Parchment Burning

Narol, Poland 1648 In 1648, the army of Chmielnicki arrived in Narol. Many Jews from neighboring villages had come to Narol for protection. The Jews crowded into the synagogue and attempted to defend themselves. However, the Cossacks set fire to the building, killing those inside. ( Virtual Shtetl ) Nathan Hannover describes the scene in Yeven Metzula: "Many hundreds shut themselves up in the synagogue, but they broke down the doors and first slew the Jews inside it and then burnt the synagogue with the slain. There was no such slaughter in the whole of Poland." He continues: "A woman who remained alive, related to me that several hundred women, and children, and a few men survived the carnage These had no food for five days and they ate human flesh. They cut off organs from the slain and roasted them on fire and ate them. Many thousands of the slain were eaten by dogs and pigs." One of the survivors, Moshe Kohen of Narol, afterward became the rabbi in Me...

Weinheim, Germany 20 September, 1298 According the entry in the Nuremberg Memorbuch, the Jews of Weinheim were burnt to death in their synagogue on Shabbat, two days before the start of Sukkot. 78 people were killed in the flames.  The attack was led by a Franconian knight named Rintfleisch, who claimed that the Jews had desecrated the host (eucharist wafers). Rindleisch led similar massacres in 146 Jewish communities across southern and central Germany that year and lasting for several years. ( Encylopedia.com ) Several kinot were written about the event, describing the horrible destruction, but none mention the town of Weinheim by name.  The community managed to go on, only to be attacked again, fifty years later, at part of the persecutions surrounding the Black Death. ( Juden in Weinheim )