Amsterdam is the capital of the Netherlands as well as its largest city. It is named for a dam built on the Amstel River, next to the IJ Bay. The bay provides easy access to the IJsselmeer (formerly Zuiderzee) which, until dammed, let out into the North Sea. Originally a fishing village, Amsterdam experienced a Golden Age of trade in the 17th Century and remains a major financial center. Today, greater Amsterdam is home to roughly one and a half million people.

Amsterdam was the center of Dutch Jewry, with approximately two out of every three Dutch Jews living in the city immediately before World War II (65,000 Jews in the city). Jews comprised approximately 10% of the city’s population. The Jewish community of Amsterdam was concentrated in southeastern sections of the city. These included the Jewish slums of the old city, the Plantage, or Plantation built outside the old Jewish Quarter by wealthier Jews, and the newer River Quarter to the south.

During the Holocaust, the Jews of Amsterdam were easily segregated from the rest of the city due to their concentration in southeastern districts. The canals running through the city served as barriers keeping Jews in the Jewish Quarter of the city; the Nazis rarely had to put up barriers to create a ghetto. Jews were kept in the Hollandsche Schouwberg or Dutch Theater of the Jewish Quarter, awaiting shipment to Kamp Westerbork. Children were held across the street in a day care center, from where many were brought to safety.

The most famous persecuted resident of Amsterdam, Anne Frank, was hidden in a canal house on Prinsengracht, in the outer Canal Belt. Her family was betrayed to the Nazis, the identity of the betrayer still unknown.

Amsterdam is known for its city-wide strike against the persecution of its Jewish community in 1941. The Februaristaking or February Strike eventually spread to other towns and cities. Today, Amsterdam is still the center of a significantly reduced Dutch Jewish population of 40,000.