Preliminary Programme

Long-standing traditions of organization, production and employment in the diamond industry of the Low Countries were challenged by the fast growing diamond production center in World War II Palestine. Built on a traditional Jewish occupational niche and driven by the needs of the war the cutting and polishing of diamonds was transferred from Antwerp and Amsterdam to Netanya and Tel Aviv. In the course of the transplantation, in which British interests and De Beers Cartel practices played a formative role, an ambivalence was created. On the one hand the British, De Beers and local Zionist entrepreneurs made certain that the industry would remain Jewish-only and continued to be based on an internal ethnic-trust system. On the other hand traditional production practices were harnessed to Zionist state-building interests of social engineering and regimentation, thus challenging a borderless immigrants’ craft culture. Supported by the non-competitive environment of the war period and by the protection of the British and De Beers the Palestine industry spurted as a world center, to be restrained only by Anglo-Belgian postwar imperial interests and by De Beers re-orientation on Europe. (Show less)

There are three reasons why diamonds are important in times of crisis or war: they provide national economies with valuable hard currency; they can be used to purchase strategic raw materials on the international markets and moreover, industrial diamonds are needed in the arms industry for high quality and high speed mass production. The nazis lacked hard currency, raw materials and industrial diamonds for their war industry. That is why they showed great interest for diamonds. First they turned towards their own, German diamond industry in Idar-Oberstein (Rheinland-Pfalz) and Hanau (Frankfurt) and embedded it in the new state run corporatist structure for better control. But since this industry was completely dependent on subcontracting for Antwerp and Amsterdam based Jewish dealers, who now boycotted the German industry, business slowed down considerably. When the British eventually imposed a blockade on the continent after the German assault on Poland, the German diamond industry came to a complete stop. Desperate nazi officials then decided to feed the moribund industry with whatever they could get their hands on. Looted Jewish jewelry was made available for repolishing by the German diamond workers so it could be sold with more profit on the international market. A secret unit was set up in Antwerp to circumvent the British blockade with help of the German Consulate General. The Jewish bank in Hanau, which had specialized in the financing of the smuggling of raw diamonds out of the Low Countries, was taken over by Nazis. Finally, special customs units were involved in the looting of fleeing Jews to make sure that currencies, precious metals, diamonds and other valuables stayed in the country. After Germany invaded the Low Countries, the reach of these customs units was increased through the creation of the infamous Devisenschutzkommandos. But these had to compete with the occupying German forces, which had their own plans. The military - as opposed to the nazi four-year plan people - wanted to rekindle the Antwerp and Amsterdam diamond centers to create a dominant German controlled diamond center. The four-year plan people wanted to extract as many diamonds as possible through outright plunder as soon as possible. The story of the diamond industries in the occupied Low Countries is that of the struggle between those two antagonists. After the war, key German players (and looters) soon reemerged with American support. Since American occupying forces tried to build a strong and economically viable Germany to prevent the German population from embracing communism and to put up a strong resistance against the emerging eastern communist bloc, they mobilized all the manpower they could get. This operation met with considerable criticism in Antwerp and in Palestine where Jewish war survivors tried to regain control over their battered traditional industry. (Show less)

In this paper I would like to scrutinize the impact of the diamond trade as the economical basis of the Jewish community in Antwerp (Belgium) on the return to Antwerp of Jews after the persecution and attempted annihilation of the community during the Second World War. In a second stance, I will explore how the organization of the diamond trade influenced resp. was influenced by specific characteristics of the Antwerp Jewish community as a religiously orthodox minority group living to a considerable degree in (self-chosen and/or imposed) isolation from the larger Antwerp community, maintaining a distinct economic, religious and social profile. I will focus my argumentation on the immediate post-war period (1944-1960) and I will also deal with the new economic competition in diamond trade with centres in the United States and Israel.

Both diamonds and Jews ’shared’ a long tradition in Antwerp before the war. Already in the 16th century a Sephardic community had settled in the port city and became active in the diamond trade. At the end of the 19th century, a wave of Jewish migration from Eastern Europe to Antwerp began. This influx continued during the first half of the 20th century and peaked with the arrival of a great number of German and Austrian Jewish refugees in the 1930’s. Antwerps’ Jewish population rose from approximately 1.200 around 1880 to 29.435 at the end of 1940. The majority of this population settled in the neighbourhood adjacent to the Antwerp Central Station, the so-called “diamond district” and its surroundings. A considerable number of these Jewish immigrants were active in the diamond trade. As to their religious orientation, one finds that most families became members of one of the two orthodox Jewish communities. As a result, all Jewish activities, including the diamond branch, the prayer houses and synagogues, the Jewish schools, the Jewish social welfare organization and the offices of Jewish social and political institutions, appeared to be centralized within the neighbourhood.
During the Second World War this remarkable Jewish life in Antwerp was completely destroyed: 65% of the Antwerp Jewish population was deported, all their institutions and organizations were officially forbidden and dissolved by the German occupier and their properties were seized. When the Nazis left Antwerp in September 1944, the city was officially “Judenrein”.
Soon after the liberation however, a Jewish community (re-)constructed itself in Antwerp. The new Jewish community was again situated in the ”diamond district / quarter”. It profiled itself economically even more in the diamond trade and it had an even stronger orthodox and “closed” character than before the war. The mutually influential relationship and changing interaction between the diamond trade and the reconstruction of the Jewish community in the postwar period will be the focus of my presentation. (Show less)