differ greatly between Jews and the rest of the Amsterdam population, Jews were far more concentrated in particular lines of commerce. Decline The migration of Sephardic Jews from the Netherlands to the Caribbean Antilles began in the mid-17th century, after the Dutch fleet captured the island of Curaçao from the Spaniards in 1634. One generation later, several waves of migrant Jewish and Protestant families from the Netherlands had established a shipping and trading settlement in Willemstad, a natural harbour controlled by the Dutch West Indies Company. The Dutch troops lost the Brazilian colony of Recife to the Portuguese in 1654, which forced many Dutch Sephardic refugees from Brazil to move to Curaçao or to the colony of New Amsterdam (Manhattan). By the 1680s, the Portuguese Sephardic Community of Amsterdam started to decline, in spite of having built a new synagogue, the monumental Esnoga, which was inaugurated in 1675. With the Netherlands experiencing economic difficulty (in part due to loss of New World colonies) some Jews left and immigration slowed. The Ashkenazic community became the larger Jewish community in Amsterdam, even as the Sephardic Jews kept positions of power and remained the significantly wealthier community. The process of emancipation, granting Jews full Dutch citizenship in the late 18th and early 19th century, continued the erosion of power the Mahamad held over the community. Holocaust On the eve of the Holocaust, there were approximately 4,300 Sephardic Jews living in the Netherlands, of a total Jewish population of some 140,000 (3%). After the war, the Sephardic community had declined to some 800 people, 20% of the pre-war population. The Holocaust meant the end of the Sephardic community in The Hague; it ended after the war as most of the community was murdered by the Nazis in concentration camps. Today Nowadays, the Sephardic community in the Netherlands, called the Portugees-Israëlitisch Kerkgenootschap (PIK) (Portuguese-Israelite Religious Community), has a membership of some 270 families (translating to approximately 600 persons), and is concentrated in Amsterdam. They constitute now some 2% of the Dutch-Jewish community. The PIK also has a youth movement, J-PIG (Jongeren Portugees-Israëlitische Gemeente - Youth Portuguese-Israelite Community). Amsterdam is still home to works of its once vibrant Sephardic community. The Portuguese Synagogue or Esnoga, which was inaugurated in 1675, is located at the heart of Amsterdam's Jewish Cultural Quarter and it is still in use today. The venerable Library Ets Haim - Livraria Montezinos was