Located in the Flanders region, Antwerp is known as the center of the global diamond trade. The city, the second most important port on the continent, is home to one of the most traditional Jewish communities in Western Europe. Unfortunately, the future of this community is worrying, as Belgium has experienced decades of anti-Semitic attacks and, in recent years, a violent increase in anti-Jewish and anti-Israel demonstrations.
Antwerp's history dates back to the Roman Empire, where archaeological remains of a settlement called "Antverpia" dating back to the 2nd century CE have been discovered. Conquered by the Franks in the 4th century and Christianized in the 7th, the city became a major urban and commercial center during the Middle Ages due to its strategic location on the banks of the Scheldt River. It was incorporated into the Duchy of Brabant, a state of the Holy Roman Empire.1, established itself as a strategic commercial hub. Its economic growth contributed to the emergence of a prosperous and powerful urban bourgeoisie with significant political influence.
In 1292, Antwerp received a Charter of Privileges from Duke John I of Brabant.2 which mentioned Jews among its inhabitants. Until the mid-14th century, it housed a small Jewish community. Between 1346 and 1353, the Black Death, an epidemic of bubonic plague, swept through much of Europe. The scourge, which wiped out between a third and a half of the European population, was falsely attributed to the Jews, who were accused of poisoning the wells with a substance they secretly produced, believed to be the causative agent of the disease, according to the beliefs of the time. Europe was gripped by strong anti-Semitism, with the massacre of thousands of Jews and the destruction of their property.
Antwerp was no exception, and the violent pogroms that broke out there put an end to the local Jewish community. It would take over a hundred years for a new Charter of Privileges, only granted in 1480, to allow our people to return to the city.
The arrival of the new Portuguese Christians
In the late 14th and 15th centuries, Spain was the scene of bloody events, after which Antwerp received a wave of Jewish converts to Christianity. In 1391, Seville was gripped by pogroms that resulted in massacres and thousands of forced abjurations. On March 31, 1492, the Catholic Monarchs, Ferdinand and Isabella, signed the Edict of Expulsion, which forced the emigration of all Jews who refused baptism. After the intercession of thirty prominent figures in the Spanish Jewish community, King John II of Portugal (1481-1495) allowed 600 Jewish families to settle in his domains, upon payment of 600 gold cruzados—an exorbitant sum for the time. Other refugees were only allowed to remain there for eight months in exchange for payment. per capita, of eight gold cruzados.
With the death of King John II, his nephew, King Manuel the Fortunate, ascended to the throne. The new monarch's marriage to Isabella, daughter of the Catholic Monarchs, marked the end of the relative tranquility of our people in Portugal. The marriage contract required that Portugal be "purified" of Jews. The Edict of Expulsion was signed by King Manuel in December 1496. However, in February 1497, to prevent the loss of wealth and talent, the king ordered the entire Jewish population to appear in churches the following month for a forced baptism. However, a large portion of these converts3 They began to follow Christianity only in appearance, remaining faithful to the Laws of Moses in secret. They were crypto-Jews. In the 16th century, many of these families settled in Antwerp.
Spanish rule (1506–1713)
Antwerp was one of Europe's most important mercantile centers in the early 16th century. Its port hosted goods from the East Indies, a lucrative trade organized and controlled by the Portuguese Crown after Vasco da Gama's first voyage to Southeast Asia (1497-1499). As a result, many Lisbon merchants and bankers began opening branches in the Flemish city.
In 1526, Portuguese converts obtained safe conduct to Antwerp through a decree of Charles V, Holy Roman Emperor, King of Spain, and Lord of the Netherlands. In 1537, they received residency rights and protection from potential accusations from the Church of being "Judaizers."4.
The Mendes family was one of the 600 families that had settled in Portugal after the expulsion from Spain. Its head, Francisco, commissioned his brother Diogo to open a branch of the House of Mendes in Antwerp. One of the most powerful financial institutions in Renaissance Europe, the House of Mendes extended substantial loans to monarchs such as Charles V and Henry VIII of England. Diogo became a spice trade magnate and organized a clandestine "escape route" for Portuguese New Christians to the Netherlands, Italy, the Ottoman Empire, or, in some cases, England through a network of agents spread across several European cities.
In 1536, the Vatican authorized the establishment of the Inquisition in Portugal. Consequently, Francisco Mendes' widow, Doña Gracia Nasi (1510–1569), known as "La Señora" (see Morashá ed. 56), left for Antwerp with Diogo's help. La Señora profoundly marked the history of the Sephardim. Always ready to help her people, she had inherited from her husband, in addition to his immense fortune, the mission of protecting the converts. Among other actions, she led, together with Diogo, a group of new Christians who sought the support of the papal nuncio to halt the Inquisition's activities in Portugal. Her nephew and son-in-law, Don Joseph Nasi (1524–1579), also stood out as an influential figure among the citizens of Antwerp.
Spanish authorities did not permit the open practice of Judaism, and from time to time, conversos were accused of being "fake Christians" and of maintaining commercial relations with the Ottoman Empire. In 1532, Diogo Mendes was arrested on charges of being a Judaizer, but managed to exonerate himself. With the intensification of persecution of New Christians in Antwerp, Diogo was persuaded by La Señora to leave the city, but he died in 1543. Dona Gracia herself left the following year for Italy and, in 1553, left Europe for Istanbul, where she openly embraced Judaism.
In addition to accusing the conversos of practicing Judaism in secret, the Spanish authorities suspected them of supporting the Protestant Reformation. Due to this and changes in the political and economic situation, they changed their policy toward the New Christians, most of whom were expelled from Antwerp in the mid-16th century. The municipal government tried unsuccessfully to prevent the banishment. By 1550, most of the conversos had left the city, with the exception of a few families who, encouraged by the growing influence of Calvinism among the local population, remained.
In 1556, Philip II, son of Charles V, ascended the throne and intensified his efforts to impose Catholicism in the Netherlands. Thus, to combat Protestantism, the Holy Inquisition was established there, not as a single, centralized court, as in Spain, but with judges appointed for specific cases. Its main activities were to combat heretics, including Judaizers, and to suppress the Reform movement, particularly Calvinism.
Philip II's attempt to impose Catholicism and centralize power in the region contributed to the outbreak of the Eighty Years' War in 1568.5 between the United Provinces of the Netherlands and Spain. In 1585, after the recapture of Antwerp, Spain implemented a policy of religious intolerance in the city. Many Protestants and converts fled to the Northern Provinces, especially Amsterdam, which had a Protestant majority. Of the 85 families of the "Portuguese nation" in Antwerp in 1571, only 46 remained by 1619. However, clandestine synagogues still existed, as attested by a 1585 report from the Lisbon Inquisition.
In 1648, the Peace of Münster6 It ended the Eighty Years' War and formalized the independence of the Northern Netherlands, which became the Republic of the United Provinces, with a Protestant majority. The Catholic south remained under Habsburg rule. With the end of the conflict, many of the "Portuguese nation" returned to Antwerp, where they continued to observe the Laws of Moses in secret. Although there were clandestine synagogues, they turned to the Amsterdam community for their religious needs. In 80, the families of the "Portuguese nation" suffered a severe shock when one of the sons of Diego Curiel, from one of the most powerful Converso families, was forcibly baptized under the claim that, having been born in a Catholic country, he rightfully belonged to the Church.
In 1694, after the discovery of yet another clandestine synagogue, the bishop of Antwerp demanded that the archduke expel the entire "Portuguese nation." Consulted by the Council of State, the burgomasters denied the request, responding that there was no reason to persecute the converts, who had brought the diamond trade to the city, were prosperous, and caused no disturbances.
Austrian rule (1713–1794)
In the 18th century, the Spanish Netherlands came under the rule of the Austrian monarchy. Antwerp had been facing commercial stagnation since the end of the previous century. Under the Treaty of Münster, the mouth of the Scheldt River had come under the control of the United Provinces, which blockaded it, preventing ships from accessing the Flemish city, and redirecting trade to other ports, such as Amsterdam. Economic stimulus policies were then adopted, including one that put municipal authorities at odds with their Austrian counterparts: tolerance for the settlement of practicing Jews.
These newly arrived Jews attempted to obtain full citizenship several times in the second half of the 18th century, but faced strong resistance from the City Council. Their situation improved during the reign of Emperor Joseph II (1780–1790), particularly after the 1787 promulgation of the Toleranzpatent, a decree granting civil and religious liberties to several minorities, including Jews.
Establishment of the Jewish community
In July 1789, the French Revolution broke out, and two years later, France granted full citizenship to all Jews in the territories under its control. For the first time since the fall of the Roman Empire, the Jews of Europe enjoyed full civil and political rights.
In 1794, Antwerp was conquered by the Revolutionary Army. During the 21 years of French rule, Jews were able to settle there freely, with full citizenship.
In 1799, through a coup d'état, Napoleon assumed supreme power in France. With the Imperial Edict of 1808, he created the "conciliar system," which organized the Jews of the country and its domains into consistories, councils of rabbis and laypeople responsible for administering community affairs. In that same year, the Jewish population of Antwerp, under the administration of the Consistory of Krefeld in the Rhineland (Rhineland, in German), had to adopt surnames and replace traditional Jewish names with local ones.
After the end of the Napoleonic Wars, the Congress of Vienna established the United Kingdom of the Netherlands in 1815, encompassing present-day Netherlands, Belgium, Luxembourg, and parts of Germany. In the new country, which incorporated Antwerp, all religions, including Judaism, enjoyed equal rights. However, there were profound differences between the north (Netherlands, with a Protestant majority and Dutch speakers, which were imposed as the official language) and the south (Belgium, where Catholicism and French predominated). These differences led to the Belgian Revolution of 1830.
The Jews of Antwerp
After its independence from the United Kingdom of the Netherlands in 1830, Belgium emerged, of which Antwerp became a part. The city's Jewish population, numbering around 80 families in 1849, grew significantly in the following decades, from approximately 500 in 1847 to around a thousand in the late 1860s. However, its greatest expansion occurred after 1880, with the arrival of refugees from pogroms in Russia and victims of discrimination in other Eastern European countries. Furthermore, of the tens of thousands of Jewish emigrants who passed through Antwerp on their way to the Americas (the United States, Canada, and Argentina), many chose to remain in the city, which, in the early 20th century, had a significant Jewish population from Poland, Russia, Hungary, Romania, and Slovakia.
The Flemish city's Jewish community was transformed by the arrival of these immigrants. From a small community composed of Portuguese and Dutch Sephardim, as well as a smaller group from the Ottoman Empire, it became predominantly Ashkenazi. Furthermore, it continued to grow in the following decades: from approximately 8 in 1900, it had already doubled by 1920.
Thus, Antwerp became the country's main Jewish center, with three distinct communities incorporated into the Central Israelite Consistory of Belgium, based in Brussels, in 1832. The first, the Communauté Israélite or Dutch Community, was founded in 1816 by descendants of immigrants from the Netherlands in the early 19th century. In 1828, it acquired land for a Jewish cemetery and, in 1893, inaugurated an "Oriental"-style synagogue, known as the "Dutch" synagogue. In 1931, it merged with the Shomré Hadas community.
The Portuguese Rite Jewish Community, formed in 1898, was the second. It was only officially recognized in 1910, despite the presence of Portuguese Jews in Antwerp dating back to the 16th century. Three years later, it opened its synagogue.
Founded in 1892 by immigrants from Eastern Europe, Machsike Hadas, the third community, was officially recognized by the authorities in 1910. It founded a religious school for boys in 1895, acquired its own cemetery in 1908, and ten years later opened an Art Nouveau synagogue.
By the end of the 1930s, the three Antwerp communities maintained twenty-eight batei midrash (houses of religious study) and five synagogues. Most of these institutions, many of which are linked to Hasidic groups, were founded between the 1920s and 1930s.
Jewish education relied on a network of establishments. Some schools were dedicated solely to religious instruction, while others offered it alongside general education.
Zionism arrived in Antwerp at the beginning of the 20th century, with specific activities and associations, in addition to the holding, for the first time in Belgium, of a Zionist congress, in 1906. With this, the city consolidated its position as the main center of the Zionist movement in the country.
Since the 1880s, the city had entered a period of great prosperity, reflecting the strong boost the diamond industry received from the discovery of diamond deposits in South Africa. Many of the Jews who intended to emigrate to the Americas remained in Antwerp to work in the cutting, polishing, and trading of these stones.
The flow of rough diamonds from Belgian colonies in Africa transformed the city into the world's leading center for the diamond industry. The Jewish community played a significant role in all aspects of the industry, largely due to its international trade connections and the willingness of Jewish immigrants from Eastern Europe to work for low wages. In the 19th century and the first half of the 20th, diamond trading and cutting became the main occupations of Antwerp's Jewish community.
The Holocaust
It is estimated that on the eve of World War II, there were around 2 Jews in Belgium. Of these, 90 were German refugees, while most of the rest were from Eastern Europe and did not hold Belgian citizenship. Fifty thousand lived in Antwerp; 15 in Brussels; and the remainder in other Belgian cities.
On May 10, 1940, Germany invaded Belgium, which surrendered on the 28th and was taken by German forces. Because they wanted to maintain order and revive the diamond industry, then almost entirely controlled by Jews, the Nazis did not immediately begin persecuting the Jewish community, unlike what they did in Eastern Europe. However, in October 1940, the first anti-Semitic measures were imposed. A special register (Judenregister) according to which Belgium only sheltered 40 Jews: the rest were in hiding (about 20) or had fled (approximately 25).
Most of the Jewish population living in Antwerp had left the country at the outbreak of hostilities. However, due to the difficulty of finding refuge, the impossibility of crossing the sea to the United Kingdom, and the initially "moderate" stance of the Germans, thousands returned to the city.
In December 1940, the arrests of Jews in Belgium began. In the following months, with the enactment of new decrees, persecution and segregation intensified, with bans on leaving home at night and going to public parks, as well as layoffs from newspapers, government posts, and educational institutions. Jewish children were no longer allowed to attend public schools.
In Antwerp, more than anywhere else in Belgium, Germans enjoyed the active support of both anti-Semitic and pro-Nazi local parties and groups.
Of the city's Jews, more than 3 who had entered the country after 1938 were deported, by February 1941, to Limburg, a rural area in the Belgian province, for forced labor in the Organisation Todt.7Some were then sent to Fort Breendonk, where the Nazis had set up a concentration and deportation camp. The Jews were separated from the non-Jewish prisoners, most of whom were members of the Belgian resistance. In 1942, all Jews were transferred to the Mechelen camp and later to other labor and extermination camps in Germany and occupied Poland.
On April 14, 1941, Antwerp was the scene of a violent pogrom. Jews were attacked, and their shops were destroyed by Nazi sympathizers, with German support. Two of the city's main synagogues were looted and destroyed, and Torah scrolls were burned. The city council assumed responsibility for the damage and approved reimbursement to the victims, but the Nazis refused to allow reparations. On August 18, the Gestapo carried out the first major confiscation of funds from the Diamond Exchange.
According to German authorities, 1941 Jews lived in Antwerp in October 17.242. All were forced to wear a yellow Star of David on their clothing from June 1942 onwards.
In the following months, people throughout Belgium were subjected to mass arrests. Initially, the destination was the Mechelen Transit Camp (in German SS-Sammellager Mecheln), established in a former Belgian army barracks in the town of the same name (Mechelen, in French). Located between Antwerp and Brussels, the camp had rail connections to Eastern Europe. Every week, two waves of about 1.000 Jews each left the camp for Auschwitz-Birkenau. Between August 1942 and July 1944, 25.257 Jews left Mechelen on 28 trains. Fewer than 2 Jews survived the Holocaust.
On the evening of Friday, August 28, 1942, a major wave of arrests and deportations began in Antwerp, which continued until September 4, 1943. All Jews still in the city, including Belgian citizens and members of the Judenrat, were arrested.
When the truth about the fate of the Jews came to light, the relative indifference that had prevailed in the early years of occupation toward German anti-Semitic policies diminished, and the country's civil authorities began to refuse to cooperate with the Nazis. With this change in attitude, many Jews were able to go into hiding. Self-help organized by the Jewish community, the Church, and the Communist underground played an important role.
In Belgium, Jews formed active resistance groups. Members of pre-war Zionist youth movements continued to operate secretly, smuggling Jews into Switzerland and Spain.
The Committee for the Defense of Jews (CDJ), established in Brussels in September 1942, was the main Jewish resistance movement. Its main goal was to help children and adults find hiding places in Christian homes. They provided food and medicine to Jews in hiding and financial assistance to families who agreed to hide Jews. Members of the group participated in sabotage actions, such as derailing trains, publishing newspapers, and falsifying documents, in conjunction with the Front de l'Indépendance, the Belgian resistance. In April 1943, members of the CDJ attacked a train traveling from Mechelen to Auschwitz, the only action in all of Europe against a transport transporting Jews to the extermination camps. About 500 prisoners managed to escape on this occasion, but many were eventually recaptured.
According to estimates, around 40 of the 65 Jews who remained in Belgium during Nazi rule were murdered in the Holocaust. In the Jewish community of Antwerp, Belgium's largest, the annihilation was devastating: 65% were killed. According to recent studies, this high percentage was due to several factors. As the city was the first in the country to record arrests, the Jews were caught off guard by the Nazis. Furthermore, most of them lived in a single location, in the neighborhood known as Jootsewijk, around the main railway station. However, the main reason for so many deaths was the strong support for the Germans of Antwerp's anti-Semitic collaborators.
Second half of the 20th century
Shortly after the city's liberation, HISO ("Hulp aan Joodse Slachtoffers," or Aid to Jewish War Victims in Dutch) was created, an organization to assist survivors. Rebuilding of the community began in 1946. Built in 1928, the Van den Nestlei synagogue was restored in 1954 and renamed after Romi Goldmuntz, a Jewish businessman who played a key role in the development of Antwerp's diamond industry. A Modern Orthodox rite, it became the city's main synagogue.
In the 1950s, Antwerp's Jewish population grew rapidly, so much so that by the beginning of the following decade, it already totaled 10 people. Holocaust survivors and their descendants were joined by immigrants from across Europe and Israel. Most of the latter belonged to Hasidic groups.
The diamond industry established itself as the primary occupation of Antwerp's Jewish community, many of whose members were highly skilled professionals responsible for the most refined stages of the cutting process, transforming rough stones into high-quality gemstones. Others participated in the international gemstone trade.
Located in Jewish neighborhoods, the diamond exchanges close on Friday afternoon, before the start of Shabbat, and remain closed on Jewish holidays. Beginning in 1980, however, due to changes in the global diamond industry, there was a decline in both the city's importance and the influence of Jewish companies in the international market.
A large part of the Jewish community still lives in the neighborhood known as Jootsewijk, near Antwerp's train station. Due to the large concentration of Orthodox and ultra-Orthodox Jews who preserve a way of life closely tied to religious tradition, the city is called "the last shtetl of Western Europe.” Yiddish is still very important, but Flemish has become the most widely used language by the Jewish community, a large part of which also speaks French and Hebrew.
According to estimates, in the early 2000s, Antwerp was home to approximately 18 Jews, of whom about 20% led a more secular life, without affiliation with any religious group. The remainder belonged to one of three local Jewish communities, each with its own houses of worship. batei midrash (study houses) and ritual slaughterhouses. Currently, there are about thirty synagogues in the city, most of them located in the Jootsewijk neighborhood.
Over 85% of children attend Jewish schools, one of the highest rates in the Diaspora. Major youth organizations include Agudat Israel, Bnei Akiva, Hashomer Hatzair, and Hanoar Hatzioni, which offer religious, educational, and social activities.
Several Jewish social welfare organizations are active in Antwerp. There are two nursing homes, a community hospital, and Zionist groups, notably Keren Hayesod, WIZO, Keren Kayemet LeIsrael, and the Zionist Federation.
With the resurgence of anti-Semitism in Belgium, as well as elsewhere in Europe, Jews in Antwerp were once again targets of violence. In 1981, the synagogue on Hoveniersstraat suffered a terrorist attack. The rise of the Vlaams Belang, a far-right nationalist party formerly called the Vlaams Blok, contributed to intolerance toward non-European immigrants in Belgium, and it had previously expressed anti-Semitic views.
The Jewish presence is more visible in Antwerp than in Brussels, due to the city's large Orthodox population. And, starting in the early 2000s, there was an increase in physical attacks against Jews and their property, particularly by members of Antwerp's Arab immigrant community. In 2017, the Dutch-speaking regions of Flanders and the French-speaking regions of Wallonia in Belgium passed laws prohibiting the slaughter of animals without prior stunning, even in the context of slaughter. kosher, known as shechitah, and the Muslim slaughter. Jewish and Muslim community leaders denounced such behavior as anti-Semitism and racism and a violation of their religious freedom.
The Jewish community of Antwerp, the Jewish Association of Europe, and Muslim communities were shocked by new laws regarding circumcision. In Judaism and Islam, it is the most important commandment, a fundamental religious covenant. For about 3.700 years, circumcision has been performed by specially trained and experienced individuals—the mohels. On May 14, 2025, police raided the home of two mohels in Antwerp, confiscated his work materials and demanded a list of circumcisions performed the previous year. The Jewish Association of Europe declared that such an action crossed another "red line," another violation of their religious freedom.
Today, there is an apparent normality in Antwerp's Jewish quarter: one sees religious Jews wearing traditional costumes, riding their bicycles or walking alongside their children, shopkeepers in front of stores and restaurants kosher, to the sound of conversations in Yiddish and Hebrew on the streets. However, community members say this apparent normalcy masks a deeper concern about the future.
1 Vast territory composed of kingdoms, principalities, duchies and free imperial cities that, despite being vassals of the emperor, enjoyed privileges that gave them de facto independence in their domains from 1232 onwards.
2 Royal document that granted specific rights and benefits to a community (city, town or group of people).
3 The newly converted Jews and their descendants were also called New Christians, “people of the Portuguese Jewish nation”, anusim (in Hebrew) or “marranos” (in a pejorative way).
4 Secret practice of Judaism by officially Christian people.
5 The conflict is also known as the Dutch Revolt or Dutch War of Independence.
6 The Peace of Münster was a treaty between the Netherlands and the Spanish Empire signed in January 1648. It was negotiated in parallel with the Peace of Westphalia, but was not part of it. It was a key moment in Dutch history, marking the formal recognition of an independent republic.
7 The Todt Organization was a paramilitary civil and military construction and engineering group created in Nazi Germany by Fritz Todt, Reich Minister of Armaments and Munitions. It was annexed to the army and was active during World War II.
