Will the pandemic lockdown inspire Amsterdam to purge the sex and drugs from its historic core and focus more on its Jewish cultural heritage? Some natives hope so — but not necessarily the Jewish community. Like most of its European neighbors, Holland closed its borders during the early stages of the coronavirus pandemic along with…
AMSTERDAM (JTA) — A statue that is seen as commemorating the suffering of slaves was vandalized inside a Jewish cemetery near the Dutch capital. Orange paint was splashed on the statue titled “Elieser” on Wednesday at the Beth Haim Portuguese cemetery in Ouderkerk aan de Amstel, the oldest Jewish burial site in the Netherlands. The…
AMSTERDAM (JTA) — A Dutch man charged with the attempted manslaughter of a Jewish father and son said he forgot why he stabbed them. During the first hearing in the case, the victims asked the judge to consider a religious or racist motive, which currently is not included in the incitement. Taha Ewis Bakri Abdel…
AMSTERDAM (JTA) — An unopened letter that was mailed to the home of Anne Frank while she and her family were in hiding fetched more than $11,000 at an auction. Bidding on the envelope, which came from an insurance company in 1942, began at $570 ahead of the auction, which took place Friday at the…
AMSTERDAM (JTA) — A Jewish woman from Amsterdam told police that a man shouted at her and her children that they “should all be shot” and called them “cancer Jews” before getting into a taxi cab. The incident occurred Wednesday in the heavily-Jewish Buitenveldert neighborhood of Amsterdam, the Het Parool daily reported based on a…
AMSTERDAM (JTA) — The son of a chief rabbi of the Netherlands and his family were accosted on the street by people he said intimidated the family, shouting at them “cancer Jews.” Rabbi Yanki Jacobs, the son of Binyomin Jacobs, complained to police on Sunday about the incident, which occurred the previous evening, the AD news…
AMSTERDAM (JTA) — On one of the Dutch capital’s busiest squares, a middle-aged Jewish man draped in an Israeli flag bellows insults at another man holding a Palestinian flag and posters promoting a boycott of Israel. The shouting startles a woman buying a herring sandwich from a food truck parked between the men on Leidse…
AMSTERDAM (JTA) — On the national day of mourning for Holocaust victims in the Netherlands, a major mosque in the kingdom’s capital celebrated the conversion to Islam of a Jewish survivor of that genocide. At least, that’s what Amsterdam’s Blue Mosque said. According to its Facebook, 87-year-old Sal van Coeverden converted on May 4, the Dutch…
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