About Jewishness

The history of the Jews is extremely extensive, depending on the countries they were living, their circumstances, etc. So I thought it would be a good thing to start the history part with the story of one family in particular, and the family I know most of, is my own.

I was born in Amsterdam, the Netherlands. Amsterdam is a city with a great Jewish history, but when I was a child, little was left of that history. Most of the Amsterdam Jews were killed in the Holocaust. Still, there were some small Jewish communities in the early 1950s, but they were religious, and my family was atheist, so we weren't part of a Jewish community.

My father, Aaron Pinto, was a neuro-surgeon. He was born in Batavia, the capital of the Dutch Indies (now Jakarta, Indonesia). My mother, Naomi Gershon, used to be a nurse, but stopped working when she was expecting me. She was born in Amsterdam.
My parents were active anti-Zionists and socialists. They didn't believe in a "Jewish state". They believed in assimilation of the Jewish people in the Diaspora, as full and equal citizens of the countries they lived in. Therefore they fought for emancipation of all minorities, including the Jews.

How different were my father's brothers and his father, my grandfather. He, Nathan Pinto, was born in Buitenzorg, Dutch Indies (now Bogor, Indonesia), and he used to be an army general. His sons were also high ranking army officers, accept my father. They thought my father was a "coward", because he never sought an army career. My father's mother, my grandmother on father's side, was a darling. Her name was Marguerita Antonia de Rozario Garça, and she was also born in Batavia (Jakarta). She was the only reason we were visiting my grandparents, because my grandfather was a harsh man.

After finishing highschool in Batavia, Nathan Pinto went to Breda, the Netherlands, to study in the Royal Dutch Army Academy. There he met his first wife, and after he finished his study and was ready for an army career, he took her with him to Batavia, where they had four sons. After she died, he married my grandmother, Marguerita de Rozario Garça, with whom he had four more sons.
During the Japanese occupation of the Dutch Indies, in the Second World War, the whole family was interned in prison camps, not because they were Jewish, but because of the fact that they were Dutch (like my grandfather) or of mixed blood, like my grandmother, my father and his brothers. My grandfather was in a Japanese POW-camp, my grandmother and her sister were in a camp for women who slept with the enemy, and my father and his brothers were in a camp for mixed breeds.
After the war my father went to Amsterdam, to study medicin. His brothers went to Breda, to become army officers. In 1951 my grandfather and grandmother were repatriated to the Netherlands, because of Indonesia's independence. He and my uncles were immediately integrated in the Dutch armed forces.

My mother, Naomi Gershon, came from a poor family. Her father, Benjamin Gershon, used to work in a sweatshop, where he manufactured clothing. Later he became a sweater (subcontractor), but it still was difficult to make ends meet. His wife, my grandmother on mother's side, was Rachel Levi. She died in Auschwitz in 1943. During the Second World War the whole family had to go underground, because the Nazis had occupied the Netherlands. However, the Nazis had their Gestapo (secret police), who traced the Jews, so Rachel, my grandmother, was arrested and taken to Auschwitz or Sobibor. So were her mother, Alida van Praag, her brothers Abraham and Benjamin, her sister Amalia, and my grandfather Benjamin's parents, Isaac Gershon and Rachel Wallage. They were killed by the Nazis in the gas chambers, Isaac in Sobibor, Rachel in Auschwitz.
Jakob Levi, my great-grandfather on mother's mother-side, died in 1939, just before the war started, but his brother Benjamin Samuel Levi (1882), died in 1943 in Auschwitz. Benjamin Gershon, my grandfather, survived the war, survived Auschwitz, but was a broken man when he returned to the Netherlands. He died in 1954.

Amsterdam, 1959. My friends and I are playing in a fenced yard in Amsterdam. All of a sudden we discover a hole in the ground, which proves to be the entrance to an underground hiding place of about 25 square metres. We find newspapers from 1941. We notify the police.
Some weeks later the police tells us that this underground hiding place used to be the dwelling of 12 to 14 Jewish people, for at least three years.
And then I saw Anne Frank's house. It was a palace compared to "our" place.

My mother didn't talk about the war, and neither did her brother Jonah, who was an artist. But her brother Jakob did, when he was drinking. I used to take care of uncle Jakob for some weeks, and he told me how their life was during the Nazi occupation. They knew that their parents and grandparents, their uncles and aunts had been taken to Auschwitz. They knew that the same thing could happen to them any day. The fear was paralysing, all these years.

My great-grandfather on father's father-side, Manuel Pinto, came from a family of bankers and civil administrators in the Dutch Indies. Manuel himself was supervising educational systems in Java. He was married to Ambrosina Clasina Roqué, daughter of François Adolphe Roqué and Sarah Rozenberg. They also were long time colonials in the Dutch Indies.
Manuel's parents were Mozes Jacob Pinto (1822) and Judie Benjamin de Hond (1824), both born in Amsterdam. Manuel was probably born in Amsterdam because his father Daniel was visiting Law School there at the time. Judie didn't have a colonial background; here parents came from Rotterdam.

Marguerita, my grandmother on father's side, was partly Indonesian. Her father was Richard Fortune de Rozario Garça (1847), born in Haubourdin, France, and her mother was Abatar Sharabi (1880), born in Indonesia. Abatar in turn was the daughter of Noam Sharabi, from Yemenite Jewish descent, and an unknown Javanese woman. (Yemenite and Baghdadi Jews settled in Indonesia from about the 7th century A.D.)

Meanwhile in Amsterdam my great-grandfather on mother's father-side, Levi Hartog Gershon (1838) was running a sweatshop. He was married to Esther Polak (1842), also born in Amsterdam. Levi was part of the poor branch of the Gershon family. The rich branch was also in the clothing business, but they were very successful and owned many fashion stores. The rich Gershons had their coat of arms registered in 1829. They let the poor branch have some of their business, as a means of charity.
Levi Hartog's father, Hartog Levi Gershon (1810), was married to Flora Marx (1817). One would expect Hartog Levi's father to be called Gershon as well, however that's not the case. His parents were Abraham Levi (1784) and Naomi Abrahams (1788), both born in Amsterdam. So Levi was Hartog's middle name and his father Abraham's last name.
Abraham's parents were Joseph Meier Levi (1753), born in Kassel, Germany, and Rika Blok (1763).
Joseph Meier's parents were Meier Levi (born before 1733) and Antoinette Salomons. That's all I was able to find out about my mother's father-side of the family.

Jakob Levi (1939), my great-grandfather on mother's mother-side, was the son of Benjamin Levi (1837) and Paulina Frank (1837), who had a grocery wholesale business in Amsterdam. However, no rabbinical records of this business was found, so this probably means that they didn't deal with kosher foods and wines. Their traces lead back to Mordechai Levi (1705), and Rebecca Jacobs, both born in Amsterdam. I couldn't find any ascendants of them in the records. All I know is that between the early 1700s and the early 1800s the family owned small stores in Amsterdam.

Daniel de Pinto (1790), my great-great-great-grandfather on father's father-side, was born in Bandung, Dutch Indies, and went to Law School in Amsterdam. He was married to Margaretha Simons (1802), born in Amsterdam. Daniel's parents were David de Pinto (1762) and Judith Simons (1763), both born in Batavia. David Pinto's parents were Eliezer Levi de Pinto (1738) and Maria Benjamin Bueno de Mesquita (1740). Maria was born in Batavia, Eliezer was born in Amsterdam.
Eliezer's parents were David de Pinto (1705) and Maria Gonsalves (1709). David was born in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, and that deserves an explanation.
From the late 1490s Sephardic Jews started settling in Brazil, because of the Spanish and Portuguese Inquisitions. They first arrived in Brazil during the period of Dutch rule, setting up in Recife the first synagogue in the Americas as early as 1636. Most of those Jews had fled from Spain and Portugal to the religious freedom of the Netherlands, but moved on to Brazil later. Besides the religious freedom of the Netherlands, the Dutch Republic was at war with the Spanish crown, which had been united with Portugal in 1580, and the Dutch were beating the Spanish and Portuguese fleets on all fronts. This made the Sephardic Jews, who suffered so much from the Spanish and Portuguese inquisitions, feel quite safe, and it was another reason for them to seek refuge in the Netherlands, or in Dutch colonies.
However, in the early 1700s the Portuguese regained control of Brazil, and the Jews who had practised their religion openly, were deported to Portugal, where they were burned at the steak following an auto da fé.
Rodrigo Alvares Pinto was the founder of the Pinto family. In 1607 his descendants arrived in Antwerp as "New Christians". There they made their fortune as shareholders of the Dutch East India Company (V.O.C.). In 1645 the family moved to Rotterdam and in 1647 the male members of the family were circumcised. 150 years after their expulsion from the Iberian Peninsula they were openly able to be Jews again. In 1651 the family moved from Rotterdam to Amsterdam. My ancestors were probably involved in the Dutch East India Company, founded in 1602, when the States-General of the Netherlands granted it a 21-year monopoly to carry out colonial activities in Asia. It was the first multinational corporation in the world and the first company to issue stock. It was also arguably the world's first megacorporation, possessing quasi-governmental powers, including the ability to wage war, negotiate treaties, coin money, and establish colonies. The Dutch East India Company remained an important trading concern for almost two centuries, paying an 18% annual dividend for almost 200 years.
On 30 May 1619, Governor-General of the V.O.C. Jan Pieterszoon Coen, backed by a force of nineteen ships, stormed Jayakarta driving out the Banten forces, and from the ashes, established Batavia (now Jakarta, Indonesia) as the VOC headquarters. By 1669, the VOC was the richest private company the world had ever seen, with over 150 merchant ships, 40 warships, 50,000 employees, a private army of 10,000 soldiers, and a payment of 40% on the original investment.
Many of the VOC employees inter-mixed with the indigenous peoples and expanded the Mestizo (Portuguese Indo) population of Indos in pre-colonial history. After the Portuguese competition was beaten by the Dutch maritime traders of the VOC, the Mestizo communities remained active in local and intra-island trade. The Dutch found merit in collaboration with these early Eurasian communities through their role as intermediaries with local traders. The Sephardi Jews from Portugal, like my ancestors, spoke Portuguese and were able to deal with the Mestizos, who spoke Portuguese/Malay. In Batavia it remained the dominant language up to 1750.

Richard Fortune de Rozario Garça (1847), my great-grandfather on father's mother-side, was a son of Antonio de Rozario Garça (1820) and Judith Samuel de Robles de Medinha (1826). Antonio was born in Melaka, Malaysia; Judith was born in Paramaribo, Surinam. Both were from a family of plantation owners, and they lived most of their lives in the Dutch Indies. However, her father, Samuel de Ishak de Robles de Medinha (Paramaribo, 1788), had a different background. His forefathers were famous glass makers in Spain. When they had to flee from Spain because of the Inquisition, they first went to Holland and later to Brazil (then under Dutch rule), where the family name was changed from Robles de Medina to the more Portuguese sounding Robles de Medinha. When the Portuguese took over again, the Sephardic Jews followed the Dutch troops to other Dutch controlled areas in the region, and finally ended up in Surinam, where they were safe, and later in Malaysia and Indonesia.
(Isaac Pinto was a Dutch captain at the beginning of the eighteenth century. At the head of a company of Jews, Pinto in 1712 heroically defended the village of Savanna in Surinam and beat off the French under Cassard. Southey ("History of Brazil," ii. 241) speaks of a captain named Pinto, who, when the Dutch were for the second time besieged at Recife, defended the fort single-handed, until, overwhelmed by superior numbers, he was obliged to surrender.)