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
Waterloo, Belgium Waterloo, Belgium Waterloo (, , ) is a Walloon municipality in the province of Walloon Brabant, Belgium, which in 2011 had a population of 29,706 and an area of . It is north of Braine-l'Alleud, which is the site of the Battle of Waterloo, where the resurgent Napoleon was defeated for the final time in 1815. Waterloo is a Francophone town. The placename has Brabantian Dutch origins. The first element is most likely "water", but it should be understood locally as "wet". The second element is "lo(o)", an ancient word for "forest" or "clearing in a forest", coming either from