Jews and the House of Orange | 400 Years of History

From 18 April to 30 September 2018, there will be an exhibition on the relationship between the Jewish community in the Netherlands and the House of Orange.

This relationship can be traced back to the seventeenth century, when Sephardi and Ashkenazi Jews immigrated to the Dutch Republic. To the Jews, the House of Orange represented the values of liberty, religious toleration, and protection. In the nineteenth century, the monarch became the symbol of national unity and the affection for the House of Orange grew stronger.

The Jewish community expressed its love of the royal house in numerous ways, ranging from personal gifts to prayers of thanks printed on orange paper. The socialist movement, which was anti-royalist and acquired a large following among Jews in the Netherlands, produced the first rifts in the relationship, but the threat of anti-Semitism in Germany led the Jewish community, again as a whole, to revive its close embrace of the House of Orange. The events of the Second World War had a profound impact on the relationship between the Jewish community and the House of Orange.

This exhibition is no longer on show
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