Tag Archives: Amsterdam

Eating History at the
Jewish Historical Museum

For a respite from the rigors of wandering around the city, the calm of the Jewish Historical Museum café always repays your effort. You can not only get off your feet, but you can sample to the delights of both standard delicatessen food that you’ll recognize, and some specialties of Jewish Amsterdam which speak of its history.

Jewish Historical Museum Café

My personal favorite is gemberbolus, a sticky bun with lots of ginger syrup (although it does come in other flavors, too). You can find a recipe here as well as the story of how this delicious treat came to be in Amsterdam. It’s traced, thanks to Gaitri Pagrach-Chandra, back to Spain in two possible ways: first, it may have been a snack for the occupying Spanish forces when they invaded the Netherlands during the Eighty Years War (1568-1648). But there seems little question that the bolus came with the Sephardic Jews fleeing the Spanish Inquisition.

Although the Netherlands was not a paradise for Jewish people — for example, they couldn’t join guilds or become citizens — it offered far more equality and opportunity than any other country at that time. The community prospered and became essential to Amsterdam’s economy as well as its character. By 1675, they had erected the magnificent Portuguese Synagogue. Why, if many were originally Spaniards, did they call it that? Partly because some fled to Portugal first before the Inquisition began there, but also because of the bitter history of the Spanish invasion and not wanting to be associated with Catholic Spain.

Even if you can’t taste all that in the gemberbolus, it’s good to remember how often food brings history alive. Since I was too busy eating my roll to take a picture of it, I’m indebted to the delightful What’s Cooking blog for the delightful photo below:

Thanks to timskitchen.blogspot.com

Another Side of Dam Square

Identified as in public domain: https://www.pinterest.com/pin/536491374335302561/

I’m doing this by eye, but I’m pretty sure that this building is on Dam Square on the Royal Palace side. The SS sign you see was designed to attract Dutch recruits, particularly after the invasion of Russia, when some were motivated by the idea that they could fight the communists. Nazi imagery like this was commonplace in major public places after the invasion in 1940.

Siert Bruins could have been recruited by this office on the Dam. He is a Dutch-born SS volunteer who was accused in 2013 of murdering Aldert Klaas Dijkema, a Dutch resistance fighter, as a reprisal. However, the judge ruled that there was insufficient evidence. Earlier, Bruins was convicted in absentia by a Dutch court for several other murders after the war, but he had already fled to Germany and taken German citizenship. Nazi hunter Simon Wiesenthal found him living under a false name in a German village, and he was convicted there of two other murders and imprisoned for 5 years.

As I researched my novel, I learned that reprisal killings were all too common. When the Resistance took some strong action, the Nazis often killed someone, or in some cases, a whole group of randomly assorted people. No wonder my heroine is afraid for her life.

Window Cleaning on the Entrepotdok

A cherry picker beside an historic building with a person cleaning windows

Entrepotdok, Amsterdam

No, the person in the cherry picker isn’t fixing something, just cleaning the grime off the windows. Like many other cleaning rituals, this is an obsession in Amsterdam. You can also still occasionally see a fellow with a long ladder balanced on a wagon, but the more modern equipment is commoner now. In addition to the national fetish with sanitation, letting the maximum light in is important more than halfway to the North Pole. This building is part of the Entrepotdok redevelopment which was an early example of the conversion of historically important buildings (in this case a warehouse) into social, i.e. public, housing.

Although I’ve been to Amsterdam’s airport dozens of times, I’ve never failed to see windows being washed, whether outside or inside, and I wouldn’t be surprised if there are people who do nothing else. Even the internal windows are gleaming, and the glass you can’t see through reflects as perfectly as any mirror. Although I think of myself as a good housekeeper, the Dutch are so much better. Our apartment rent has nearly always included a weekly or bi-weekly cleaning to be sure standards were kept up.

In my upcoming novel An Address in Amsterdam, cleaning is an important part of everyday life. After the family’s Gentile housekeeper is no longer allowed to work for a Jewish household, my heroine Rachel and her mother do all the work themselves, which was unusual for the middle class at that time.