Europe holds both ends of the Sephardi story. It is where the Jews of Spain and Portugal lived before 1492, and where the largest and best-documented communities of the exile were built afterwards.
This page covers twenty-five countries and cities. It also explains how they connect, which is the part most researchers need and few reference works supply.
Four different Sephardi Europes
The word Sephardi covers four distinct populations in Europe, with different origins, different records and different languages. Confusing them is the commonest error in the field.
The Iberian homeland
Spain and Portugal. No continuous Jewish community survived in either after 1492 and 1497. What survives is Catholic parish registers, notarial deeds and Inquisition files, and the families appear under Christian names.
This is where most lines end and where, with patience, they can be made to begin again.
The Western Sephardi centres
The Netherlands, England, Germany, France, Livorno, Venice, Gibraltar, Denmark, Belgium and Ireland.
These are the communities founded by New Christians who left Iberia and resumed Judaism openly. They were overwhelmingly Portuguese rather than Spanish, they were merchants, and they were in constant contact with one another. Amsterdam was the centre of the network and London the largest offshoot.
Their records are the best in the Sephardi world. If your family passed through Amsterdam, the archives are older and fuller than anything you will find at the other end of the line.
The Ottoman Balkans
Greece, Bulgaria, North Macedonia, Serbia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Kosovo, Albania, Croatia and Romania.
These were Ottoman lands until the nineteenth century, and the Jews who settled there after 1492 went directly from Spain rather than by way of Portugal. They spoke Ladino, kept Spanish customs for four centuries, and formed the largest Sephardi communities that have ever existed. Salonica alone held tens of thousands.
They were also very nearly destroyed. Most Balkan Sephardi communities lost the overwhelming majority of their members between 1941 and 1944, and the records suffered with them. Anyone researching here should read the Ottoman archives section as well as the country page.
Italy and the smaller states
Italy, the minor Italian states, Malta, Austria and Russia.
Italy is a special case, because until 1861 it was a dozen separate states competing with one another for Jewish merchants. Families moved between them constantly, and their records sit in separate archives to this day. The Portuguese nation in Italy began at Ancona and Ferrara in the 1530s, sixty years before Livorno.
How the European communities connect
Three routes account for most Western Sephardi migration, and knowing them saves a great deal of wasted searching.
The first ran from Portugal to Amsterdam, either directly or through Antwerp, and then outward to London, Hamburg and the Americas. Roughly a quarter of Sephardim arriving in Amsterdam in the early eighteenth century still came straight from Iberia.
The second ran from Iberia over the Pyrenees to Bayonne and Bordeaux, and from there to Amsterdam, London and the Caribbean. These families were never far from Spain and traded across the border for generations.
The third ran through Italy. Families reached Ancona or Ferrara in the 1530s, moved to Venice after 1597, and to Livorno in the seventeenth century. From Livorno they went on to Tunis, Egypt, London and Amsterdam.
If a European line runs out, the answer is usually Amsterdam, Livorno or the Portuguese Inquisition records.
Where are the European Sephardi records?
The four groups above have quite different archives.
For the Western Sephardi communities, the community’s own archive is normally the richest source: membership lists, tax assessments, charity registers, circumcision and burial books. Amsterdam’s runs from 1639, London’s from the 1660s.
For Spain and Portugal, the records are Catholic and judicial. Parish registers, notarial deeds, and above all Inquisition case files, which name relatives in detail.
For the Balkans, the records are Ottoman until the nineteenth century and then national. Community registers survive patchily, and many were removed to Jerusalem or destroyed in the war.
For Italy, everything depends on which state a town belonged to before 1861.
The European pages
Albania · Belgium · Bosnia and Herzegovina · Bulgaria · Croatia · Denmark · England · France · Germany · Gibraltar · Greece · Ireland · Italy · Kosovo · Livorno · Netherlands · North Macedonia · Portugal · Romania · Russia · Serbia · Spain · Venice
Help us find records
If you hold family papers, transcriptions or photographs from any European Sephardi community, please email [email protected].
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