History
Sal Meijer: A Story of Memory, Craft, and Humour
Sal Meijer (1906–1994) was more than the founder of a well-known butcher’s shop and sandwich counter. He was a man shaped by a world that has largely disappeared: the pre-war Jewish Amsterdam of trades and crafts, social customs, humour, and an instinctive sense of communal belonging. He carried that world with him throughout his life.
In post-war Amsterdam, Sal Meijer was neither a brand nor a legend. He was a man behind a counter, wearing an apron, with a sharp eye for his craft and a distinctive way of looking at people and the world. At the same time, he became a prominent figure in Jewish Amsterdam: a survivor, a bearer of memory, and someone who could not separate his identity from history, community, and loss.
From the late 1950s onward, Sal Meijer ran his modest business on the Jodenbreestraat, later continuing at the Nieuwmarkt and on the Scheldestraat. What he sold was simple: meat and filled sandwiches. But his shop was more than a place to eat. It became a meeting place for local residents, Jews from the Netherlands and abroad, journalists, artists, and loyal customers: a place where conversations unfolded, where laughter and silence coexisted, and where a sense of continuity was felt in a city and a community still recovering from war and upheaval.
Sal Meijer had personally experienced the war and the loss of many loved ones. Yet he carried that history without pathos. In conversations and interviews he spoke about his past without placing himself at the centre. Victimhood did not suit him; irony and humour did. His often dry, sometimes sharp wit was not superficiality but a way of living with what had happened. For him, laughter was not a denial of the past, but a form of survival.
The half-and-half sandwich and the warm salt beef later became the most visible symbols of his work; not through ambition or promotion, but through daily craftsmanship. For Sal Meijer, everything revolved around devotion to his trade, care for food, and respect for the people he served. In interviews he consistently stressed that fame meant little to him; he did not see himself as an icon or a model, but simply as someone doing his work and living his life.
Journalist G. Philip Mok described Sal Meijer in his obituary, “Prince of the Exile,” as someone who embodied the experience of loss, displacement, and survival, while at the same time holding fast to his Jewish identity, his humour, and his cultural roots. His shop was not an attraction and not a concept, but a fixed point in the lives of many. Its meaning lay not in what was sold, but in how it was done: without pretension, without grandstanding, with modesty and dignity.
After his death in 1994, Sal Meijer continued to live on in memories, stories, and articles. What he left behind was not a formula, a franchise, or a commercial idea, but a cultural and moral legacy inseparably linked to his person, his values, and his time. This legacy cannot be detached from the historical context in which it arose, nor reduced to a contemporary format.
The Sal Meijer Heritage Foundation was established to document, preserve, and interpret this story. Not to exploit it, but to place it in context. To record what Sal Meijer represented: a generation, a mindset, and a form of humanity that cannot be reproduced.
This is not a story about nostalgia for its own sake.
It is a story about memory, humour, craftsmanship, and community.