History of the Jews in Belgium History of the Jews in Belgium Judaism has a long history in Belgium, from the 1st century CE until today. The Jewish community numbered 66,000 on the eve of the Second World War but, after the war and the Holocaust, is now less than half that number. Today, Belgium is home to more than 30,000 Jews, of whom two-thirds live in Antwerp. The first Jews to arrive in the present-day territory of Belgium arrived with the Romans between the years 50 and 60 AD Jews were mentioned as early as 1200 in Brabant (and in 1261, Duke Henry III ordered
Belgium during the Leopold period. In 1908, this outcry led the Belgian state to assume responsibility for the government of the colony, henceforth called the Belgian Congo. A Belgian commission in 1919 estimated that Congo's population was half what it was in 1879. Germany invaded Belgium in August 1914 as part of the Schlieffen Plan to attack France, and much of the Western Front fighting of World War I occurred in western parts of the country. The opening months of the war were known as the Rape of Belgium due to German excesses. Belgium assumed control of the German colonies of