List of West European Jews

List Of West European Jews

Apart from France, established Jewish populations exist in the Netherlands, Belgium, Germany, 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 killed in the Holocaust, and much of the modern Jewish population of these countries (as well as of Germany and Switzerland) derives from post-Holocaust arrivals from Eastern Europe, Germany with an estimated Jewish population of around 200 000, 100 000 of which are officially affiliated with orthodox synagogues, 20 000 with "liberal Judaism", and the rest unaffiliated, is, due to recent immigration from Russia, now the fastest growing Jewish community in the world besides the State of Israel. Here is a list of some prominent West European Jews, arranged by country of origin.