Джеймс Миченер - The Source

The next weeks were filled with unusual activity. If Count Volkmar of Gretz was going to Jerusalem, along with more than a thousand of his people, he would leave little to chance. For his wife and daughter, eight wagons and sixteen draft horses were provided filled with enough equipment to serve them and the six servants who would care for them. Eight additional wagons carried foodstuffs, implements and armor. Besides the servants for the countess, an even dozen serfs marched on foot to care for the count and Wenzel of Trier. In addition, eight grooms brought along some two dozen riding horses for the minor knights associated with the count, and these were followed by about a thousand men consisting of merchants and farmers, monks and ordinary serfs. About a hundred women wanted to join the procession, but this number diminished after Matwilda had weeded out the known prostitutes.

On Sunday morning, May 24, 1096, the Gretz contingent formed up outside the city gates, an orderly crowd of peasants waiting for the arrival of Gunter and his men from the north. At about ten o’clock outriders appeared, soon followed by a host of some six thousand, and it was quickly apparent that the care which Count Volkmar had given to the selection of the men from Gretz had not been duplicated by Gunter when he chose the volunteers at Cologne; for he appeared with a rabble. Thieves, men sprung from jail and notorious prostitutes were conspicuous. There were gangs of debtors who had shaken free of their creditors, and peasants who would hoe the fields no more. Boredom was banished and the frenzy of unknown adventure was high as Gunter, now splendid in new armor and a red tunic with a blue cross, spurred his horse through the wagons and the cattle. He was attended by eleven knights, and these were not rabble but hardened young men capable of defending themselves and the unruly crowd they led.

“Did you ever see such an army?” Gunter cried with animal joy as the knights rode up to welcome the new recruits.

Volkmar made no reply, but as the mob pressed in upon his own well-disciplined people he suggested, “Let Wenzel bless us as we start,” and all uncovered as the priest intoned, “Dear God, protect this holy army as we march to Jerusalem to recover it from the infidel. Strengthen our arms, for we fight Your battle. Sweet Jesus, lead us, for we wear Your cross. Death to the infidel!”

The multitude echoed, “Death to the infidel!” and at this unfortunate moment a Jew of Gretz who sold clothes in the market happened to pass the gates, and Gunter cried, “Great Jesus! Why should we ride to Jerusalem to fight His enemies there and leave His greater enemies here to prosper?”

And in the heat of the moment he dashed with a loud cry through the gates and with one swipe of his great sword slashed off the head of the unsuspecting Jew. The mob howled its approval, and men from the north started spurring their horses into the city, followed by thousands on foot.

“Kill the Jews!” they bellowed.

A Jewish woman was coming to market, and a lancer ran her through, using his tremendous strength to toss her in the air, where she hung suspended for a terrible moment, her eyes still seeing the sudden mob beneath her. The crowd shrieked and she descended sickeningly toward the street, where they trampled her to death.

Volkmar, sensing what must follow, tried to fight his way back into the city, but he was powerless. “Stop!” he begged, but none would listen.

The mob was after Jews but could not have explained why. In the obligatory Easter sermons they had listened to ill-informed priests crying, “The Jews crucified Jesus Christ and God wants you to punish them.” From learned discourses delivered by bishops they had discovered that in the Old Testament, Isaiah himself had prophesied that a Virgin would give birth to Jesus Christ, and that the Jews had stubbornly rejected the teaching of their own Book: “For this sin they shall be outcast forever.” And in their daily life they watched as the Jew lent money, which honest men were forbidden to do, and some had known at first-hand the interest which moneylenders charged. But stronger than any of these complaints was the inchoate suspicion, not often expressed in words, that in a world where all decent men were Christian, there was something intolerably perverse in a group who clung obstinately to an earlier religion which had been proved an error. The Jews were a living insult to the trend of history, and if one helped exterminate them, he must be doing God’s work. Therefore, when Gunter pointed out the folly of marching to Jerusalem to confront God’s enemies while the greater foe stayed here in Gretz, he awakened a score of latent hatreds.

“Kill the Jews!” the mob roared, storming its way through the gates, and local residents—who had no specific cause for cursing Jews—were caught up in the frenzy and suddenly turned informer. “In that house a Jew lives!” Like locusts the mob descended upon the house, killing, pillaging and laying waste.

“Get the moneylender!” cried a man who had never borrowed from any Jew, and like a monstrous animal the crowd turned with one accord and swept into the southern corner of the city, where a Christian led them to Hagarzi’s four-storied house. Fortunately the banker was absent, but soldiers flushed out his daughter, whom they ran through with two lances, throwing her far over their shoulders. As she flew in the air it became evident that she was pregnant, and women shrieked approvingly, “With that one you caught two!” And they stamped her to pieces.

“The synagogue!” they shouted, and this low building so unlike a church infuriated them, for when they came to that holy place they found that some sixty-seven Jews had taken refuge inside. “Burn them all!” the mob screamed, and about the entrances chairs and scraps of wood were placed, drenched with oil, and set afire. When gasping Jews tried to fight their way free they were greeted with lances jabbing them back into the flames. All perished.

They were the lucky ones, for now the Crusaders started flushing out Jewish women. Old ones they killed on the spot, running them through with daggers. Younger ones they stripped naked and raped time after time in the town square, with all applauding. Then, in disgust, they hacked off the girls’ heads.

For two sickly hours the Crusaders stormed through the streets of Gretz, killing and maiming and defiling. When at last they leaned weary on their swords, with blood on their tunics and smoke in their eyes, they justified their slaughter to each other: “It would have been folly to leave for Jerusalem when the men who crucified our Saviour stayed behind to grow rich.” When they withdrew from the city they left behind eighteen hundred dead Jews and the beginning of a heritage that would haunt Germany forever.

In the dreadful silence that followed, when the great knights were gone and the priests, one sturdy Jew wearing cloth from Venice and a fur collar crept out from the refuge into which he had fought his way some hours before and started moving cautiously through the alleys. He saw the gutted synagogue with its sixty-seven charred skeletons. He saw his offspring strewn across the streets. He saw the smoldering memorials and the frightened, bewildered faces of the neighborhood Christians whom he had often befriended. They recognized him as a Jew, one of the great men of their city, but they were so sated with killing that no one raised his hand against the pitiful man. We leave him there—an honest banker—beginning to pick up the hideous shreds of his life, moving with glassy eyes through the alleys of Gretz; but we do not abandon him, for he will be with us again and again. His name is Hagarzi of Gretz, a fugitive groats maker from the town of Makor, and to his neighbors, when the grandeur of his courage is recognized, he will continue to be known as God’s Man.