Years ago, I had a German history professor who got into this minor topic one night (night classes were always famous for leaving a traditional history class and getting into little known bits of history rarely ever discussed)....of blood libel.
So, what was blood libel? It's a gimmick (my term) for a antisemitic accusation. Something that you could accuse Jews of in German history....but mostly of a false hoax-like story.
In old Germany (going to this period between the 400s and 1700s)....some Germans would come up and accuse some Jews of kidnapping/killing some German kids (naturally Catholic or Lutheran). The reason for the kidnapping? Well....the hoax story was that Jews would use the blood of the kids as part of their secret rituals.
This gimmick worked with with folks talking about wells being poisoned (even when they weren't) or some desecrated bodies were talked about over in such-and-such village (when the event never occurred).
So naturally, you'd ask....how the heck did this 'blood' requirement come up? Well...the idiot who started the story merely suggests that you needed it for making matzos (Jewish crackers/bread) for Passover.
You can sit here in modern times and laugh over how the story got created and passed around, but in the 1400s....it easily stood up as local 'fact'. You could easily be accused...rounded up in some town with this fake story....and burned to death as punishment.
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