About: List of West European Jews

Apart from France, established Jewish populations exist in the Netherlands, Belgium, Italy and Switzerland. With the original medieval populations wiped out by the Black Death and the pogroms that followed it, the current Dutch and Belgian communities originate in the Jewish expulsion from Spain and Portugal, while a Swiss community was only established after emancipation in 1874. However, the vast majority of the population in the Netherlands and a large proportion of the one in Belgium were murdered in the Holocaust, and much of the modern Jewish population of these countries (as well as of Switzerland) derives from post-Holocaust arrivals from other parts of Europe. Here is a list of some prominent Jews in western Europe, arranged by country of origin.