Why go
The diamond trade is only one part of this history. The community’s shifting rights, its synagogues and schools, and the violence of the Second World War explain why Jewish Antwerp cannot be reduced to a shopping district or a single period. Oostenstraat is one named setting for confronting that history.
The full story
Jewish presence in Antwerp is documented as far back as the medieval Duchy of Brabant, though settlement was repeatedly threatened by expulsion and persecution. People fleeing the Iberian Peninsula arrived in the sixteenth century, when Antwerp was a major trading city. Legal freedom to settle came with the French Revolutionary period; a formally recognised community followed in the early nineteenth century. During the Second World War, antisemitic groups attacked synagogues on Oostenstraat and Jewish-owned shops. Jewish men were sent to forced labour, and later roundups involved German forces and local police. The Holocaust devastated the community. Its later life has included synagogues, schools, charities and a complex mix of Dutch, Yiddish, French, Hebrew and English. That mix reflects both religious traditions and Antwerp’s changing languages of commerce, especially in the diamond trade. The history is best approached as part of the city’s living fabric, with its wartime losses kept in view.