A Shtetl Under the Sun: The Askenazic Community of Curacao

This book memorializes a unique period in the history of Ashkenazic Jews in Curaçao. In the 1920s, many Jews fleeing poverty and anti-Semitism in Eastern Europe attempted to emigrate to America, but quota restrictions made this difficult. Starting in 1926, Ashkenazic Jews began to arrive on the island of Curaçao, most of them coming from regions which lay within the borders of Poland and Romania.

Initially, their Sephardic fellow Jews did not welcome them with open arms. Nonetheless, within fifteen years they managed to build a strong economic position for themselves on the island. The years following the Second World War, in particular, were the best of times for the Ashkenazic community on Curaçao. By then they owned the majority of stores in Punda and had established very close ties with one another. In many respects, the tropical island of Curaçao resembled a small shtetl: an Eastern European city whose population was predominantly and sometimes exclusively Jewish.

Over the years, many Ashkenazic Jews left Curaçao. Today only a little more than one hundred Ashkenazim are left on the island. But all of them remember the shtetl atmosphere during the second half of the 20th century, which Jeannette van Ditzhuijzen chronicles—through historical research, personal remembrances and photographs—on these pages.