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How the Holocaust is remembered in the land of Anne Frank
(JTA) — You’d think that in a country so closely identified with Anne Frank — perhaps the Holocaust’s best-known victim — cultivating memory of the genocide wouldn’t be a steep challenge.
That’s why a recent survey, suggesting what the authors called a “disturbing” lack of knowledge in the Netherlands about the Holocaust, set off alarm bells. “Survey shows lack of Holocaust awareness in the Netherlands,” wrote the Associated Press. “In the Netherlands, a majority do not know the Holocaust affected their country,” was the JTA headline. “The Holocaust is a myth, a quarter of Dutch younger generation agree,” per the Jerusalem Post.
“Survey after survey, we continue to witness a decline in Holocaust knowledge and awareness. Equally disturbing is the trend towards Holocaust denial and distortion,” Gideon Taylor, the president of the Conference of Jewish Material Claims Against Germany, which conducted the study, said in a statement.
Like other recent studies by Claims Conference, the latest survey has been challenged by some scholars, who say the sample size is small, or the survey is too blunt a tool for examining what a country’s residents do or don’t know about their history. Even one of the experts who conducted the survey chose to focus on the positive findings: “I am encouraged by the number of respondents to this survey that believe Holocaust education is important,” Emile Schrijver, the general director of Amsterdam’s Jewish Cultural Quarter, told JTA.
One of the scholars who says the survey doesn’t capture the subtleties of Holocaust education and commemoration in the Netherlands is Jazmine Contreras, an assistant professor of history at Goucher College in Maryland. Contreras studies the historical memory of the Holocaust and Second World War in Holland. In a Twitter thread earlier this week, she agreed with those who say that “the headline that’s being plastered everywhere exaggerates the idea that young people in NL know nothing about the Holocaust.”
At the same time, she notes that while the Netherlands takes Holocaust education and commemoration seriously, it has a long way to go in reckoning with a past that includes collaboration with the Nazis, postwar antisemitism, a small but vocal far right and a sense of national victimhood that often downplays the experience of Jews during the Shoah.
“It’s such a complex issue,” Contreras told me. “There’s no one answer to how the Holocaust is remembered in the Netherlands.”
Today is International Holocaust Remembrance Day, and I took the opportunity to speak with Contreras not only about Dutch memory, but how the Netherlands may serve as an example of how countries deal with Holocaust memory and the national stories they tell.
Our interview was edited for length and clarity.
Jewish Telegraphic Agency: Tell me a little bit about when you saw the survey, and perhaps how it didn’t mesh with what you know about the Netherlands?
Jazmine Contreras: My major problem is that every single outlet is picking up this story and running a headline like, “Youth in the Netherlands don’t even know the Holocaust happened there. They cannot tell you how many people were killed, how many were deported.” And I think that’s really problematic because it paints a really simplistic picture of Holocaust memory and Holocaust education in that country.
There are multiple programs, in Amsterdam, in other cities, in Westerbork, the former transit camp. They have an ongoing program that brings survivors and the second generation to colleges, to middle schools and primary schools all across the country. And they also have in Amsterdam a program called Oorlog in Mijn Buurt, “War in My Neighborhood,” and basically young people become the “memory bearers” — that’s the kind of language they use — and interview people who grew up and experience the war in their neighborhood, and then speak as if they were the person who experienced it, in the first person.
You also have events around the May 4 commemoration remembering the Dutch who died in war and in peacekeeping operations, and a program called Open Jewish Houses [when owners of formerly Jewish property open their homes to strangers to talk about the Jews who used to live there]. It’s really amazing: I’ve actually been able to visit these formerly Jewish homes and hear the stories. And, of course, the Anne Frank House has its own slew of programming, and teachers talk a lot about the Holocaust and take students to synagogues in places like Groningen, where they have a brand new exhibit at the synagogue. They are taking thousands at this point. The new National Holocaust Names Memorial is in the center of Amsterdam.
I think, again, this idea that children are growing up without having exposure to Holocaust memory, or knowledge of what happened in the Netherlands, is a bit skewed. I think we get into a dangerous area if we’re painting the country with a broad brush and saying nobody knows anything about the Holocaust.
Have you anecdotal evidence or seen studies of Dutch kids about whether they’re getting the education they need?
Anecdotally, yes. I was invited to attend a children’s commemoration that they do at the Hollandsche Schouwburg theater in Amsterdam, which is the former Dutch theater that was used as a major deportation site. And it’s children who put on a commemoration themselves. Again, not every child is participating in this, but if they’re not participating in the children’s commemoration, then they’re doing the “War in My Neighborhood” program, or they’re doing Open Jewish Houses, or they’re taking field trips. That’s pretty impressive to me, and it’s pretty meaningful. They want to help participate in it in the future. They want to come back because it leaves a lasting impression for them.
Let’s back up a bit. Anne Frank dominates everyone’s thinking about Holland and the Holocaust. And I guess the story that’s told is that she was protected by her neighbors until, of course, the Nazis proved too powerful, found her and sent her away. What’s right and what’s wrong about that narrative?
Don’t forget that Anne Frank was a German Jewish refugee who came to the Netherlands. And I think that part of the story is also really interesting and left out. She’s this Dutch icon, but she was a German Jewish refugee who came to the Netherlands, and the Dutch Jewish community was single-handedly responsible for funding, at Westerbork, what was first a refugee center. I think that’s really complicated because now we also have a discourse about present-day refugees and the Holocaust.
Jazmine Contreras, an assistant professor of history at Goucher College, specializes in Dutch Holocaust memory. (Courtesy)
I’ve also never quite understood the insistence on making her an icon when the end of the story is that she’s informed on and dies in a concentration camp. The idea that the Franks were hidden here fits really well into this idea of Dutch resistance and tolerance, and her diary often gets misquoted to kind of represent her as someone who had hope despite the fact that she was being persecuted. In the 1950s, her narrative gets adopted into the U.S., and we treat it as this globalizing human rights discourse.
We don’t talk about the fact that she’s found because she’s informed upon, and we don’t talk about the fact that you had non-Jewish civilians who were informers for a multitude of reasons, including ideological collaboration and their own financial gain.
And when it was talked about most recently, it was about a discredited book that named her betrayer as a Jew.
That was a huge controversy.
I get the sense from your writing that the story the Dutch tell about World War II is very incomplete, and that they haven’t fully reckoned with their collaboration under Nazi occupation even as they emphasize their own victimhood.
On the national state level, they have officially acknowledged not only the extensive collaboration, but the failure of both the government and the Crown to speak out on behalf of Dutch Jews. [In 2020, Prime Minister Mark Rutte formally apologized for how his kingdom’s wartime government failed its Jews, a first by a sitting prime minister.] Now, the question is, what’s happening in broader Dutch society?
Unfortunately, there was an increase in voting for the Dutch far right, although they’ve never managed to get a majority or even come close to it.
Something else that’s happening is that many ask, “Why should Dutch Jews get separate consideration after the Second World War, a separate victimhood, when we were all victimized?” The Netherlands is unique because it’s occupied for the entirety of the Second World War — 1940 to 1945. There is the civil service collaborating, right, but there’s no occupation government. So it’s not like Belgium. It’s not like France, not like Denmark. And there was the Hunger Winter of 1944-45 when 20,000 civilians perished due to famine. You have real victimhood, so people ask, “Why are the Jews so special? We all suffered.”
And at the same time, scholarship keeps emerging about the particular ways non-Jewish Dutch companies and individuals cooperated with the Nazis.
The NIOD Institute for War, Holocaust and Genocide Studies in Amsterdam, which has done so much of this research, found that Jews who were deported had to pay utility bills for when they weren’t living there. You have a huge controversy around the the Dutch railway [which said it would compensate hundreds of Holocaust victims for its role in shipping Jews to death camps]. The Dutch Red Cross apologized [in 2017 for failing to act to protect Jews during World War II], following the publication of a research paper on its inaction. A couple of decades ago, the government basically auctioned off paintings, jewelry and other Jewish possessions, and in 2020 they started the effort to give back pieces of art that were in Dutch museums. Dienke Hondius wrote a book on the cold reception given to survivors upon their return. Remco Ensel and Evelien Gans also wrote a book on postwar Jewish antisemitism.
So a lot has been happening, a lot of controversies, and, thanks to all of this research, a lot happening in order to rectify the situation.
It sounds like a mixed story, of resistance and collaboration, and of rewriting the past but also coming to terms with it.
There’s a really complex history here of both wanting to present it as “everybody’s a victim” and that the resistance was huge. In fact, the data shows 5% of the people were involved in resistance and 5% were collaborators. So it’s not like this wholesale collaboration or resistance was happening. It was only in 1943, when non-Jewish men were called up for labor service in Germany, that they got really good at hiding people and by then it was too late.
Right. My colleagues at JTA often note that the Nazis killed or deported more Dutch Jews per capita than anywhere in occupied Western Europe — of about 110,000 Jews deported, only a few thousand survived.
Yes, the highest percentage of deportation in Western Europe.
A room at the Anne Frank House museum where she and her family hid for two years during the Holocaust in Amsterdam, the Netherlands. (Photo Collection Anne Frank House)
Since this week is International Holocaust Remembrance Day, let me ask what Holland gets right and wrong compared to maybe some other European countries with either similar experiences or comparable experiences.
The framing of that question is difficult because there’s so many unique points about the Holocaust and the occupation in the Netherlands. Again, it was occupied for the entirety of 1940-45. You have a civil service that was willing to sign Aryan declarations. The queen, as head of a government in exile in London, is basically saying, “Do what you need to just to survive.”
One of the big problems is there are people like Geert Wilders [a contemporary right-wing Dutch lawmaker] who practice this kind of philo-Semitism and support of Israel, but it’s really about blaming the Muslim population for antisemitism and saying none of it is homegrown. They don’t have to talk about the fact that there was widespread antisemitism in the aftermath of the Holocaust.
In the Netherlands they’re not instituting laws around what you can and can’t say about the Holocaust like in Poland [where criticizing Polish collaboration has been criminalized]. There are so many amazing educational initiatives and nonprofit organizations that are doing the work. And even these public controversies ended up being outlets for the production of Holocaust memory when survivors, but mostly now the second and third generations, use that space to talk about their own family Holocaust history.
Tell me about your personal stake in this: How did the Holocaust become a subject of study for you?
I specialize in Dutch Holocaust memory. I’m not Jewish, but my grandparents on my mother’s side are Dutch. For my first project I looked at relationships between German soldiers and Dutch women during the war during the occupation, and I eventually kind of made my way into the post war, when these children of former collaborators were still very marginalized in Dutch society. It ties into this. I do interviews with members of the Jewish community, children of resistance members and children of collaborators and how these memory politics play out.
What is the utility of events like International Holocaust Remembrance Day and the major Holocaust memorials in educating the public about the Holocaust and World War II?
International Holocaust Remembrance Day and May 4 result in the production of new memories about the Holocaust and the Second World War. I was at the 2020 International Holocaust Remembrance Day commemoration when the prime minister formally apologized. It was a really big moment, and it allowed the Jewish community, and the Roma and Sinti community, a space to remember and to share in that and to speak to it as survivors and the second and third generation.
Unlike the United States, the Netherlands is a small, insular country, so the relationship between the public and the media and academics is so close. So in the weeks before and the weeks after these memorials, academics, politicians and experts are publishing pieces about memory. That’s useful to the production of new memories and information about the Holocaust.
But what about the other days of the year? Will putting a monument in the center of Amsterdam actually change how people understand the Holocaust? That is a question that I think is harder to answer. The new monument features individual names of 102,000 Jews and Roma and Sinti and visually gives you the scope of what the Holocaust looked like in the Netherlands. But does that matter if somebody lives outside of Amsterdam and they’re never going to see this monument?
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Minnesota’s Democratic nominee is an Israel critic – but she is not El-Sayed 2.0
(JTA) — Peggy Flanagan, the likely next senator from Minnesota, defeated a moderate pro-Israel congresswoman, accuses Israel of genocide and says she would oppose offensive weapons sales to Israel.
If the victory Tuesday of the state’s lieutenant governor over Rep. Angie Craig sounds like an echo of last week’s election in another midwestern state, Michigan, listen a little closer: Flanagan differs from Abdul El-Sayed in critical if subtle ways when it comes to Israel and Jews.
Flanagan has not joined El-Sayed and a number of left-wing challengers for Congress in saying that she would oppose U.S. funding for defensive weapons like the Iron Dome missile program.
Her platform says she would have joined the two incumbent Minnesota senators, Amy Klobuchar – who is running for governor, and whom she hopes to replace – and Tina Smith “in voting to halt offensive weapons sales to Israel.” That places her within the current Democratic mainstream: 40 out of 47 senators who caucus with the Democrats voted in April for the bill banning offensive weapons when it came up.
Her platform also calls for “a two-state solution which allows for a secure Israel and Palestinian self-determination.” El-Sayed will not commit to recognizing Israel’s existence as a Jewish state, or to a two-state solution.
The crisis moment in El-Sayed’s relationship with his state’s Jewish community came when he appeared to equivocate in condemning a violent attack on a Detroit area synagogue in March when pre-school was in session.
Flanagan was unequivocal: “Our Jewish communities are facing unprecedented levels of violence and threats,” she wrote then on social media. “It is on all of us to call anti-semitism out when we see and hear it, and to make sure that all of our faith communities are treated with respect. Hate brings no one more safety, more dignity, or more peace.”
She is equally as adamant when the threat is closer to home. In 2025, on the anniversary of the Oct. 7, 2023 attack, a different synagogue called Temple Israel in Minneapolis was vandalized with graffiti in the shape of two inverted triangles — a symbol associated with Hamas — and reading “Al-Aqsa Flood,” Hamas’ name for its attack on Israel.
“Last night, Temple Israel in Minneapolis was defaced with anti-Semitic hate,” Flanagan wrote. “My heart is with the congregants of Temple Israel and our entire Jewish community. Hate has no home in Minnesota, and every house of worship should be a safe place to pray.”
There are things that Flanagan has done and said that nonetheless unsettled the pro-Israel community.
Some Jewish Democrats voiced concern to the Minnesota Star Tribune that Flanagan played into antisemitic tropes by singling out the American Israel Public Affairs Committee in her campaign against Craig – a page out of El-Sayed’s playbook in defeating AIPAC-backed Rep. Haley Stevens, and the playbook of a number of progressive congressional candidates this year. During the lead-up to the primary, Flanagan was vocal about her opponent Craig’s support from the pro-Israel lobby, calling her “AIPAC’s candidate.”
A Flanagan spokesperson told the paper that she has “consistently condemned antisemitism and will continue standing with Jewish Minnesotans against hate.” Flanagan’s campaign did not return a request for comment.
Flanagan had the support of Israel-critical progressives, including Sen. Bernie Sanders, the Vermont senator who authored the proposed ban on the sale of offensive weapons, and Rep. Ilhan Omar of Minnesota. Like them – and unlike Smith and Klobuchar – she has accused Israel of genocide.
She also drew the endorsement of progressive Jewish organization Bend the Arc.
“She is a close friend of the Twin Cities Jewish community and a trusted ally in the fight against antisemitism,” wrote Bend the Arc’s CEO, Jamie Beran. “She understands that Jewish safety is bound up with the safety and freedom of all our neighbors.”
Now, Flanagan will take on Republican nominee Michele Tafoya, a former NFL sideline reporter who has expressed support for Israel and its war with the U.S. in Iran. Minnesota has not elected a Republican U.S. Senator since 2002. Flanagan is favored to win in a state which has trended increasingly blue in recent years.
Flanagan also says she will not support New York’s Chuck Schumer if he chooses to seek another term as party leader in the Senate. Schumer is a pro-Israel stalwart.
Republicans, who control the Senate, have unanimously voted against Sanders’ resolutions, rendering them essentially symbolic tools for Democrats to voice disapproval of the Israeli government. If progressive Israel critics like El-Sayed and Troy Jackson in Maine win in November and help flip the Senate — and especially if Schumer gives up leadership — the pathway to blocking weapons sales to Israel would become clearer than ever.
This article originally appeared on JTA.org.
The post Minnesota’s Democratic nominee is an Israel critic – but she is not El-Sayed 2.0 appeared first on The Forward.
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‘History cannot be erased’: ‘Hostages Square’ in Tel Aviv is formalized in official name change
(JTA) — The plaza that became the center of Israel’s campaign to bring home the 251 captives Hamas seized on Oct.7, 2023 is now formally called “Hostages Square,” establishing a permanent reminder of the more than two-year struggle that ended with the return of the final hostage in January.
Mayor Ron Huldai unveiled new signage at the plaza outside the Tel Aviv Museum of Art on Wednesday, formally adopting the name Israelis had used for the site for close to three years.
Hostage families and their supporters gathered at the square for mass rallies, weekly Shabbat gatherings, vigils and public events demanding the release of those held in Gaza. The plaza was also filled with crowds celebrating as hostages returned home.
“History cannot be erased, and we must not allow it to be forgotten,” Huldai said at the unveiling. “The decision to name this place ‘Hostages Square’ is intended to ensure that this chapter in the history of the State of Israel, from October 7, 2023 until the return of the final hostage, Ran Gvili, on January 26, 2026, will be remembered for generations.”
The formal designation settles a debate over whether or not the site’s role in one of the more significant events in Israel history should be remembered or erased.
After a deal was announced in October 2025 to free the remaining living hostages, Dani Miran, whose son Omri spent 738 days in Hamas captivity, personally urged Huldai to rename the plaza “Returnees Square.” Other proposals included “Heroes Square” and names emphasizing unity, while relatives of hostages whose bodies were still being held in Gaza argued that the existing name should remain until everyone was returned.
The last hostage, police officer Ran Gvili, was returned to Israel on Jan. 26 after his remains were recovered in Gaza. The following day, the clock in Hostages Square that had counted the time since Oct. 7 was stopped after 844 days.
The site still carries a political charge: In July, protesters met at the square to call for an official inquiry into the lapses that facilitated the Oct. 7 attacks, something Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has fiercely resisted. The alleged failures of the day have become an issue ahead of Oct. 27 elections.
Rebecca Geller, who handled international communications for the Hostages and Missing Families Forum and spent much of the war alongside hostage families at the square, said she was glad the name was being formally preserved.
“Whatever the space will be in the future, it will be important to honour” what it meant during the war, she said. “It gave the families a place to come to feel the support of the community, to get out of the house and to be nourished through the worst times of their lives, body and soul.”
By July, Tel Aviv’s municipal naming committee had backed Huldai’s proposal to make “Hostages Square” the plaza’s official name, saying it had become a national symbol of solidarity and the campaign to return the captives. Until then, the site was officially known as the plaza outside the Tel Aviv Museum of Art despite “Hostages Square” becoming its universally recognized name.
“This was the site of a courageous and determined struggle led by families who did everything they could to bring their loved ones home,” Huldai said. “Tel Aviv-Yafo had the privilege of being their home, and together with residents of the city and people from across Israel, this square became a center of solidarity, mutual responsibility and an unwavering demand: bring them all home.”
“This square will remain a testament to the families, to their struggle and to the commitment never to give up on anyone. We will not allow this story to be forgotten.”
The square may now be permanent, but Google has yet to get the memo: as of Thursday, its Maps listing marked Hostages Square as “permanently closed.”
Geller said the square remains a difficult place to visit.
“I struggle to return there – even when I’m just going to the art museum – because it always brings up the emotion that was held there,” she said. “For me, it will always be Hostages Square.”
This article originally appeared on JTA.org.
The post ‘History cannot be erased’: ‘Hostages Square’ in Tel Aviv is formalized in official name change appeared first on The Forward.
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War and uncertainty drives Israelis seeking quiet abroad
(JTA) — When Iris Meiri-Snir moved from Israel to northern Italy last month, she gave up a job she loved, proximity to her children and grandchildren, and the social and professional ties she had built over a lifetime.
She and her husband, Hagai Agmon-Snir, left for their home in Mevaseret Zion, an explicitly ideological choice that places them among a growing number of Israelis building their lives elsewhere.
Meiri-Snir was vice principal at a leading Jerusalem high school, while Agmon-Snir, a neuroscientist, spent decades working on coexistence initiatives involving Palestinians, Haredim, LGBTQ Israelis and other communities. As the country pushed right-ward, they found themselves increasingly on the fringe.
“Leaving is our way of expressing our opposition,” he said, adding that he would encourage others who felt the same way to do likewise.
For years, the couple belonged to the optimistic camp that believed Israeli society could still return to the liberal values they upheld. By the time they decided to move to Arona, a town on Lake Maggiore in northern Italy, that conviction had disappeared. Despite their comfortable lives in Israel, they no longer felt they could justify staying.
They have been public about their journey out of their homeland, speaking with JTA and Israel’s Channel 11. “If I ignore all the political and social crap happening around me, what do I have to complain about here?” he told the Kan public broadcaster in an interview filmed before the couple left Israel. “We’ve got it pretty good.”
“But it’s no longer possible to be part of what’s happening here,” he added, arguing that a “fascist current” in Israel had moved into the mainstream.
The Snirs are not alone. A Tel Aviv University study showed that Israeli immigration has remained at record levels, with an estimated 40,000 and 50,000 citizens exiting for at least a year in each of the past three years, a record run of emigration that began amid the political upheaval of 2023. Itcontinued through the wars that followed the Oct. 7 Hamas-led attack that year.
The authors of the study said the current numbers do not yet pose a significant economic or security risk, but warned that could change if emigration continues to rise. They pointed to what they called a “dangerous” increase in the so-called brain drain, or the departure of highly educated, high-earning Israelis. A separate Israel Tax Authority study found that emigrants’ incomes before leaving were about 50% higher than the national average, with doctors and engineers disproportionately represented.
The movement, however, is not all in one direction. More than 22,500 new immigrants arrived in Israel in 2025, including about 8,500 from Western countries such as the United States, France, Britain and Canada. Overall aliyah fell by about a third, largely because of a steep decline in arrivals from Russia, but immigration from several Western countries rose: French aliyah more than tripled between 2023 and 2025, while North American immigration also increased.
For some of those newcomers, the same wars and upheaval that have helped drive Israelis abroad have instead strengthened their desire to live in Israel, where they seek solidarity with a people under siege. More than 2,300 North American Jews were planning to move to Israel this summer, about 15% more than in recent years, according to Nefesh B’Nefesh, which facilitates aliyah.
Across social media, dozens of groups cater to Israelis considering emigration, a move known as yerida — the inverse of aliyah — though native-born Israelis more commonly use the English loanword “relocation.” In one English-speaking Facebook group, members cited security fears, repeated wars, financial instability, the high cost of living and dissatisfaction with the education system.
For new arrivals to Israel some of the pressures are particular to life as an immigrant. People in the group described struggling with the language, the absence of family nearby and, particularly among Europeans, frustration with a welfare system they felt offered far less help than their native countries during illness, unemployment or other crises.
One woman posting said she had become disillusioned with the aliyah dream she felt had been sold to her by the Zionist Federation, but later softened that criticism, telling JTA in a private message that the organization had done “so much good” for her family and that she had written the post while angry about the war.
Ishai, originally from San Francisco and now exploring a move to Prague, said the cost of living and “endless and pointless wars” were part of why he wanted to leave. His disillusionment with Israel’s treatment of Palestinians began during his military service in the West Bank and intensified after Oct. 7. Like Agmon-Snir, he used the word “fascist” to describe what he sees taking hold in Israeli society. Most Israelis, he said, have “zero ambition for a better place in any meaningful way.”
“They either worship Bibi or think he’s the source of all the problems,” he said, referring to Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu by his nickname.
With elections approaching, Ishai, who asked to be identified only by his first name because “this kind of talk could get me killed or at least fired,” said he saw little prospect of change at the ballot box.
“They all proclaim the exact same policies,” he said. Yair Golan, the former deputy IDF chief who leads the left-wing Democrats party, was the only major politician saying anything “even remotely towards peace,” Ishai said, though in his view Golan still advocated ruling Palestinians “with an iron fist.”
Anna Lukatsky, a Jaffa-based stylist and content creator, is moving to the Greek island of Paros for seven months after the High Holidays. The political climate played a role in the decision, she said, but was far from the determining factor, and she deliberately chooses not to dwell on it. “I have nothing to say politically beyond what has already been said.”
Oct. 7 did, however, reinforce a feeling that she should stop putting off the life she wanted. “There is never a good time to fulfill a dream. When things are good, it’s not a good time, and when things are bad, you can’t,” she said. “Anything can happen. Now is the time to live.”
She is going with her two daughters, 15 and 16, and their father — her longtime partner — whom she married only two weeks ago in an online Utah ceremony, mainly to help secure a European visa. Practical questions such as schooling and what comes next do not appear to trouble her much. Her daughters, both musicians, are not enrolled in school in Greece but will continue music lessons over Zoom. She seemed equally unfazed by what would happen to the belongings they leave behind.
“Who cares about a sofa or a plate when I’m moving to Paros?”
Beyond Paros, she has no fixed plans for what the family will do next — and where — only “plenty of dreams still to fulfill.”
While Israeli communities have formed in other Greek destinations such as Thessaloniki, Lukatsky said she was not seeking one out in Paros.
“I see myself by the sea in Greece, financially secure, writing my book, with time for my family,” she said.
Several weeks after moving to Arona, Meiri-Snir said life had become “very busy,” much of it socially. She and Agmon-Snir are part of a local circle of Israelis who meet regularly for dinners and other gatherings, while also spending time with a wider group of mostly European expats who meet each week for lunch. So far, she said, they have no regrets about the move.
Meiri-Snir described the reception from locals as uniformly warm, and said the couple were already recognized at local establishments.
“We don’t hide that we’re from Israel,” she told JTA over WhatsApp. People sometimes greet them with “shalom” or tell them they hope things will be all right in Israel.
“We haven’t felt any antisemitism at all,” she said.
Meiri-Snir was careful not to generalize from their experience. “I’m not trying to erase other people’s experiences of antisemitism,” she said, adding that she expected the atmosphere could be different in larger cities such as Milan or Bologna.
“Here it’s an area of small towns and villages, and the atmosphere is different,” she said. “
People are mostly concerned with their own affairs, and the attitude toward us here has been very pleasant and positive. That might surprise Israelis.”
This article originally appeared on JTA.org.
The post War and uncertainty drives Israelis seeking quiet abroad appeared first on The Forward.
