Jews as Exotica

It is a casual review by a travel writer. Under the 

caption: 'Dutch Tolerance', an eye-catching phrase 

in descriptions of the preeminent place of 16thC

Amsterdam as a cosmopolitan destination: "The 

atmosphere ... created attracted a high-energy mix 

of humanity; immigrants, Jews, outcasts and political

rebels" ... raising my antennae so fine-tuned and

polished over the years, heavy in the ongoing 

experience of anti-Semitism that racists declare 

non-existent. Dutch tolerance is it? That would be 

the country where 75percent of its well-integrated

hundreds-of-years-old Jewish demographic 

failed to survive the holocaust, where of those Jews 

who went into hiding, a third were betrayed by 

Dutch fascist Nazi collaborators. The Netherlands 

of today sensitively protects prostitution, exercising

a liberal view of recreational drug use. In a previous 

iteration the Dutch were great seafarers, colonizing

 countries from South America to Africa and Asia

the most cruel of foreign occupiers whose flagrant 

abuse of native peoples shocked even their French 

and British counterparts. The Netherlands today

invites tourists to visit the numerous sites of WWII

Nazi work camps where Jews were interned as slave

labourers before transport to the notoriously successful 

Auschwitz, where the work of the Final Solution 

was assiduously carried out to free the world of

the onerous, poisonous presence of such exotics.