Jewish, Dutch (Israel)

Dutch Jews in Israel are a small community of a few thousand, mostly Holocaust survivors from the Netherlands, where three in four Jews were murdered, and later immigrants with their families. They keep their own association, which in 1945 had already rescued 222 Dutch Jews with immigration certificates and today publishes a Dutch-language magazine read in more than a thousand homes. The association runs branches in Jerusalem, Tel Aviv, Haifa and the south and supports homes for Dutch-born elderly such as Beth Joles in Haifa. Their sober Dutch style and the memory of Westerbork and the deportations set them apart from other Ashkenazi Israelis.