Days Two and Three: Amsterdam, The Netherlands

This is a holiday weekend in the Netherlands, so Amsterdam is crowded with Dutch folks, plus the weather is lovely—sunny and cool, so everyone wants to be outside.  I saw Amsterdam by boat, traveling up and down the canals in the old parts of the city.  Buildings range from the houses built in the 15^th century to modern architecture.  Amsterdam is a city that is rich in history but does not cling to the past—its forward thinking and progressive.  The spirit of entrepreneurship that began with the founding of the city led by merchants is still very much alive.   

            I also traveled to the Jewish History Museum, which is a museum dedicated to telling the story of the Dutch Jewish historical experience.  The museum connects four former synagogues from the old Jewish quarter.  Amsterdam was the home of Holland’s largest Jewish population.  In the 1930s there were 140,000 Jews living in the Netherlands; today there are 44,000.  The museum tells the story of the earliest Dutch Jews from their arrival in Amsterdam, after their expulsion from Catholic Spain and Portugal in 1492.  Later many Jews came to Holland from Eastern Europe to escape pogroms in Poland, Russia and Germany. Jews in Holland could practice their religion in peace and without fear or a ghetto, but they were limited in their occupations.  All of the trade guilds were closed to them, so Jews ended up working as merchants as either international traders, buying and investing in shares of overseas trading operations or for those with less money, they worked as street peddlers.  Some entered the diamond trade, since it was one of the few trades that developed after the medieval period, hence it did not have a restrictive medieval guild.  The elite of the community were well off, but the majority of Dutch Jews were poor due to the lack of economic opportunities.  This situation improved somewhat in the 19^th century, but even up until 1939, most Dutch Jews lived in poverty.  During the German Nazi occupation from May 1940 till April 1945, the majority of the Jewish population were deported and most died in German concentration camps.  After the war, when the survivors returned, the Dutch government and people did little to help them.  Not until 1973, did the government accept any responsibility for the welfare of the Jewish survivors of the Holocaust; the Dutch people were reluctant to deal with their role in cooperating with the Nazis.


Today many Dutch Jews still do not feel comfortable with being openly Jewish, since there is still latent anti-Semitism in Holland, despite the international image of the Dutch as being open and tolerant as a society.  For me this puts the emphasis on “tolerate” meaning “will allow” but not include or be made to feel welcome.  My grandmother’s family was Dutch and Jewish.  I was always taught to be proud of this heritage and believed that the Jews in Holland were treated better than the rest of Europe; now I have somewhat mixed feelings.  They were treated better, but even in “enlightened” Holland, they were not really accepted.  Visiting the Anne Frank House just underscores the precarious position that all European Jews faced, what it meant to be a minority and vulnerable to the whims of your neighbors, who may tolerate you for a time, but can turn their backs on you when you need them most.  Traveling in Europe as a Jew is hard. There are constant reminders of the recent past, making it difficult to reconcile the beautiful scenery and old world charm with the painful reality of the Shoah.  Although the Jewish History museum is an interesting museum, I could not help but feel saddened by all that was lost; somehow the museum, standing in these four repurposed but no longer holy sanctuaries represented a way of life and a community that is a shadow of what it once was.