The Jewish hospice in metropolitan Amsterdam will close down for renovations after volunteers said they feared working at an alternative location in a heavily Muslim neighborhood, the institution’s board said on Tuesday.
The temporary location offered by the Cordaan health services provider in Amsterdam’s Nieuw-West neighborhood to the Jewish Hospice Immanuel “was suitable in terms of affordability and accessibility, but raised serious safety concerns,” the hospice’s director, Nadia Schoenzwytt, wrote in a statement that she sent to JNS on Wednesday.
“Volunteers indicated they did not feel safe in this neighborhood. Volunteers are the backbone of our hospice, so we took their concerns very seriously,” she added
Therefore, Immanuel will be closed for “five or six months,” Schoenzwytt said.
Immanuel is one of a handful of Jewish hospices in Europe. Situated in the heavily Jewish suburb of Amstelveen, it offers terminal patients, many of them Holocaust survivors, a place to spend their final weeks while receiving kosher meals, among other amenities. The hospice will reopen there after renovations, the board said.
The closure was first reported by the NIW Dutch-Jewish weekly.
The decision was taken after talks with a police representative, the statement said, and, while “the conversation was respectful and pleasant, its content was very discouraging and confirmed that we could not eliminate the feeling of insecurity.”
Contacted by JNS for a reaction, a spokesperson for the Amsterdam police said that the police representative “outlined and discussed the local context of the neighborhood,” but “the police did not issue any negative recommendations or make any statements about whether or not safety could be guaranteed.”
Daan Wijnants, the head of the People’s Party for Freedom and Democracy faction on the Amsterdam City Council, submitted critical questions on the closure to the city government headed by Mayor Femke Halsema.
“Does the city government recognize that the security of Jewish people, institutions and businesses is being compromised in Nieuw-West?” one of the questions reads.
A spokesperson for the municipality told JNS: “It’s unfortunate how this turned out, as there’s no evidence of any unsafe situation. Of course, the hospice should be able to establish itself in any neighborhood in the city.”
Critics of Halsema’s administration have accused it of repeatedly downplaying Amsterdam’s antisemitism problem. In recent weeks, she has said that “it was unfair” to make allegations of antisemitism against the Royal Concert Hall for its initial refusal to host a Chanukah concert if it features a cantor who serves in the IDF.
On Nov. 8-9, 2024, dozens of Arab and Muslim men participated in what some of them described as a “Jew hunt” against Maccabi Tel Aviv F.C. fans who were in town for a soccer match. Dozens of Israelis were assaulted on those dates, in what Halsema initially acknowledged that many local Jews experienced as a modern-day “pogrom.”
But Halsema later walked back that term, as her administration publicly accused Israelis of instigating the violence.
