The Crusades brought together different layers of the population of countries and brought together all European nationalities. Europeans came to be aware of themselves as a whole. At the same time, Europeans, having become closely acquainted with the peoples of the East, clarified two important features. The first one is that the peoples of the East are not wild barbarians and backward pagans. In culture and customs, they were higher than European aliens. The second one is that the peoples of the West began to realize their national characteristics. They abandoned religious prejudices and learned to see people like themselves in other nations. Jews escaped from the pogroms of the crusaders, taking refuge in royal castles. Conrad III granted Jews refuge in his ancestral lands (Nuremberg and others); the bishop of Cologne placed at their disposal the Valkenburg fortress, in which the Jews defended themselves against the crusaders with weapons in their hands. Many Jews maintained personal contacts with Christian scholars, traders, and customers, while learning from them and sharing their experiences and knowledge with them. Slowly but inexorably, the center of Jewish history was shifting to the West, because the basic socio-economic and cultural realities were stronger than psychological biases.
