these riches at Kaffa, nomadic tribesmen frequently raided the town. As a result, Kaffa was heavily fortified.
In the year 1346, an army of Tartar tribesmen attacked the town determined to seize it and carry off its riches. However, the Jews were well-entrenched, and weeks went by, with little chance of the Tartars achieving their objective. Bubonic plague broke out among Asiatics in their crowded cities, which had no sanitation, and now this disease appeared among the besiegers. Their commander devised a particularly diabolical plan to smoke out the Jews. He put the corpses of the diseased soldiers on his catapults, and flung them over walls into Kaffa. The plague soon broke out among the defenders, and more than half of the Jews died. The survivors retreated to a ship and sailed for home, carrying the plague bacillus with them.
Their first port of call was Constantinople. This city of one million was soon swept by the plague, and one third of its inhabitants died within two months. The Jewish death-ship next landed in Sicily, where its terrible cargo spread death among the gentiles. Then to Sardinia, and Genoa; finally the Jewish death-ship docked at Marseilles. The Jewish survivors set out for their settlements in many European cities, and wherever they went, the people were decimated by the plague.
The gentiles soon realized that the plague only appeared where there were Jews, but they had no idea that the Jews had brought the disease with them from Asia Minor. Their first reaction was that the Jews had poisoned their wells, for the plague affected its victims like the symptoms of well-known poisons of that age. The victim was seized with horrible pains, vomited blood, and died within two days. The corpse immediately turned black, suggesting the presence of a virulent poison.
A rumor circulated among the gentiles that the Sanhedrin, a secret council of ruling Jews, had met at Toledo, Spain, and had given orders to destroy the gentiles by poisoning their wells. There was some basis for this rumor, as the Jews quickly disposed of Jewish victims of the plague by throwing the bodies down a well, to avoid being accused of spreading the plague. This, of course, infected hundreds of people who used this water. As many communities took action against the Jews, they began to flee from country to country, which spread the plague more rapidly. In Naples, a horde of Jews was driven into the ocean and drowned by the angry gentiles. Their bodies washed up for miles along the Italian coast, and further infected the people.
Shiploads of Jews cruised along the coasts of Europe, forbidden to land, as every country had been warned that the Jews were carriers of this disease. As Jews died on board, their bodies were thrown into the water, and they too, washed up on shore, infecting the very towns which had refused to let them land. The Jews continued to wander about Europe, and the plague raged unabated for fifty years. Twenty-five million people, one-fourth of the population of Europe, died the horrible death of the plague
It was the most awful calamity ever endured by a civilization and, in this case, the Jews nearly succeeded in wiping out their host.
