The Amsterdam Pogrom: Deja Vu

When I think of Amsterdam, I think of a progressive European city- one which is filled with stroopwafel and a red light district: its air thick with morning fog and marijuana smoke. You may think of the benches by the canal, bicycles, cobblestoned-streets or the tulip markets. A Jewish person may think of the Anne Frank House, or back to the 1940s where Nazis roamed the streets. When attics housed hundreds of Jewish families rather than dusty heirlooms, each of them shuddered, clutching stars and Shabbos candles wrapped in cheap tablecloth. 

It is easy to compare these two ideas, laying the first on top of the second like decoupage. The flowers cover up the faded scars. Long gone, we thought, is the fear and the hatred, and up until very recently, it was only right to revel at how far we had come. The time comes, though, that facades fall, history repeats itself and I am now crossing that trip to Amsterdam off of my bucket list. 

On November 7th 2024 – a month and a year after the October 7th attacks in Israel, and 86 years, almost to the day, after the infamous Kristallnacht pogroms of 1938– a new kind of pogrom was held on the streets of Amsterdam. Mobs attacked Israeli soccer fans after a match, with eyewitnesses saying they saw people being chased with knives, attempted stabbings, beatings, people being thrown in the river, and even others being rammed into by vehicles. Israel had to send two helicopters to rescue Jews because Dutch authorities weren’t doing enough. I think back to the time of Anne Frank- she had no rescue helicopters, because there was no ‘Israel’ to send them, and for the mere fact we have those helicopters now, I am grateful. But as Jews, I fear we have gotten so used to celebrating the smallest victories, rationalizing and shifting emphasis to make things seem more manageable. Remember, dear reader, it is okay not to be optimistic right now, we don’t need to find a silver lining in this coal-caulked dungeon. We shouldn’t have had to send the helicopters at all. Because this shouldn’t be happening. 

On another continent, unaware of what was occurring in Amsterdam at that very moment, USF Hillel had taken this time and space to hold a memorial event for those who had lost their lives in the October 7th attacks. We aren’t able to even grieve before we are forced into another tragedy. Another list of names, another desperate phone call to our mothers, sobbing because we have been training our whole lives for this. To be able to detect a pattern. Jews are all forced to be historians, to study motifs and see, perhaps faster than anyone, when history is repeating itself. 

We all grew up with stories in our families or our communities of pogroms, and how quickly the world can turn on us. I held these stories close to my heart, yet a part of me was naive, believing that I was lucky to be a Jew in this time. And in many ways, I am. But for a pogrom to not only happen, but be broadcast globally, it cuts me right to my core. The videos I have already etched in my mind, of a man being beaten and kicked on concrete, of a car ramming into a crowd of Jews on the street, while screaming ‘free Palestine’. Seeing a pogrom in a digital age is devastating. An event like this triggers a gut reaction, one that has been spoon-fed to us by cautious and traumatized grandparents for generations. It also takes us right back to all of the trauma we have experienced in our own lifetimes. Our grief seems to be cumulative, it never gives us the chance to overcome it all before a new wave of pain hits us.

I am a textbook over-thinker, spiraling, and trying to soothe my own hyperventilation at the idea that Europe is once again, becoming the kind of place that could be the perfect breeding ground for another Holocaust. But what truly concerns me, and pushes this narrative, is that everyone else seems to be under-thinking it. The silence that has followed outside of the Jewish community is sickening. I want to grab millions of people by the shoulders and shake them violently, weeping, screaming, begging. Why can’t they see? It’s happening again. 

This is part of the issue. The normalization of violent antisemitism under the guise of social justice. Let me tell you, dear reader, there is nothing socially ‘just’ about lynching Jews and hunting them like dogs in the streets of a city who should know better.

We are burnt out, and burned down. How long can we defend our right to exist? When they tell us, ‘go back to Europe’, is this the Europe they want us to go to? I, like many of you I’m sure, am heartbroken by this. It feels like October 7th was just the beginning. I’m sorry I can’t offer more of an optimistic outlook, but I have nothing left to give. I will find my feet again, but for now, floating seems to be my only option.