List of West European Jews

Apart from France, established Jewish populations exist in the Netherlands, Belgium 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 most of the Swiss community arrived after emancipation in 1874. The Dutch population, however, was decimated during the Holocaust, while major Jewish communities never again arose in Spanish or Portugal. Here is a list of some prominent West European Jews, arranged by country of origin.

Table of contents

1 Belgium 2 Ireland 3 Luxembourg 4 Monaco 5 Netherlands 6 Portugal 7 Spain 8 Switzerland

Belgium

• Chantal Akerman, director
• Zora Arkus-Duntov, father of the Chevrolet Corvette (Belgian-born)
• Natacha Atlas, singer (half Jewish; Belgian-born)
• Lt-General Louis Bernheim, WWI General
• Diane Von Furstenberg, fashion designer
• Camille Gutt, finance minister; head of the IMF
• Paul Hymans, liberal leader; president of the League of Nations
• George Koltanowski, chess player
• Claude Lévi-Strauss, anthropologist (Belgian-born)
• Ilya Prigogine, chemist, Nobel Prize (1977)
• Henry Spira, animal rights activist
• Gilbert Stork, chemist
• Olivier Strelli, fashion designer

Ireland

• Henri Bergson, philosopher (Anglo-Irish mother)
• John Desmond Bernal, molecular biologist (half Jewish)
• Agnes Bernelle, entertainer
• Robert & Ben Briscoe, lord mayors of Dublin
• Daniel Day Lewis, actor (half Jewish)
• Chaim Herzog, Israeli president
• Sam Obernik, singer

Luxembourg

• Hugo Gernsback, science-fiction pioneer (unconfirmed)
• Gabriel Lippmann, French physicist (Luxembourg-born)

Monaco

• Franz Schreker, composer (half Jewish)

Netherlands

• Tobias Asser, jurist, Nobel Peace Prize (1911)
• Carina Benninga, field hockey player, Olympic flag bearer
• Job Cohen, mayor of Amsterdam
• Anne Frank, diarist
• Samuel Gompers, labor union leader (Dutch parents)
• Xaviera Hollander, writer (half Jewish)
• Leo Lionni, illustrator (half Jewish)
• Tom Okker, tennis player
• Baruch Spinoza, philosopher (Portuguese parents)
• Sjaak Swart, Ajax footballer

Portugal

• Luis De Torres, explorer
• Jorge Sampaio, president (Moroccan Jewish grandmother)

Spain

• Cecilia Roth, actress
• Milton Wolff, head of the Abraham Lincoln Brigade

Switzerland

• Jeff Agoos, US soccer international
• Ernest Bloch, composer
• Felix Bloch, physicist, Nobel Prize (1952)
• John M. Brunswick, founder of the Brunswick Corporation
• Ruth Dreifuss, Swiss president (1999)
• Camille & Henry Dreyfus, inventors of Celanese
• Albert Einstein, physicist, Nobel Prize (1921)
• Edmond Fischer, biochemist, Nobel Prize (1992) (half Jewish)
• Robert Frank, photographer
• Max Frisch, writer
• Viktor Korchnoi, chess player (half Jewish)
• Mathilde Krim, AIDS researcher (convert)
• Meret Oppenheim, surrealist artist
• Rachel, stage actress (Swiss born)
• Tadeus Reichstein, chemist, Nobel Prize (1950)
• Charles Weissmann, biochemist

See also: List of Jews, List of Jews by country