Anne Watches Over the City

Photo Montage: Michel Dankaarts, LBi Lost Boys 

© Anne Frank House© Anne Frank House / Anne Frank Fonds

What is it like to be Jewish in Amsterdam?

To live in a city which has seen so much sadness and so many atrocities. To tred on the streets where others who had their lives cut-short, walked. To meet people whose parents parents only survived because they hid, often separated from their siblings and parents at a very young age, some of them never meeting their parents or siblings again. My children play with the grandchildren of those survivors. 

Anne Watches Over Amsterdam

There are constant reminders of the past. By Central Station, there is a large poster promoting 'Anne Frank - the musical' (see above photo). Anne looks down, smiling over the Amstel, towards the city.  The Dutch place great emphasis on being the same as everyone else. There is a Dutch expression, that in a field of wheat, if a sheaf sticks his head up above the others, it will be cut down. It is not good to be different. So, being Jewish is often a discrete activity here. The boys in my children's school only put on their kippot in the classroom. There are no outward signs that we are different once we are in public, outside of the school. The Jewish school is frowned upon by many Dutch people. 'Why do they need their own school?'.  Conversely, I've found the Jewish school a less racist and a more culturally open and accepting place than the Christian school my children attended previously.  I am very happy that my children are learning about Jewish festivals, such as the festival of Trees (Tubishvat) and not about Zwarte Piet.  I also feel strongly that we should each know our own identity and be strong and comfortable with it. If we were all the same, the world would be a dull shade of grey. I prefer my world to be full of different colours.  

Before 1939, 1 in 10 people living in Amsterdam was Jewish. 

There aren't very many Jewish people living in Amsterdam in comparison to London. It is painful to think how many people could have been living here if it wasn't for the Holocaust. 

There were 75,000 Jewish people living in Amsterdam before the Holocaust. See Holocaust.  Now there are approximately 12,000 Jewish people living in Amsterdam. It feels good to be one of those 12,000 and to stand up and be counted.

The Portuguese Synagogue in Amsterdam

I visited the Portuguese Synagogue in Amsterdam. Gone were the gold leather wall coverings, stolen by the Nazi's. There are lockers under the benches in the synagogue. Each synagogue member had their own locker in the bench with a key. After the war, many of the lockers remained locked as no-one had the keys when their owners did not return after the war. The population of the synagogue was so diminished, the post-war congregants moved to a small room and locked up this large synagogue.  Today, the synagogue feels more like a museum and less like an active place of worship.

"Only a small percentage of the Jews in Amsterdam survived the Holocaust and returned from camps and their places of hiding to their city, also known in Holland as Mokum (Hebrew for city). The community’s great synagogue-complex (now home to the Jewish Historical Museum) remained empty and had to be exchanged for smaller place of worship outside the city center."