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History of the Jews in Belgium

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Today, Belgium is home to more than 29,000 Jews, of whom two-thirds live in Antwerp.

History

Early history

Jews were mentioned in the Middle Ages in Brabant, and in 1261 Duke Henry III ordered the expulsion of Jews and usurers from the province. The Jewish community suffered further during the Crusades, as many Jews who refused to be baptised were put to death. This early community mostly disappeared after the Black Death persecutions 1348–1350, and finally the Brussels massacre, 1370.

Sephardim

In the 16th century, many Sephardic Jews who had been expelled from Spain and Portugal settled in Belgium and the Netherlands. In addition, many Marranos (crypto-Jews who outwardly professed Christianity) settled in Antwerp at the end of the 15th century.

Later history

Austrian (Habsburg) rule in Belgium started in 1713. Particularly under Emperor Joseph II, Jews acquired more rights, such as those to practice crafts, own land, and operate their own cemeteries. A number of Ashkenazi Jews immigrated to the area in that period. The status of Jews in Belgium improved further under French and Dutch rule.

Shortly following Belgian independence, in 1831, Judaism was recognized as an official religion (besides Roman Catholicism, the country's majority faith, and Protestantism). On 17 March 1832 the Central Jewish Consistory of Belgium was founded as the official representative of the Jewish religion to the Belgian authorities. The Great Synagogue of Brussels was built in 1876–1877.

Around the turn of the century, the focal point of the world's diamond trade shifted from Amsterdam to Antwerp, bringing many Jewish diamond traders and polishers to the city. During World War I, many fled to the neutral Netherlands, but they returned after the war. Many Polish and Romanian Jews immigrated during the 1920s while Nazi persecutions brought waves of German and Austrian Jews in the 1930s.

Holocaust

Prior to the Second World War, and its peak, the Jewish community of Belgium consisted of roughly 70,000 Jews (35,000 resided in Antwerp and 25,000 in Brussels). About 22,000 Jews at that time were German Jewish refugees. Only 6% of the Jewish population were of Belgian nationality. Belgium was occupied by Nazi Germany between May 1940 and September 1944, and antisemitic policies were adopted throughout Belgium, even though popular resistance in some cities hindered their full application. Belgian local police rounded up Jews, on three occasions in Antwerp, assisting the German in fulfilling their murderous policy towards the Jews. Approximately 45% of the Belgian Jews (25.484 people) were deported to concentration camps from Dossin Barracks in Mechelen, primarily to Auschwitz. Only 1,200 of the deportees survived the war. The Committee for Jewish Defence, which worked with the national resistance movement Front de l'Indépendance, was the largest Jewish defence movement in Belgium during the war. Some Belgian Jews who fled Belgium in 1940 were deported on transports from Drancy, France. A total of 28,900 Belgian Jews perished between 1942 and 1945. Belgium was the only occupied country in which a transport (Train XX) was halted to give deportees a chance to escape.

The National Memorial to the Jewish Martyrs of Belgium is in Brussels. More than twenty thousand names of Belgian Jewish victims are inscribed on the walls of the Monument, some of whom were killed on Belgian territory, but many of whom were shipped off to the death camps and executed in the East.

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