"For Jews in the European Diaspora, the First Crusade was a catastrophe unprecedented since the destruction of the Temple. Three flourishing communities of the Rhineland — Worms, Mainz, and Cologne — were massacred by burghers and crusaders led by a German, Count Emicho of Leinigen, after the charismatic preacher Peter the Hermit had aroused popular hysteria. The frightful memory of these pogroms is preserved in three nearly contemporaneous Hebrew prose narratives, as well as in prayers and dirges that are recited to this day. Nor were these the only crusader persecutions of Jews. When Jerusalem fell in 1099, the Jews of the city were slaughtered along with the Muslims, and there were further assaults during the Second Crusade of 1147."