History of the Jews in Curaçao

The history of the Jews in Curaçao (a constituent country of the Kingdom of the Netherlands) can be traced back to the mid-17th century, when the first Jewish immigrants began to arrive.

Initially, they sought refuge in nearby Portugal but eventually spread throughout Europe into other places with larger Jewish populations, like Belgium, Greece, Italy, Turkey, and Holland.

[1] So many of the Sephardic Jews from Spain and Portugal had settled in Amsterdam, that by the year 1700, the city's community was the largest Jewish center in Western Europe.

When the Dutch West India Company began efforts to exploit the resources of the Americas and was placed in charge of colonizing, the Sephardim became involved as translators and traders.

[3] The first Jew on the island, Samuel Cohen, was part of the conquering fleet and had served as an interpreter to Dutch commander Johannes van Walbeeck.

[4] Granted a two-mile strip of land along the coast by the West India Company, these settlers established the community of Mikve Israel with the plan of farming.

[3][4] They were joined by a group of around seventy colonists arriving in 1659,[3] under the patronage of Isaac da Costa, who brought with them a Torah scroll, as a gift from the Jewish congregation of Amsterdam.

[5] Their interests spread to banking and commerce,[4] importing goods like cloth, tools, utensils and weapons from relatives in Europe and exchanging or selling them to obtain foodstuffs, hides, tobacco and wood from other colonies.

Utilizing architectural styles with which they were familiar, these merchants built homes similar to those they had left in Amsterdam, which had living quarters on the upper floors and warehouses for their goods on the lower levels.

The same year marked the arrival of the community's first qualified rabbi; Josiau de David Pardo, a Dutch emigrant and son-in-law of the Torah scholar Saul Levi Morteira.

[5] A portion of the Jewish population emigrated to Newport, Rhode Island in 1694; historian Max J. Kohler surmised that this was because the Curaçao settlement had proved "unsuccessful" for some families, despite its religious and civil freedoms.

[citation needed] An exception was Phelipe Henriquez (1660-1718), a Jewish trader who oversaw transshipment of more than three thousand slaves via Curaçao to Cartagena between 1680 and 1701.

[5] For the Jews of Otrobanda, a problem arose, in that crossing the harbor to attend services was a breach in the prohibition of working on the Sabbath; thus, in 1746 another synagogue, Neve Shalom, was built as a de facto satellite of Mikve Israel.

In the early eighteenth century a Jewish merchant, Daniel Cohen Henriquez, also occupied a central position as the sorter of tobacco grades prior to its export to Amsterdam.

The island inhabitants raised a National Guard, including Jewish officers Haim Abinun de Lima, Raphael Alvares Correa and Abraham Shalom Delvalle, which repelled the invasion.

He took refuge within the Jewish community in Otrobanda and was able to cultivate support for his independence movement through the mutual disdain for Spanish rule, which he shared with the Curaçaoan Jews.

As men were unable to attain employment, they left the island, relocating to Danish held St. Thomas or to Latin America where countries were beginning to gain their independence and overturn the Inquisition laws.

Many Sephardic women attended Colegio Colonial, a school directed by José R. Henriquez and his wife, where they learned arithmetic, astronomy, etiquette, general religion, geography, languages, reading and writing, along with students from Colombia, the Dominican Republic and Venezuela.

One such project was spearheaded by Rebecca Cohen Henriquez, who led the members of "Club Entre Nous" to build Queen Wilhelmina Park in 1899.

[25][26] Rabbi Zerach Warhaftig, a Polish Zionist leader, heard about the scheme and arranged with the temporary Dutch consul in Kaunas, businessman Jan Zwartendijk, to issue "Curaçao visas" to anyone who requested them.

[27] Without receiving permission from the Dutch diplomatic mission in Riga,[28] Zwartendijk issued 2,200 Curaçao visas between July 24 and August 2, 1940, the day before his office was closed by the Soviets.