Blood libel in the context of "William of Norwich"

In Jungian depth psychology, the witch archetype is a common portrayal of a woman, usually old and living alone, who practices dark magic. Witches are typically considered to be a dangerous, lurking threat. How the witch archetype is viewed typically depends on the religious and political context as well as the social context and its gender politics. Jean La Fontaine wrote that the "stereotype of evil appears not to have been closely connected to the actions of real people except when it was mobilised against the current enemies of the Church."

The origins of the witch archetype have been connected to antisemitic beliefs: in 1215, the Fourth Council of the Lateran issued an edict that all Jews must wear identifying headgear, a pointed cap known as a Judenhat. This style of hat then became associated with black magic, Satan worship, and other acts of which the Jews were accused.

The Odessa pogroms were a series of violent anti-Jewish riots and attacks in the multi-ethnic port city of Odessa in the 19th and early 20th centuries. Odessa had become a successful and cosmopolitan city known for liberal attitudes, and a hotbed of revolutionary activity in the Russian Empire, with a growing and vital Jewish community that had grown more prosperous along with the city, even though the majority still lived in abject poverty. The pogroms became an international cause célèbre for the Jewish diaspora. Notable pogroms occurred in 1821, 1849, 1859, 1871, 1881, 1900, 1905, and 1918–1919, resulting in hundreds of Jewish deaths, thousands of injuries, and destruction of property, devastating the community and driving emigration.

The causes of the pogroms included religious and ethnic discrimination, economic competition and resultant economic antisemitism, and political changes. Odessa's population included Greek, Jewish, Russian, Ukrainian, and other communities, with the Jewish population growing to become the second-largest group behind Russians. The earlier pogroms, such as those in 1859 and 1871, were initiated by Greeks with Russians joining in. After 1871, the pogromists were mainly Russian joined by ethnic Ukrainians. Pogromists came from all different classes and occupations. According to Jarrod Tanny, most modern-day historians argue that pre-1881 pogroms were "largely the product of frictions unleashed by modernization", rather than a resurgence of medieval antisemitism. The 1905 pogrom was markedly larger in scale, with over 500 casualties (80% Jewish), 300 injuries, and over 1600 homes and businesses damaged, and with heightened antisemitism spurred by economic and political turmoil. Historians such as Robert Weinberg and Shlomo Lambroza believe the police and hospital figures were likely an underestimate, with a range of estimates from likely over 800, to over 1000 killed, and approximately over 2000 or even up to 5000 wounded. Even the pre-20th century incidents were incited by perennial antisemitic tropes such as rumors of Jewish desecration of the church, conspiracy theories of Jewish complicity in assassinating the tsar or the patriarch, and blood libels.

The Kielce pogrom was an outbreak of anti-Jewish violence that took place on 4 July 1946 in the city of Kielce, Poland. Polish soldiers, police officers, and civilians attacked a building at 7 Planty Street that housed around 150–160 Jewish Holocaust survivors, killing 42 Jews and wounding more than 40. The violence was sparked by a false accusation of child kidnapping, a revival of the antisemitic blood libel myth. Despite the rapid collapse of the kidnapping claim, rumors were circulated by state forces, prompting the gathering of a hostile crowd and the subsequent assault on the building and its inhabitants. Several Jews not residing at Planty Street were also killed elsewhere in the city that day, and at least two Jews were later murdered in transit through Kielce's train station.

The pogrom occurred less than a year after the end of World War II and is considered the deadliest act of violence against Jews in postwar Poland. It had a profound impact on the Jewish community, prompting a mass exodus of Holocaust survivors from the country. The incident also drew international condemnation and remains a subject of historical investigation and public debate. In the immediate aftermath, the Polish authorities held a series of trials, resulting in multiple death sentences and prison terms. However, high-ranking security officials faced limited consequences, and the communist government initially sought to deflect blame by attributing the violence to political opponents.

Antisemitic tropes, also known as antisemitic canards or antisemitic libels, are antisemitic allegations about Jews as an ethnicity or Judaism as a religion.

Since the 2nd century, malicious allegations of Jewish guilt have become a recurring motif in antisemitic tropes, which take the form of libels, stereotypes or conspiracy theories. They typically present Jews as cruel, powerful or controlling, some of which also feature the denial or trivialization of historical atrocities against Jews. These tropes have led to pogroms, genocides, persecutions and systemic racism for Jews throughout history. Antisemitic tropes mainly evolved in monotheistic societies, whose religions were derived from Judaism, many of which were traceable to Christianity's early days. These tropes were mirrored by 7th-century Quranic claims that Jews were "visited with wrath from Allah" due to their supposed practice of usury and disbelief in his revelations. In medieval Europe, antisemitic tropes were expanded in scope to justify mass persecutions and expulsions of Jews. Particularly, Jews were repeatedly massacred over accusations of causing epidemics and "ritually consuming" Christian babies' blood.

Menahem Mendel Beilis (1874 – July 7, 1934; sometimes spelled Beiliss) was a Russian Jew accused of ritual murder in Kiev in a notorious 1913 trial, known as the "Beilis trial" or the "Beilis affair". Although Beilis was eventually acquitted after a lengthy process, the legal process sparked international criticism of antisemitism in the Russian Empire.

Beilis's story was fictionalized in Bernard Malamud's 1966 novel The Fixer, which won the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction and the U.S. National Book Award for Fiction. Maurice Samuel's book Blood Accusation: the Strange Case of the Beilis Trial, a non-fiction account, was published by Alfred A. Knopf the same year.

The history of the Jews in Romania concerns the Jews both of Romania and of Romanian origins, from their first mention on what is present-day Romanian territory. Minimal until the 18th century, the size of the Jewish population increased after around 1850, and more especially after the establishment of Greater Romania in the aftermath of World War I. A diverse community, albeit an overwhelmingly urban one, Jews were a target of religious persecution and racism in Romanian society from the late-19th century debate over the "Jewish Question" and the Jewish residents' right to citizenship, leading to the genocide carried out in the lands of Romania as part of the Holocaust. The latter, coupled with successive waves of emigration, including aliyah to Israel, has accounted for a dramatic decrease in the overall size of Romania's present-day Jewish community.

During the reign of Peter the Lame (1574–1579), the Jews of Moldavia, mainly traders from Poland who were competing with locals, were taxed and ultimately expelled. The authorities decided in 1650 and 1741 that Jews had to wear clothing evidencing their status and ethnicity. The first blood libel in Moldavia (and, as such, in Romania) was made in 1710, when the Jews of Târgu Neamț were charged with having killed a Christian child for ritual purposes. An anti-Jewish riot occurred in Bucharest in the 1760s.During the Russo-Turkish War, 1768–1774, the Jews in the Danubian Principalities had to endure great hardships. Massacres and pillages were perpetrated in almost every town and village in the country. During the Greek War of Independence, which signalled the Wallachian uprising of 1821, Jews were victims of pogroms and persecutions. In the 1860s, there was another riot motivated by blood libel accusations.