I have mentioned on this blog several times how much I enjoy my walks trough old historical centre of Amsterdam and how much I admire the beautiful old houses - however, the more I learn about it, the more I realise that a lot of the old town was totally demolished (for various reasons) and what has survived was a complete accident, because the whole streets and neighbourhoods were moved away to create space for new buildings. The understanding that historical area must be preserved did not really occur before 1970s - before that, quite a lot of beautiful old houses were simply gone forever. I have already mention the area of Kattenburg where the whole street disappeared, but how about the whole neighbourhood that was gone?
Recent visit to Stadsarchief where they had exposition "Déjà vu" reminded me that actual photographs still exist about the Jewish neighbourhood that once existed around what is now Watterlooplein with Opera House/City Hall. From what we know, it was one of the few artificial islands in the city centre and it was overcrowded with the poorest Jewish inhabitants - it was also close to local Synagogue that still stands there. It was one old photograph on that exhibition that fascinated me (a beautiful view on the whole island from the tower of Zuiderkerk) and the impression stayed with me until I did some research and found an excellent documentary called "Vlooienburg, the history of a Jewish quarter".
https://npo.nl/start/video/vlooienburg-de-geschiedenis-van-een-joodse-wijk
What a joy! Not as in joyful story but as in archaeological discovery - apparently I am not the only one interested in the old buildings and the history of the city - the documentary was everything I always wanted to know about the now disappeared neighbourhood. It explains that the whole area behind De Blauwbrug was originally Jewish and how these particular Jews were actually relatively well-off until refugees from other places around Europe started coming in, making it a overcrowded slum. (Later some of these families would move to a new neighbourhood in the South of Amsterdam called Transvaalbuurt which had beautiful new houses and spacious rooms, but it was far away from historical centre with Synagogue) There was a large number of Jews from Portugal's city Porto and everybody had to adapt to the rules and traditions of the new city.
Vlooienburg was an artificial island of rectangular shape and it had four blocks with tightly squeezed houses next to each other - it housed around 7 000 people and it was a very poor area, as Jews were prohibited from most of the crafts and were only allowed several options, including diamond cutting. Where for centuries Amsterdam was a safe haven for all the Jews escaping dangers, pogroms and inquisitions, it all changed in WW2 when Germans occupied the country and eliminated 75 % of Amsterdam's Jews. Not only were the inhabitants all arrested, deported and murdered but the houses were also pillaged (for firewood) and left empty and demolished until the City Hall eventually decided to turn the whole area in the parking lot, than used it to built a new City Hall & Opera House there.
What we now call Waterlooplein with its Flea market, was in fact a totally different neighbourhood and there is absolutely nothing left of it (except old Moses and Aaron Church) - in the documentary, archeologists were digging in a cesspits left behind these demolished houses and discovering traces of food, pottery and cutlery that showed traces of imports from Portugal and other places. I ended up watching not one but two documentaries about history of Amsterdam and had a great time.
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