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Residential segregation of Jews in Amsterdam on the eve of the Shoah

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  22 August 2011

PETER TAMMES
PETER TAMMES
Affiliation:
Department of History, Leiden University.
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Abstract

While previous studies showed a drop in residential segregation over time, calculated dissimilarity and isolation indices for 1941 show a halt in the decreasing segregation among Jews in Amsterdam. Furthermore, persons of Jewish origin who had left Judaism appear to have lived mainly in different districts from those who belonged to Jewish congregations, indicating that district of residence can serve as a reflection of the assimilation process. Moreover, analyses of life histories of about 700 Jewish persons show that being born outside the Jewish neighbourhood increased the likelihood that an individual would leave Judaism, while living outside the Jewish neighbourhood during adolescence increased the likelihood of marrying a Gentile; these results refine our understanding of the impact of residential segregation.

La ségrégation résidentielle des juifs d'amsterdam à la veille de la shoah

Alors que les études antérieures ont montré, pour les Juifs d'Amsterdam, une baisse de la ségrégation résidentielle avec le temps, les indices de différenciation et d'isolation que nous avons calculés pour 1941 montrent que la ségrégation a cessé de diminuer. En outre, les personnes d'origine juive qui avait quitté le judaïsme semblent alors vivre principalement dans des districts différents de ceux qui appartiennent à des congrégations juives, ce qui indique que le quartier de résidence peut être considéré comme reflétant le processus d'assimilation. En outre, les analyses des histoires de vie d'environ 700 personnes juives montrent que le fait d'être né en dehors du quartier juif a augmenté la probabilité, pour un individu, d'abandonner le judaïsme, et que le fait de vivre son adolescence en dehors du quartier juif a augmenté la probabilité d'épouser un non juif. Ces résultats permettent d'affiner notre compréhension de l'impact de la ségrégation résidentielle.

Residenzielle segregation von juden in amsterdam am vorabend der shoah

Während frühere Untersuchungen davon ausgingen, dass die residenzielle Segregation im Laufe der Zeit zurückging, zeigt eine Berechnung von Verschiedenheits- und Isolationsindizes für das Jahr 1941, dass die Abnahme der Segregation unter Juden in Amsterdam zum Stillstand kam. Außerdem scheinen Personen jüdischer Herkunft, die ihr Judentum aufgegeben hatten, weitgehend in anderen Wohngebieten als diejenigen gelebt zu haben, die noch jüdischen Gemeinden angehörten, was darauf hindeutet, dass das Wohngebiet den Prozess der Assimilation widerspiegelt. Ferner zeigt eine Analyse der Lebensläufe von etwa 700 jüdischen Personen, dass jemand, der außerhalb einer jüdischen Nachbarschaft geboren wurde, mit größerer Wahrscheinlichkeit den jüdischen Glauben ablegte, und dass jemand, der seine Jugend außerhalb einer jüdischen Nachbarschaft verbrachte, mit größerer Wahrscheinlichkeit einen Nichtjuden heiratete. Diese Ergebnisse verfeinern unser Verständnis der Auswirkungen von residenzieller Segregation.

Type
Research Article
Information
Continuity and Change , Volume 26 , Issue 2 , August 2011 , pp. 243 - 270
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2011

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References

ENDNOTES

1 C. Reijnders, Van,,Joodschen Natiën” tot Joodse Nederlanders. Een onderzoek naar getto en assimilatieverschijnselen tussen 1600 en 1942 (Amsterdam, 1969), 68–70, 171.

2 S. Leydesdorff, Wij hebben als mens geleefd: het joodse proletariaat van Amsterdam, 1900–1940 (Amsterdam, 1987), 19.

3 S. Leydesdorff, ‘In search of the picture: Jewish proletarians in Amsterdam between the two world wars’, in Jozeph Michman and Tirtsah Levie eds., Dutch Jewish history (Jerusalem, 1984), 315–33.

4 L. Wirth, The ghetto (Chicago, 1956), 282.

5 R. E. Park, ‘The urban community as a spatial pattern and moral order’, in Ceri Peach ed., Urban social segregation (London and New York, reprint 1975), 21–31.

6 M. M. Gordon, Assimilation in American life. The role of race, religion, and national origins (New York, 1964).

7 O. D. Duncan and B. Duncan, ‘A methodological analysis of segregation indices’, in Peach, Urban social segregation, 35–47; Duncan, O. D. and Lieberson, S., ‘Ethnic segregation and assimilation’, American Journal of Sociology 64, 4 (1959), 364–74CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

8 See Massey, D. S. and Denton, N. A., ‘The dimensions of residential segregation’, Social Forces 67, 2 (1988), 309–10CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

9 Duncan and Duncan, ‘A methodological analysis’.

10 Hiebert, D., ‘The social geography of Toronto in 1931: a study of residential differentiation and social structure’, Journal of Historical Geography 21, 1 (1995), 55–74CrossRefGoogle Scholar; C. Peach, ‘The ghetto and the ethnic enclave’, in Marco Martiniello and Jan Rath eds., Selected studies in international migration and immigrant incorporation (Amsterdam, 2010), 581–606.

11 Massey, D. S., ‘Ethnic residential segregation: a theoretical synthesis and empirical review’, Sociology and Social Research 69 (1985), 315–50Google Scholar.

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13 Gans, H., ‘Comment: ethnic invention and acculturation, a bumpy-line approach’, Journal of American Ethnic History 12, 1 (1992), 45–52Google Scholar.

14 Massey, ‘Ethnic residential segregation’, 321.

15 See Alba, R. and Nee, V., ‘Rethinking assimilation theory for a new era of immigration’, International Migration Review 31, 4 (1997), 826–74CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed, especially 836; and R. Alba and V. Nee, Remaking the American mainstream. Assimilation and contemporary immigration (Cambridge, 2003), 29.

16 Lieberson, S., ‘The impact of residential segregation on ethnic assimilation’, Social Forces 40 (1961), 52–7CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Gordon, Assimilation in American life, 81.

17 Gordon, Assimilation in American life, 70–71, 78.

18 Ibid., 80.

19 Alba and Nee, Remaking the American mainstream, 29.

20 Ibid., 59.

21 Persons who had one or two Jewish grandparents were defined as ‘quarter’ Jews and ‘half’ Jews, respectively. Grandparents were considered to be Jewish if they belonged to a Jewish congregation. Belonging to a Jewish congregation includes all who were members of the Portuguese or Dutch Israelite congregation, and does not signify only those attending synagogue regularly.

22 Tammes, P., ‘Het belang van Jodenregistratie voor de vernietiging van joden tijdens de Tweede Wereldoorlog’, Tijdschrift voor Sociale en Economische Geschiedenis 6, 2 (2009), 34–62CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

23 L. de Jong, Het koninkrijk der Nederlanden in de Tweede Wereldoorlog (The Hague, 1969–1991), part 4, 874–5; A. J. Herzberg, Kroniek der Jodenvervolging 1940–1945 (Amsterdam, 1978), 50; J. Presser, Ondergang. De vervolging en verdelging van het Nederlandse jodendom 1940–1945 (The Hague, 1965), part 1, 62–3.

24 Tammes, ‘Jodenregistratie’.

25 J. T. Veldkamp, Het Amsterdamse Bevolkingsregister in oorlogstijd (Amsterdam, 1954), 8, 13.

26 The Netherlands Institute for War Documentation (NIOD), 77, 1411–13. This list was recovered and first used by M. Croes and P. Tammes, ‘Gif laten wij niet voortbestaan’. Een onderzoek naar de overlevingskansen van joden in de Nederlandse gemeenten, 1940–1945 (Amsterdam, 2004).

27 The Amsterdam list is not dated. We assume that this list was being finished in the second week of May 1941, since the youngest person on this list was born on 7 May.

28 A chronological list of anti-Jewish measures taken in the Netherlands is given in B. Moore, Victims and survivors: The Nazi persecution of the Jews in the Netherlands, 1940–1945 (London, 1997).

29 We do know of a Jewish writer who left Amsterdam in February 1941 because he no longer felt comfortable in this city; see P. Tammes, ‘U draagt geen ster’. De vervolging van joodse inwoners in Bergen (NH) tijdens de Tweede Wereldoorlog (Bergen, North-Holland, 2005), 25–6, 62–3. Such cases, however, seem to be rare, since we did not come across similar stories in Dutch national or other local historiographies on the persecution of Jews.

30 Of the ‘full’ Jews, 7.4 per cent were religiously unaffiliated and 0.67 per cent had converted to Christianity.

31 Of the ‘full’ Jews, 13.3 per cent were of non-Dutch nationality.

32 See L. Lucassen, The immigrant threat: the integration of old and new migrants in western Europe since 1850 (Urbana and Chicago, 2005), 103.

33 To locate the addresses' districts, we made use of the information on the Amsterdam History website: http://www.amsterdamhistorie.nl/ [visited in May 2009].

34 Gemeente Amsterdam Bureau van Statistiek, Amsterdam gedurende den Tweeden Wereldoorlog. Statistisch jaarboek der gemeente Amsterdam, 1940–1944 (Amsterdam, 1949).

35 Historical Sample of the Netherlands (hereafter HSN), Dataset ‘Jewish Dutch or Dutch Jews?’ (JDJ), release 2009.01. For more information about the HSN, see www.iisg.nl/~hsn

36 The address of residence in Amsterdam had three dimensions: the address is located in a street or square, which is located in a small residential area, which is located in a district.

37 Massey and Denton, ‘Dimensions’, 309–10.

38 See Ibid., 308.

39 S. Lieberson, ‘An asymmetrical approach to segregation’, in Ceri Peach, Vaughan Robinson and Susan Smith eds., Ethnic segregation in cities (London, 1981), 61–82.

40 Massey and Denton, ‘Dimensions’, 308.

41 Van Engelsdorp Gastelaars, Vijgen and Wagenaar, ‘Jewish Amsterdam’; J. Vijgen, ‘Joden in Amsterdam. Assimilatie en segregatie van een ethnische minderheid 1600–1933’ (unpublished Master's thesis, Amsterdam, 1983), 114–15.

42 Van Engelsdorp Gastelaars, Vijgen and Wagenaar, ‘Jewish Amsterdam’, 139.

43 See Leydesdorff, Wij hebben als mens geleefd, 122, 138, 175.

44 See Van Engelsdorp Gastelaars, Vijgen and Wagenaar, ‘Jewish Amsterdam’, 139.

45 Ultee and Luijkx, ‘Jewish–Gentile intermarriage’, 176–7.

46 In the sources that Ultee and Luijkx used for 1906, 1920 and 1930, Jews were those persons belonging to the Portuguese or Dutch Jewish congregation. The source used for 1941 is the overview given in the statistical yearbook of Amsterdam for 1940–1944. This overview includes all persons having one or more Jewish grandparents, irrespective of their own religious affiliation.

47 Ultee and Luijkx, ‘Jewish–Gentile intermarriage’, 177.

48 See Rijksinspectie van de Bevolkingsregisters, Statistiek der bevolking van joodschen bloede in Nederland samengesteld door de Rijksinspectie van de bevolkingsregisters aan de hand van de formulieren van aanmelding ingevolge verordening no. 6/1941 (The Hague, 1942), 71–2.

49 A. Caransa, Verzamelen op het Transvaalplein: ter nagedachtenis van het Joodse proletariaat van Amsterdam (Baarn, 1984). Leydesdorff, Wij hebben als mens geleefd, 187, noticed a similar process for the Tugelaweg: many Jewish families living in Uilenburg moved to that street.

50 See Leydesdorff, Wij hebben als mens geleefd, 189.

51 C. Tilly, ‘Transplanted networks’, in Virginia Yans-McLaughlin ed., Immigration reconsidered. History, sociology, and politics (New York, 1990), 79–95.

52 See Leydesdorff, Wij hebben als mens geleefd, 86, 176, 191.

53 See Ibid., 229–30.

54 Van Engelsdorp Gastelaars, Vijgen and Wagenaar, ‘Jewish Amsterdam’.

55 S. Waterman and Kosmin, B. A., ‘Residential patterns and processes: a study of Jews in three London boroughs’, Transactions of the Institute of British Geographers 13, 1 (1988), 79–95Google Scholar.

56 The Amsterdam district map was published by Bureau van statistiek der gemeente Amsterdam, Enkele gegevens omtrent de bevolking van Amsterdam 1940–1941. Statistische mededeelingen; no.119 (Amsterdam, 1941).

57 Gemeente Amsterdam Bureau van Statistiek, Amsterdam gedurende den Tweeden Wereldoorlog, 71–2.

58 Reijnders, Van,,Joodschen Natiën”, 89–90, 172.

59 See Leydesdorff, Wij hebben als mens geleefd, 139.

60 See Reijnders, Van,,Joodschen Natiën”, 89.

61 See Leydesdorff, Wij hebben als mens geleefd, 135, 139, 160.

62 Alba and Nee, ‘Rethinking assimilation theory’, 863.

63 The Pearson correlation ranges from +1 to −1. A correlation of +1 means that there is a perfect positive linear relationship between variables, while in the case of −1 there is a perfect negative linear relationship. Values between −1 and +1 indicate the degree of the relationship: between 0.70 and 0.99 is regarded as a (very) high correlation, between 0.40 and 0.69 as a moderate correlation, between 0.20 and 0.39 as a low correlation, and as it approaches zero there is almost a negligible correlation.

64 Duncan and Lieberson, ‘Ethnic segregation’; see also Lieberson, ‘Impact of residential segregation’.

65 C. Peach, ‘Ethnic segregation and ethnic intermarriage: a re-examination of Kennedy's triple melting pot in New Haven, 1900–1950’, in Peach, Robinson and Smith, Ethnic segregation in cities, 193–216.

66 Leydesdorff, Wij hebben als mens geleefd, 139.

67 Gordon, Assimilation in American life, 80.

68 We used the information on the website http://www.amsterdamhistorie.nl/ [visited May 2009] to relate the address or administrative code given on the family cards to the Amsterdam districts. The streets and residential areas in the district ‘Jonker-, Ridder-, Konings-, en Keizerstraat en omgeving’ (areas with the administrative codes C, P, Q, R, S) and ‘Overige Jodenbuurt en Hoogte Kadijk’ (areas N, O) and some parts of the areas U and V are taken as streets that constitute the Jewish neighbourhood.

69 Since all 717 research subjects in the samples were born in Amsterdam, 27 of them lived in another place at age 17 years and are coded as living outside the Jewish neighbourhood.

70 Multinomial logistic regression is especially designed to analyse relationships between a non-metric dependent variable consisting of more than two categories, such as religious affiliation, and metric or dichotomous independent variables, such as being born inside or outside the Jewish neighbourhood.

71 Those research persons who were religiously unaffiliated or had converted to Christianity hardly ever married a person who was Jewish around the time of marriage.

72 See, for example, Waterman and Kosmin, ‘Residential patterns’, 79.

73 See Schrover, M. and van Lottum, J., ‘Spatial concentrations and communities of immigrants in the Netherlands, 1800–1900’, Continuity and Change 22, 2 (2007), 215–52CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

74 See Massey and Denton, ‘Dimensions’.

75 See Van Engelsdorp Gastelaars, Vijgen and Wagenaar, ‘Jewish Amsterdam’.

76 Tilly, ‘Transplanted networks’.

77 Grewel, F., ‘De joden van Amsterdam’, Mens en Maatschappij 30 (1955), 338–50Google Scholar; Tammes, P., ‘Jewish–Gentile intermarriage in pre-war Amsterdam’, History of the Family 15, 3 (2010), 298–315CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

78 Gans, ‘Comment’.

79 Lieberson, ‘Impact of residential segregation’.