Amsterdam, on April 11, 1944, while hiding from the Nazis and their Dutch collaborators, Anne Frank wrote in her diary, “One day this terrible war will be over. The time will come when we’ll be people again and not just Jews.”
Less than four months later, on August 4 of that year, Anne and her family were arrested by the German Security Police, ably assisted by Dutch police officers, and deported to the death camps.
Anne’s longing to grow up in a world that would see her as a human being rather than an object of hatred and persecution never came true. Her words today greet visitors at the Anne Frank House, a quiet yet devastating reminder of a dream denied.
For decades after the Second World War, the Netherlands struggled to confront its own role in the destruction of its Jewish community.
Seventy-five percent of Dutch Jewry, the highest percentage of any country in occupied Western Europe, was murdered, alongside tens of thousands of Jewish refugees who had fled there believing it would offer safety.
Dutch efficiency, civic compliance, and administrative cooperation played a decisive role in the speed and scale of deportations. Yet for many years, this reality remained marginal in the national narrative.
Only in recent years has official recognition taken visible form.
In 2021, the National Holocaust Names Memorial was inaugurated in Amsterdam’s old Jewish quarter, bearing more than 102,000 names of murdered Dutch Jews. In 2024, the National Holocaust Museum opened its doors nearby.
Amsterdam today is filled with monuments, plaques, and museums commemorating Jewish life and Jewish loss. These initiatives reflect a growing willingness to acknowledge historical responsibility, but they also raise an uncomfortable question.
What does remembrance mean if it does not translate into moral clarity in the present?
For many Dutch Jews, the answer is troubling. Memorialization has expanded, but so has antisemitism. Members of the community increasingly say that hostility toward Jews has not been this strong, this open, or this socially acceptable since the end of the Second World War.
Unlike neighboring countries such as France or Belgium, antisemitism in the Netherlands has not yet fully manifested as a constant physical threat. There have been no mass casualty attacks on synagogues or Jewish schools. No routine armed guards at every institution.
Instead, what has taken hold is something more diffuse and insidious. Many Dutch Jews describe it as ‘ambient antisemitism’: a pervasive social climate in which hostility toward Jews is normalized, excused, or reframed as political expression.
It is present in classrooms, on campuses, in cultural institutions, and above all in media and online discourse. It emanates not only from extremist fringes but increasingly from the mainstream.
One violent rupture exposed how fragile this distinction really is.
In November 2024, following a Europa League soccer match between Maccabi Tel Aviv and Ajax Amsterdam, violent riots erupted in the streets of Amsterdam.
Upon exiting the game and returning to their hotels or wandering around the city, Israeli fans were chased, beaten, and hunted by Arab rioters across the city. Some were hospitalized with serious injuries.
Videos circulated online showing Jews being assaulted while passersby looked on, including some being thrown into the canals.
The scenes unfolded on the eve of the anniversary of Kristallnacht, triggering painful historical associations for a Jewish community of roughly 40 to 45,000 people.
For many, the images of Jews being openly and proudly hunted on the streets, in shops, and in hotels of Amsterdam felt like a warning.
Dutch political leaders condemned the violence as antisemitic. King Willem-Alexander stated that Jews must feel safe in the Netherlands and warned that history teaches how intimidation escalates when left unchecked.
The statements were clear, but for many Jews, they felt reactive rather than preventive, a response to an eruption rather than to the deeper conditions that made it possible.
Those conditions were already documented months earlier.
In July 2024, the European Union Agency for Fundamental Rights published a comprehensive survey on Jewish perceptions and experiences of antisemitism across Europe. The findings for the Netherlands were alarming.
Seventy-three percent of Dutch Jewish respondents said antisemitism was a very big or fairly big problem in their country.
Forty-seven percent reported experiencing antisemitic harassment, yet most did not report the most serious incidents to police or authorities, often because they felt it would make no difference. Ninety percent believed antisemitism had increased over the previous five years, especially online.
Nearly one-third had considered emigrating because they no longer felt safe as Jews in the Netherlands. Seventy-nine percent believed the government’s efforts to combat antisemitism were ineffective.
These perceptions were reinforced by hard data.
According to CIDI, the Center for Information and Documentation Israel, the leading organization monitoring antisemitism in the Netherlands, the year 2024 marked the highest number of recorded antisemitic incidents since the organization began tracking them in 1974.
The increase was not marginal but structural, reflecting a normalization of antisemitic expression rather than isolated spikes.
“Antisemitism does not only have to be violent to be dangerous,” said Dr. Moshe Kantor, president of the European Jewish Congress.
“When it becomes embedded in public discourse, media narratives, and institutional silence, it creates an environment in which Jewish citizens are made to feel conditional rather than protected, and that seems to be the case more and more in the Netherlands in recent years.
“European governments must understand that combating antisemitism is not only about policing extremists but about setting clear boundaries in education, media, and public life. Failure to act decisively does not produce neutrality. It produces the normalization of hate and intolerance.”
For Emile Schrijver, general director of Amsterdam’s Jewish Culture Quarter, the shift has been both societal and deeply personal.
“Before Oct. 7, I would never have defined myself as the other among the Dutch,” he says. “Now I do. Jewish identity has become problematic.”
“My family has lived here since the 17th century. I am Dutch. I am not a religious Jew. The Jewish identity has become a problematic identity. I am 63 years old. Recently, I realized that I belong to the only generation of Jews that has lived the larger part of its life with the illusion that it can be a Jew without a problem.”
Schrijver describes a constant stream of online antisemitism that is aggressive, repetitive, and unavoidable. While he insists he does not feel physically threatened and continues to speak publicly, he notes that many others have adapted their behavior out of fear.
Mezuzot are quietly removed from doorposts. Jewish jewelry is hidden under clothing. Parents warn their children to be cautious. One of Schrijver’s daughters was advised by a police officer to hide her Star of David necklace because he could not guarantee her safety.
After the Oct. 7 massacre, Schrijver says, something fundamental shifted.
The initial shock at the Hamas massacre of Israeli civilians rapidly gave way to accusations against Israel and, by extension, against Jews in the Netherlands.
“I refuse to first position myself on what Israel is doing before I am allowed to speak about antisemitism here,” he says.
Jewish cultural institutions now receive messages accusing them of “committing genocide.” Jewish identity, Israeli nationality, and assumed political positions are merged into a single charge.
“That mixture has become toxic,” Schrijver continues.
“I feel strongly connected to the notion of the State of Israel, to my friends and family there, and I fight for the liberty to continue feeling this connection regardless of my opinions on the current Israeli government. But even this position, for some people here, is an outrageous support for genocide. I refuse to accept it.”
Schrijver identifies three converging sources of antisemitism today. The first is traditional racist antisemitism from the far Right, drawing on old stereotypes about Jewish power, money, and violence.
The second comes from radicalized elements within parts of the Muslim community, fueled by imported conflicts and religious extremism, with the pogrom against Maccabi Tel Aviv fans serving as a stark example.
The third comes from sectors of the political Left, which frame the Middle East exclusively through a simplistic oppressor versus oppressed narrative and refuse to acknowledge Jewish vulnerability.
“Antisemitism is one of the few hatreds where the perpetrator decides whether it counts,” Schrijver says. “If I say something is antisemitic, I am told it is not and that I am overreacting.”
Writer and publicist Leon De Winter, who lost over 100 family members in the Holocaust, places particular responsibility on the Dutch media. He describes a relentless stream of anti-Zionist messaging that, in his view, leaves little room for nuance or context.
“What the media is doing is sheer ongoing 24/7 anti-Zionist propaganda. The Nazis knew how to use propaganda. The Bolsheviks, too. Nowadays, it is also all about very intensive propaganda, and because of social media, it is almost impossible to avoid it,” de Winter says.
“Of course, there are antisemitic undercurrents in society, which help spread this propaganda. People are sensitive to it, believe it. The media is creating certain narratives about the Jewish state that are unavoidably mirrored in Jews, 90% of whom identify with Israel.”
“Generally speaking, Dutch society was and is very indifferent. Under the circumstances of WWII, this indifference became cowardice. Now people are convinced that you can hate for free, without any consequences.”
De Winter also sees a psychological mechanism at work.
By portraying Israel and Jews as perpetrators of extreme crimes, Dutch society can relieve itself of historical guilt.
“If the Jews are as bad as the Nazis, then there is no reason to feel guilty about what happened during the war,” he argues. “You can believe you are finally on the right side of history.”
“There are still many decent people in the Netherlands,” stresses de Winter. “Never underestimate the presence of decency within large segments of Dutch society. The ruling elites are aware of the fire that exists and know they must not play with it. They try to contain it, to extinguish it.”
“At the same time, there is growing concern about the aggressiveness of pro-Palestinian demonstrations and about what is happening in our universities, which increasingly follow the woke revolution in the United States. Yet, as long as the anger is not directed at you, it is considered acceptable. Let it be directed at the Jews. ‘They are evil anyway, so why should we care?’
“I once thought the last Jew would leave Europe in 2050. I was too optimistic. I now think it will be 2040. And when the Jews are gone, will the majority miss them? Of course not. We already disappeared once, after 1940.”
Jigal Markuszower, president of NIK, the umbrella organization of 26 Jewish communities in the Netherlands, describes the post-Oct. 7 period as unprecedented in his lifetime.
“There were demonstrations already on October 8, when Israel was still in shock,” he notes. He argues that sustained, one-sided coverage turns political protest into a breeding ground for antisemitism.
“If it looks like antisemitism, sounds like antisemitism, it is antisemitism.”
“In the end, the criticism against Israel comes from antisemitism,” says Markuszower.
“These days, you don’t see demonstrations against the Iranian regime. People who join the anti-Israel demonstrations are not necessarily antisemitic, but they often don’t know anything about the situation in the Middle East, and they get brainwashed by the media and its one-sided coverage of the news.
“Every evening for two years, Gaza was the first item of the news in the state-sponsored media. The repression in Iran, on the other hand, was practically a non-issue. Neither was the genocide in Darfur.”
Markuszower is particularly critical of Holocaust remembrance that is disconnected from education. Museums and memorials, he argues, become hollow if schools are not required to engage with them meaningfully.
“If schools say it is inappropriate to talk about the Second World War because of Gaza, what is the point?” he asks. “When the Dutch confront the Holocaust, they still do it on their own terms.”
Nevertheless, unlike de Winter, Markuszower believes that there is a future for Jews, at least in Amster dam.
“The Dutch Jews have a very long history in the Netherlands. I don’t see this history coming to an end so quickly,” says Markuszower.
“Some would say that there have not been so many Jews in the Netherlands since the end of WWII. That’s probably the case. However, was it ever really good here for Jews after WWII?
“Did we ever get the chance to become a big community? I don’t think so. But positive things are happening in our community even after Oct. 7. More people feel the need to be together in Jewish communities.”
Businessman Roland Kahn, whose family was almost entirely murdered in the Holocaust, offers a more unsparing assessment. “Antisemitism runs in the veins of Dutch society,” he says.
After the war, he argues, shame suppressed it. When Jews became strong, when Israel could defend itself, it resurfaced. “It was acceptable to be a dead Jew. A living Jew who hits back is a problem.”
Kahn describes Dutch antisemitism as passive rather than explosive, rooted in indifference and reinforced by media narratives portraying Jews as child killers.
While no Jews have been murdered in the Netherlands in recent years, he warns against complacency. “Hatred does not need blood to be real,” he says. “It only needs permission.”
Today, the warning signs are unmistakable. Jewish security has become permanent. Emigration is openly discussed.
Many Jews feel they are being tolerated rather than accepted, remembered rather than protected. Antisemitism has been laundered through political language, moral absolutism, and selective outrage.
Anne Frank dreamed of a future in which Jews would be seen simply as people again. Eighty years later, in her own city, surrounded by monuments to her memory, that dream remains painfully unresolved.