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​BLOOD LIBEL

Antisemitic woodcut from the Nuremberg Chronicle, 1493, illustrating the false ritual-murder charge against the Jews of Trent.

This woodcut from the Nuremberg Chronicle (1493) illustrates the false charge that the Jews of Trent murdered a boy named Simon in 1475. It is antisemitic propaganda, not a record of real events.

 

The blood libel is the false charge that Jews murder Christian children for their blood, a medieval lie that has fueled violence for almost 900 years and still resurfaces today.

 

First published: April 8, 2026

 

 

Key Facts

  • What it claims: That Jews murder non-Jews, usually Christian children, to use their blood in religious rituals such as baking matzah for Passover. This is false.

  • First recorded: In Norwich, England, in 1144, after a boy named William was found dead and a monk, Thomas of Monmouth, wrote an account blaming the local Jews. It is the first recorded blood libel in Europe.

  • How it spread: Similar charges followed in England, France, Spain and Germany, and by the 15th century the libel was commonplace in western and central Europe. It later spread into eastern Europe and, in the 19th century, beyond Europe.

  • Modern form: The Nazis used it in propaganda, and today it resurfaces in state media, on television, in "organ harvesting" claims and in QAnon, which the ADL says "has roots in the antisemitic trope of blood libel."

  • Why it's false: Jewish law forbids eating any blood, and the Ten Commandments forbid murder. The "proof" was again and again a confession extracted under torture, and popes, emperors and courts rejected the charge.

 

The blood libel is the false accusation that Jews murder non-Jews, usually Christian children, to use their blood in religious rituals, such as baking matzah (unleavened bread) for Passover. It is also called the "ritual murder charge."

 

The accusation is a lie. Jewish law forbids eating any blood, and, as the ADL puts it, "no historical or religious truth supports such accusations." Even so, the charge led to torture, massacres and expulsions for centuries, and it still appears in new forms in the 21st century.

 

Blood libels often surfaced around Passover, close to Easter. That timing tied them to an older accusation, that Jews were to blame for the death of Jesus.

 

How the Lie Began

The first recorded blood libel in Europe came from Norwich, England. In 1144, a boy named William was found dead in a wood near the town. A monk, Thomas of Monmouth, later wrote an account that blamed the local Jews, claiming they had tortured and killed the boy in mockery of the crucifixion of Jesus. A cult grew up around William, and a rumor spread that Jews crucified a Christian child every year at Passover.

 

These first charges were of ritual murder. The claim that Jews wanted Christian blood was added in the 13th century, on the European continent. Similar accusations followed across Europe:

 

  • England: Gloucester (1168), Bristol (1183) and Lincoln (1255). After the death of a boy in Lincoln, 19 English Jews were executed.

  • France and Spain: Blois (1171) and Saragossa (1182).

  • Germany: Fulda (1235) and Munich (1286). At Fulda, Jews were accused of taking the blood of five Christian boys for medicine, and 34 Jews were burned to death.

 

By the 15th century, the blood libel was commonplace throughout western and central Europe. The best-known case came from Trent, in northern Italy. In 1475, a two-year-old boy named Simon disappeared around Easter, and his father claimed that the local Jews had killed him to make matzah. The whole Jewish community, men, women and children, was arrested. Seventeen of them were tortured for 15 days until they "confessed." According to the Jewish Virtual Library, more than a dozen were executed, some burned at the stake, and another died in prison. A religious cult grew up around Simon, and the case was widely used in antisemitic propaganda inside and outside Italy.

 

From the 17th century, blood libel cases spread increasingly into eastern Europe, especially Poland and Lithuania.

 

The Libel in the Modern Era

In the 19th century, the blood libel became a central part of modern antisemitism and spread beyond Europe. Major cases included:

 

  • Damascus, 1840: A Capuchin friar and his servant disappeared, and Jews were accused of killing them for their blood. Jews were arrested and tortured, and two died under torture. The ADL notes that 63 Jewish children were also taken hostage to force confessions.

  • Polná, 1899: In the Hilsner Affair, in the Czech lands, a Jewish man named Leopold Hilsner was convicted of murder and sentenced to death. The ritual-murder accusation lay at the heart of the prosecution, and riots against Jews broke out in towns across Bohemia and Moravia.

  • Kishinev, 1903: Kishinev was the capital of Bessarabia, in the Russian Empire (today Chișinău, Moldova). Before Passover, the local newspaper Bessarabets accused the city's Jews of the ritual murder of a Christian child. It was shown that Jews had not killed the child, but in April 1903 a mob attacked the Jewish community anyway. The YIVO Encyclopedia counts 49 people killed and 586 maimed, and the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum puts the toll at almost 50 Jews killed.

  • Kyiv, 1911: The tsarist government accused Mendel Beilis, a Jewish factory manager, of ritual murder. He was held in prison for more than two years.

 

Why the Charge Is False

The blood libel has no basis in Jewish law, in Jewish practice or in evidence:

 

  • Blood is forbidden: Leviticus 17:10–14 forbids eating blood, both for Israelites and for strangers living among them. As the ADL notes, Jewish law forbids "any blood, human or animal."

  • Kosher practice: Because animal blood may not be eaten, kosher meat is soaked and salted to draw out any blood that remains in it.

  • Murder is forbidden: The Ten Commandments say, "You shall not murder" (Exodus 20:13).

  • Forced confessions: Again and again, the "proof" was a confession extracted under torture, as at Trent and Damascus.

 

Rejected Again and Again

Rulers, popes and courts rejected the blood libel many times:

 

  • Emperor Frederick II: After the Fulda case, the emperor ordered an inquiry. It concluded that nothing in the Old or New Testament says Jews desire human blood and that, on the contrary, "they avoid contamination with any kind of blood." Frederick II rejected the charge in his judgment.

  • Pope Innocent IV, 1247: The pope wrote that "Christians charge falsely" when they accuse Jews of using the heart of a murdered child in a rite and blame them for any dead body that is found.

  • The Ottoman sultan, 1840: After the Damascus Affair, the sultan officially denounced the blood libel.

  • Tomáš G. Masaryk, 1899: The Prague professor, later president of Czechoslovakia, publicly challenged the Hilsner verdict and the ritual-murder accusation behind it.

  • The Beilis jury, 1913: An all-Christian jury acquitted Mendel Beilis. The same jury also accepted the prosecution's account that the boy was killed at a Jewish-owned brickworks with almost complete loss of blood, an answer widely read as support for the ritual-murder charge.

  • The Catholic Church, 1965: The Church removed Simon of Trent from the list of saints.

 

In their own time, neither the emperor nor the pope was heeded, and the libel kept spreading.

 

From Nazi Propaganda to the Postwar Years

The Nazis made effective use of the blood libel to demonize Jews. Julius Streicher's newspaper Der Stürmer, founded in 1923, often used ritual-murder imagery, and its May 1934 issue was devoted to the blood libel.

 

The charge did not end with the Holocaust. In July 1946, in Kielce, Poland, a nine-year-old non-Jewish boy left home without telling his parents. A false rumor claimed that Jews had kidnapped him and hidden him in the basement of the local Jewish Committee building. He came home two days later, but the accusation set off a pogrom in which 42 Jews were killed, and thousands of Jews then fled Poland.

 

In later years, the Soviet press raised the blood libel in remote regions such as Georgia, Dagestan and Uzbekistan, as part of a campaign against Judaism and Israel. It dropped the charge after it drew protest around the world.

 

How the Libel Reappears Today

The details change, but the core accusation stays the same: that Jews kill innocent people, often children, for their blood or bodies. Modern forms include:

 

  • State media: In October 2000, Al-Ahram, an Egyptian government-sponsored newspaper, published a full-page article titled "Jewish Matzah Made from Arab Blood."

  • Television: A 2003 TV series broadcast in Syria and Lebanon, based on The Protocols of the Elders of Zion, showed Jews murdering Christian children and draining their blood to bake matzah.

  • "Organ harvesting": In 2009, a Swedish tabloid published an article implying that the Israeli army killed Palestinians to supply organs to Israeli hospitals. Its author admitted he was not sure he had adequate evidence, but the article spawned numerous conspiracy theories. The ADL reports that these claims reemerged after the October 7, 2023, massacres in Israel, and in the ADL's words, "organs are substituted for blood."

  • "Zionists" and children: The American Jewish Committee lists modern rumors of Jews, or "Zionists," eating Palestinian children and drinking their blood as a current form of the libel.

  • QAnon: The QAnon conspiracy theory claims that a secret "cabal" murders children in rituals to harvest a supposed life-extending chemical from their blood called "adrenochrome." The ADL says this belief "has roots in the antisemitic trope of blood libel."

 

Why the Libel Is Dangerous

The blood libel turns Jews from neighbors into imagined child killers. The ADL notes that it served "to dehumanize Jews and justify their persecution." Over the centuries it was used to justify "the pillaging, torture, burning alive and expulsion of countless Jews," and blood libels "have frequently led to mob violence and pogroms." It still inspires violence. The ADL notes that the man who attacked a synagogue in Poway, California, in April 2019 invoked Simon of Trent in his manifesto.

 

The blood libel began with the death of a boy in Norwich in 1144 and a monk's story about it. Jewish law contradicts it, and emperors, popes, courts and the Catholic Church have rejected it. Still it returns, in newspapers, on television and in new conspiracy theories. It is not true, and it never was. Recognizing it in its old and new forms helps us reject it.

 

Sources

 

​Last updated: October 3, 2026

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