Jews have repeatedly and consistently been treated as convenient scapegoats. According to the Bible, the Jews were enslaved by the Egyptians. While there is no documentary or archeological evidence of this, first and fourth century BCE writings from Alexandria contain anti-semitic references. As Chrisitanity began to rise to power in Rome under the Emperor Constantine, laws were enacted to deprive Jews of their rights. By the time of the Crusades during the eleventh through thirteenth centuries, Jews encountered en route to the Holy Land were slaughtered if they refused to convert. By the Middle Ages, Jews were considered to be responsible for the Black Death, and believed to use the blood of Christian children in Passover rituals, in spite of official teachings by the Church to the contrary. In some European cities, jews were confined to ghettos. During the Englightenment, anti-semitism persisted, and by the twentieth century, the Nazi party carried out the Final Solution, killing Jews en masse in the camps at Auschwitz, Dachau, and elsewhere.