Any trip to Amsterdam should include a visit to the Jewish Historical Museum. This modern, trend-setting museum, housed in four monumental synagogues, offers a unique look at Jewish life in the Netherlands past and present in all its complexity. The museum has a large multimedia collection ranging from paintings to films and from everyday objects to 3D presentations and always offers one or two temporary exhibitions. Inside the Jewish Historical Museum is another museum, just for children! It is set up as a Jewish family home with six rooms, where children aged 6 to 12 can play games that will teach them about Jewish culture – sometimes seriously and sometimes with humour. Children can bake rolls in the kosher kitchen, learn Hebrew in the study or make music together in the music room. Every week the JHM Children’s Museum hosts special activities like painting workshops and birthday parties. Check our website to find out what we have planned.

Jewish Historical Museum & JHM Children's Museum

In the centre of the Jewish Cultural Quarter stands the magnificent Portuguese Synagogue. The building is still used as a house of worship, but it is also open to the public, and concerts are held there regularly. The 17th-century interior is still fully intact and illuminated by hundreds of candles. The other buildings in the complex include treasure chambers where visitors can admire a unique collection of ceremonial objects made of silver, gold, silk and brocade. The complex also includes the oldest functioning Jewish library in the world, Ets Haim Livraria Montezinos, which is included in UNESCO’s Memory of the World Register.

Portuguese Synagogue

This statue commemorates the February Strike of 1941, the only major protest in the Netherlands against German round-ups of Jews and resistance fighters. Every year, that act of resistance is commemorated here.

The Dockworker

This monument, ‘Never again Auschwitz’, was designed by the writer and artist Jan Wolkers. It consists of six broken glass mirrors reflecting the sky. Underneath them is an urn holding ashes from Auschwitz.

Auschwitz Monument

In this street you can find the former Portuguese Jewish hospital at no. 6–12. The offices of the Dutch diamond workers’ trade union were at no. 9, in the historic building De Burcht, designed by H.P. Berlage and open to visitors by prior arrangement. After the Second World War this street was renamed after the Jewish union leader and politician Henri Polak (1868-1943).

Henri Polaklaan

During the Second World War, the occupying forces made Jews assemble in this former theatre. Tens of thousands of men, women and children were held here, not knowing what fate awaited them, until they were deported to concentration and extermination camps. The Hollandsche Schouwburg is now a memorial site with a wall of names commemorating the Jewish victims. It also holds an exhibition about the Holocaust in the Netherlands.

National Holocaust Memorial

Through this former teacher training school hundreds of Jewish children, who were held captive in the cr&egrave;che next door, were smuggled to relatively safe places with the help of the resistance during the Second World War. At this historic site, in the National Holocaust Museum, the story of the Holocaust is told in changing exhibitions and events in an artistic form and based on personal accounts.

National Holocaust Museum

Piet Meerburg (1919-2010) was a resistance fighter in the Second World War. He was involved in saving the Jewish children from the crèche. Other bridges in this area are named after the members of the resistance, such as Walter Süskind, Felix Halverstad, and Lau Mazirel. The former Rosenthal-May Nurses’ Residence, which offered housing to nurses at a Jewish hospital, can be seen on the other side of the Nieuwe Keizersgracht.

Piet Meerburg bridge

Along the edge of the canal you can see the names of 200 Jews who lived on the other side of the Nieuwe Keizersgracht (at no.2–74). All of them were deported and murdered during the Shoah.

The Shadow Canal Monument

The markings in the pavement show where Megadle Jethomim, a home for Ashkenazi orphans, once stood. The inscription in the stone, designed by Otto Treuman, was added in 1989. The final words are: ‘No one returned. May their memory be blessed.’

Jewish Boys' Orphanage Monument

Baruch de Spinoza (1632–1677) is one of the great philosophers of European history. He was born in Amsterdam, the scion of a prominent Portuguese Jewish family. He was expelled from the Jewish congregation in 1656 because of his radical views. The sculpture of Spinoza, designed by Nicolas Dings in 2008, is near the probable location of his home.

Spinoza monument

Once the beating heart of the Jewish quarter, this is still the site of a popular daily flea market.

Waterlooplein

Stunning synagogues, striking buildings and impressive memorials grace the streets of Amsterdam&rsquo;s old Jewish quarter. In the heart of the neighbourhood, an area of less than one square kilometre, you will find the Jewish Cultural Quarter, which includes the Jewish Historical Museum with the engaging JHM Children&rsquo;s Museum, the stately Portuguese Synagogue , the moving National Holocaust Memorial and the National Holocaust Museum. Here visitors can find out all about Jewish culture, history and traditions &ndash; all with just one ticket.

Amsterdam

Welcome to the Jewish Cultural Quarter.

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