Starting on 25 November 2011, Amsterdam’s Jewish Historical Museum will feature the exhibition ‘Mijn naam is Cohen’ (‘My name is Cohen’), a series of portraits made by Amsterdam photographer Daniel Cohen with texts by unrelated Editor-in-Chief of magazine Vrij Nederland, Mischa Cohen.

They got together and found 25 people with the same last name, but of different generations, backgrounds, gender, views, Jewish and non-Jewish. Former mayor and politician Job Cohen is mentioned as is journalist Jisca Cohen thanks in part to whom I got to meet Daniel Cohen (unrelated to each other) and found out about his project first hand. I also know he plays a good game of football.

The quick and dirty version is that Amsterdam (aka Mokum, its Jewish name still very much in use by everyone) had lots of Jews and today for Holocaust reasons has very few.

(The picture of Anne Frank, the most ‘popular’ Jewish figure of Amsterdam who was German and not Dutch.)

(Link: www.jhm.nl)