Rhineland massacres
| Rhineland massacres | |
|---|---|
| Part of the First Crusade | |
| Location | Speyer, Worms, Metz |
| Date | 1096 4856 (by the Hebrew calendar) |
| Target | French and German Jews |
| Victims | 2,000 Jews |
| Perpetrators | People's Crusade |
| Motive | Antisemitism |
The Rhineland massacres, also known as the German Crusade of 1096 or Gzerot Tatnó (Hebrew: גזרות תתנ"ו, "Edicts of 4856"), were a series of mass murders of Jews perpetrated by mobs of French and German Christians of the People's Crusade in the year 1096 (4856 in the Hebrew calendar). These massacres are often seen as the first in a sequence of antisemitic events in Europe which culminated in the Holocaust.
Prominent leaders of crusaders involved in the massacres included Peter the Hermit and especially Count Emicho. As part of this persecution, the destruction of Jewish communities in Speyer, Worms and Mainz was noted as the Hurban Shum (Destruction of Shum). These were new persecutions of the Jews in which peasant crusaders from France and Germany attacked Jewish communities. A number of historians have referred to the violence as pogroms.