Amsterdam in the early 1980s
 

In 1982, Dutch photographer Ed van der Elsken shot a film of "his" Amsterdam. Amsterdam has always been both the subject and the object of his work. He started of living on Nieuwmarkt, and indeed, this area, the old jewish quarter that had just survived the war, featured massively in his early work.

But this is Amsterdam in the 1980s, at the time of Ed's film, "the present". Amsterdam is more eccentric, grubbier, edgier, than it is now. He's shooting during the "Festival of Fools" which explains the presence of many mimes.

The backbone of the film is a number of "flying shots", that take you through Amsterdam's topography, the meat of the film is the series of street shot sequences, with Ed's commentary.

Enjoy

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mHUoqM3iyag

As context, I'm adding a video that catalogues the whole sale demolition of the old Jewish area in the late 1970s:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Te8jo7ZKu0o

Van der Elsken's film should be seen in that context too, because these demolitions had spawned an active and belligerent squatter's movement, which flourished right at the time when he shot his film.

Very interesting - thanks for sharing.
The first film is how I remember Amsterdam on my first trip there with my parents when I was around 13/14. I don't remember many details but an overall impression of a city where quaint/cute and rough/edgy were very close together.. pretty exciting for a kid from the countryside.
Looking back, I have to smile when people nowadays warn others to avoid the "seedy" or dangerous places of Amsterdam.

Yes exactly. All that is gone and has been cleaned up.

I shall watch the films later when I am at the PC.
My first visit to Amsterdam was in 1978, when you had to walk through a mass of dodgy characters offering all sorts of things, upon arrival at C.S. As a twenty year old woman it was a bit scary.
An American friend described it at the time as the armpit of the world.:)

The haunting and at times mournful clarinet says it all. Thank you Menachem.

Ah yes the sleaze was ubiquitous in the early 80s in Amsterdam - a time when I took hundreds of folks thru it on tours and more than a few were victimized by folks selling bogus drugs or pickpockets or real drugs - I had a guy put his hands in my shirt pocket just out of the blue.

Acid and hard drugs were sold over the counter at the Flying Dutchman pub on Zeedijk - I used to see an old grungily dressed man come in the Dutchman and then roll open the newspaper he was carrying and out came thousands of hits of acid the pub owner sold to customers - often hundreds at a time.

The Other Place in the red-light district was a complete reprobate place - again open trade in acid and hard drugs by a loose cannon Hells Angel guy who seemed to run the place (owned it was said by the Hell's Angels - the pub did not even have pub beer - no license or whatever but just cans bought from Albert Heijn probably. a totally gruzzy (and fun!) place where you never new what would happen - from brawls to shouting matches with the crazy guy who seemed to run the place.

Squats were still at several places right in the heart of things - like at Vondel Kirche on the edge of Vondel Park - my groups had parties in this abandoned chruch with sand floor for a few years until the building was reclaimed by owners.

The old jail at the entrance to Museumplein was a squat I think with a renegade cafe - now an established cafe. A group of reggae bands held court in the basement.

Amsterdam in the 80s - fun but rough and yes that is all cleaned up now - all for the better I guess.

Cool, I worked in Vondelkerk, after they converted it to office space. Lucky Luyk, De Grote Keizer, all well known squats.

One of the biggest ones is the Handelsblad complex on Nieuwezijds Voorburgwal, which was legalized. As now, there was a huge housing shortage, while a lot of the real estate stood empty. That was the idealistic starting point, later on, the squatters' movement started to attract lots and lots of criminal drifters.

Amsterdam was a wild place then, much wilder than the sanitized, yuppified tourist space it is now:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=65icombpmdM

"I threw stones from here"

1969 was my first visit to AmsterdamdamdamDAMN! and there were riots every night near my youth hostel on a canal near the University of Amsterdam - from Ann Arbor, Michigan and a large prestigious university we had had our fair share of activism on campus and town with broken windows, occupied buildings, etc.

But nothing like I saw in Amsterdam where the students and protestors seemed much more militant inopposing the U.S. efforts in Viet Nam - a few years later I did see violent protests in favor of the squattors.

But those anti-war protests were something else - police on horses and with water cannon blowing protestors right into canals!

Menachem working at Vondel Kerk after it was turned into upscale (looking) offices - what a coincidence! We climbed the steeple there several times during out parties - the places was all dustry because the floor had been removed - quite a memory - thanks for the memories Amsterdamneddamneddamned!

Oh and the Heroin Boat - can you imagine a city where they had a boat anchored near Centraal Station where folks could come and buy for sure clean sxxt as they called it and get new needles, etc (I did not partake!) - Switzerland did have these in Zurich and Bern where addicts were shooting up in pulbic parks.

ah Amsterdam in its wild west days!

Thanks for this. A highlight of my first visit to Amsterdam in the late 70s was being chased along a lane in the red light district after trying to photograph a neon sign unlike I'd encountered anywhere else - 'Real F***ing Live Sex'. And returning to my middle bunk in a shady hostel where my top and bottom bunk neighbours turned out to be German and Scottish junkies/ dealers who spent the night coming and going and threatening to kill each other.

I was there in the early 70's when the hippies/junkies completely clogged and trashed up Dam Square, panhandling all who passed by. In the name of "sanitation" the cops started guarding the fire department each evening when they would blast the Square with fire hoses to at least clear the bums out once a day.

Many/most of the panhandlers were Americans, which caused me some personal problems. Their cry was, "Hey Buddy, can you spare a Guilder?" I was almost broke and living with my girlfriend after I had lost my job in London. We went to a party, and one of the guests was being really obnoxious. When we were introduced he snottily said to me, "Oh, you are an American!", and handed me a Guilder.

I hit him. Not my finest moment, but the Dutch host threw him out, not me.

PalenQ, you have to remember that in the 1960s, much of the police leadership in Amsterdam, high ranking officers, but also many the officers on the beat, had been collaborators with the German occupiers in the 1940s. High ranks often had been street cops during the war and might well have assisted in deporting jews. Much of the violence was directed at this "Schalkhaar generation". All of this culminated in violent protests against the marriage of then Princess Beatrix and Claus von Amsberg, a German, who had been a Hitler youth member.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kLZftjSq3Bc

But also. Amsterdam was in the grips of a real anarchist revolt: the Provo movement.

Such a shame none of this is subtitled, but this is Louis van Gasteren's short Because my bike was there, which publicized the flash point of much of the demonstrations: the random police violence against bystanders

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aZ870Ml8_lU

Fast forward to 2002: the wedding of Prince Willem Alexander and Maxima Zorreguieta. Controversial because her father may or may not have been complicit in the Argentinian "dirty war" during the Videla regime.

In any case, there was a reference to 1966 in the form of a "smoke art" installation on the roof of the Bijenkorf.

We've come a long way...

Menachem..now I notice that it's a flute. Still rather mournful but more lively as you listen, in a way. Menachem...I've been meaning to ask you, with a Hebrew/Yiddish name(like Begin had) where are you originally from?

interesting stuff menachem who I suppose like Anne Frank and many others if Jewish is Dutch! Kind of like asking an American with a Jewish name - where do you originally come from?

anyways thanks a load menachem for those precious insights about a fascinating city I am so happy to have spent so much time in, on business and pleasure, for so long.

Pal..you just don't get it old boy. After WW II, surviving Jews left Europe in droves, some to North America, some to Argentina, some to Western Europe, including Netherlands. A very logical question, so what's your beef, Mr. Roscommon? Only 120,000 survivors remained in Central and Eastern Europe, not including 2 million in the former Soviet Union...others went west as I said (or east to Israel). In California we frequently ask where someone originally came from, since "immigration" from the east, south and midwest USA to this state has been enormous. There are, by the way well over 150,000 Jews in Southern California who came from Iran and Russia in the past 10-50 years. So we ask. With the steady flow of Californians who have come here fom Central and South America, I have found that they proudly tell you about their homeland. As well they should. Since I speak a credible Spanish, that helps. I am a first generation American as are all my cousins. Our family came to America during the mass migrations of the late 19th and early 20th centuries...from Russia.

Stu - sorry for any ill tone in my query - you are one of my very favorite Fodorites - ever since I met you in Palenque (I think) - and yes I guess there were not many Jewish folks left in Holland after the war - just seems that menachem has been working in Amsterdam since the late 1970s or so - but I get your point. My grandparents came from Bohemia but I never consider myself a Bohunk - but I do understand with all the atrocities and discriminations pointed at Jewish folk they would more retain their ethnic ID.

Sorry about a perceived tone I did not mean to come across and even thought of it just after posting.

Being Jewish is not an ethnic identity, it is religious. And considering there is a 6,000 year tradition and all the achievements both religious and secular, there is more to retaining one's Jewish identity than atrocities.

Thank you for your understanding.

Just a little history lesson, Pal.

By the way, Anne was German. She was born in Germany (she was born 6 months after me)...the family left Germany to get some respite in Holland when things were getting too hot for Jews in Germany. Only problem was, they didn't go far enough west, Happened to many who thought Belgium, France and Netherands would be their safe havens. Even Switzerland or Sweden would have been a better move for the Franks.

Oops, I missed a lot it seems (was in Amsterdam today, shooting photographs and cycling around, dodging droves of visitors who were walking on bike paths)

Anyway. There still is a somewhat sizeable jewish community in the Netherlands, of about 45000, 15000 of whom live in Amsterdam. But there's very little organized jewish life in the city centre. For that you have to go to Buitenveldert or Amstelveen.

And IMDonehere, let's say "jewish" is a kind of nationality, with an ethnic component (born of a jewish mother) and a religious component (converted)

My entire family comes from the north, Groningen from my mother's side, Friesland from my father's side. My father's family ended up in Friesland because his brother was deemed too ill to travel to America, and so they were stuck in Rotterdam, having travelled there from Poland (well, Lvov, so technically present day Ukraine) A benevolence society helped them resettle in Heerenveen, where they stayed up to WW2, when they were deported. My father was the sole survivor of his family. My mother's parents hid her and her brother with farmers up north. My grandfather was a psychiatrist and he followed his patients to, eventually, a death camp, where they were murdered, but he survived. And my grandmother hid for a while, then gave herself up for deportation. But it was towards the end of the war so she survived in the Westerbork transit camp where she was liberated. Amazingly, my mother's family survived, but the rest of her relatives were murdered.

It's good to know that before WW2 there was jewish life almost everywhere in the Netherlands, and NL was divided into Amsterdam (Mokum, makkom) and the rest, the countryside, the "Mediene". Those communities were completely wiped out, but even outside Amsterdam there has been a resurgence (of sorts) of jewish life. I've been involved personally in the founding of a new jewish kehilla in the town in Friesland where my father was born and this was of immense significance to me.

And IMDonehere, let's say "jewish" is a kind of nationality, with an ethnic component (born of a jewish mother) and a religious component (converted)
________
Sorry, Menachem, but that is not accurate. Even as the conservatives in Israel consider a political vote on who is a Jew, Jewish is not a nationality as Muslims and Christians are Israelis.

And while Jewish tradition considers a child born from a Jewish mother to be Jewish that has nothing to with ethnicity, it is matrilineal, a biological designation of descent.

Jewish is simply a religious affiliation whether by birth or conversion, just the way Muslims and Christians can be of any color, ethnic, nationality, or culture.

menachem...thank you for asnswering my question,..and for sharing your fascinating history with us. I'm a writer and I've been interviewing Jews in every corner of Europe all these years. Many of whom found their way into my stories. I feel certain that you will forgive my being "nosy"...
stu

IMDonehere, that's why I wrote "a _kind_ of nationality". Because it's easy to see that "jewish" still escapes definition somewhat. It's not fully ethnic, because anyone can become jewish. It's not fully religious, because even if I don't keep the commandments, I'll still be considered jewish. It's not "israeli" either, because jews exist as jews without having to be israeli.

It's also meaningful that after 1813, when jews were granted full civil rights in the Netherlands, the jewish community was called "the Jewish nation". A nation without territory, with a national religion, that has always been a difficult concept to handle.

@tower, gladly done. Jews of my generation in The Netherlands all tell more or less the same stories. Only now, things are normalizing somewhat, psychologically, for that "second generation", the children of shoah survivors. Jews are now almost invisible as a culturally functioning group. Lately there have been attempts to outlaw kosher slaughter, and there's a perennial debate to do the same with circumcision. So there's pressure, and you might say that it's no longer viable to be religiously jewish in The Netherlands. It's worse in some other countries though: France, Scandinavian countries... Ironically, on the continent, Germany is now the country with one of the largest and most vibrant jewish communities in Europe.

Fascinating film. Thank you for sharing and thanks for the history lesson, everyone.

On one of my trips to Amsterdam, I believe in 1998, I got caught up in a squatters protest at the Zuiderkerk. My husband & I were on the Waterlooplein when we saw banners being unfurled from the tower of the Zuiderkerk. Even though they were written in Dutch and we had no idea what they said, the banners drew us to them, where a small crowd had formed on the plaza in front of the church. As we waited for something to happen, the crowd got larger, and larger, and larger. Then the police arrived, in full riot gear!! We were expecting some kind of performance art and got a squatters protest instead. But that was okay, because everyone remained peaceful and we got a history lesson.

Robyn :)>-

There was huge opposition to the Opera House/City Hall complex that is now on Waterlooplein. Earlier, there had been violent protests at the way metro station Nieuwmarkt was built, demolishing huge numbers of housing. And earlier the intention was to build a freeway right through the middle of the Nieuwmarkt area to connect Weesperstraat to the IJtunnel. Protests against this were so fierce, that the project was stopped, eventually.

There is a memorial to this, on Jodenbreestraat, approximately where the Rembrandthuis is. If you walk towards Nieuwmarkt frrom there, you'll see a monument, a pillar supported by a turtle. On the plinth, there's one of Jacob Israel de Haan's beautiful quatrains about Amsterdam, honouring it as the "jerusalem of the west".

And if you go into metrostation Nieuwmarkt, you'll still see signs from the Nieuwmarkt riots: photos on the wall of the station and inlayed in the platform "housing is not a favor but a right"

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0mBQJN4PW6U

https://www.flickr.com/photos/arthur-a/5375319934/

Incidentally, the Rembrandt house was, in the nineteenth century, far more well known as "the minyan of the Spitz family"

There was huge opposition to the Opera House/City Hall complex that is now on Waterlooplein>

Yes it was called I believe "Stopera" - I witnessed some of the Stopera protests.

Yes, Stopera is STadhuis/OPERA

Menachem: Have you ever met Judith Belinfante, one-time director of the new Jewish Museum in Am'dam? Reasom I ask, I met Judith and her husband who were visiting my next door neighbors...on Hollywood Beach in Oxnard, Ca. back in the 80's. She had just taken over as Director..fascinating and quite a beautiful woman. On one of my Am'dam visits she was away to a conference so we never did meet again.

WW2 was a terrible time for most in Holland and Amsterdam - well especially harsh on Jewish or gay or the mentally challenged, etc but from folks I've talked to most people suffered greatly due to food shortages - they did in fact resort to eating flower bulbs - but there were quite a few collaborators as is also the case - the Dutch Resistence Museum contains many many visuals and artifacts of this harsh harsh time that is hard to fathom in today's 'tolerant' laidback Amsterdam.

I think the Anne Frank House should be incuded on everyone's Amsterdam visit list - it is so so sobering - much like concentration camps I have been too and to imagine such a sweet girl like Anne ended up in Auschwitz-Birkenau I think. Terrible terrible times and I feel for all who suffered but especially Jewish folks and others put on trains to the East.

@tower: I know her from afar, let's say. It's such a small community that everyone knows everyone else. I know two of the curators, Hetty Berg and Edward van Volen, Edward because he also served as rabbi to the reform congregation, but in Arnhem, not in Amsterdam.

It's a great museum and she gave it such a great start in its, then, new home in the synagogue complex on JD Meijerplein.

I must say, I do respect people wanting to visit the Anne Frank House, but imo, the Jewish Historical Museum is so much more to the point, and interesting, and alive, a living expression of the jewish community in Amsterdam. Whereas I see the Anne Frank House as more of an epitaph to the Frank family and as a testament to both Dutch heroism and Dutch collaboration. I lived around the corner from it for quite a while, but I never could make myself go and visit.

Unfortunately in Dutch, but here is a short documentary about Ed van der Elsken's photo of the Sal Meijer sandwich shop, the only jewish business standing in the old jewish neighbourhood before it moved to Scheldestraat.

It moved to Rijnstraat a couple of years ago, so you can still go there. Everyone who is anyone in jewish Amsterdam will go there for lunch on sunday afternoon. And their pastrami sandwiches are a reason in itself to want to go there.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Re1V5c-r1CY

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s7NwUylw2XA
And in the second link, Ed' commentary about a "jewish neighbourhood without jews"

We visited the Anne Frank House earlier this year. We have also visited Auschwitz.

It is important that there are various ways people remember the Holocaust. The Anne Frank House is more ghostly reminder while the camps embody the horror. For me, and I have read many others, the most moving exhibitions at Auschwitz, were not the remnants of the crematoria or the railroad siding, but the exhibition cases filled will glasses and hairbrushes, which create an immediate emptiness.

And I agree with Stu, that the Jewish Historical Museum was more poignant and instructive, as to Jewish life past and present.

Yes i had the same experience at Auschwitz, the hairbrushes, yes. But also the notion, that everywhere you would dig, there's ashes. I went in 2008, with one of Bernie Glassman's "bearing witness" retreats, and we spent a week there, just sitting, bearing witness, in silence. One of the most difficult experiences of my life. Until then, my main means of confrontation had been Claude Lanzman's "Shoah". And of course the stories that weren't to be told, but were always alluded to in my family.

The sobering thing to me when visiting say the grimmest of camps Birkenau, where the trains came in and some were sent right to the gas chambers and others to work (Auschwitz was mainly a work camp I think) but at Birkenaus the gas chambers and train platform just struck such a horror in me - and the sobering thing was that it just was not that long ago.

And Germany was a so-called civilized cultured country - just proves could always happen and is in some parts of the world - genocide - menachem's parents and grandparents must have gone thru a Hell we can never imagine - Stu's and IMD's too and all Jewish folk.

when I visit those camps I feel Jewish too!

One of my professor's in grad school was Tom Keneally who wrote what was called Schindler's List in America, but called Schindler's Ark in all other English speaking countries. (His US publisher thought Americans would confuse it with something like Noah's Ark.)

Tom is an Australian Irish Catholic who studied for the priesthood when he was much, much younger. But his humanity is always present in all his work. His first book was "The Chant of Jimmy Blacksmith" about the abuse of Australian Aborigines. His latest about women and WWI. One need not be of any faith, gender, color, nationality, or religion to have empathy for another.

One need not be of any faith, gender, color, nationality, or religion to have empathy for another.>

Something radical Muslims have yet to learn!

Radicals in general, PalenQ. Lack of empathy towards or tolerance for others not convinced of your particular form of radical thought is not confined to the Muslim faith.

No it is not and certainly has not be so in the annals of even Christianity but in modern times we do not here much fire and brimstone the likes of the radical Muslims, who are a very very small % of Islam - but the likes of ISIS cutting off innocent peoples heads is medieval - of course Dick Cheney is just as guilty of medieval barbarism or advocating it but at least he does not base it in religion - or that religion would disown him!

Last century over 150,000,000 died at the hands of other humans. At least 100,000,000 were killed in or by what are considered Christian countries.