Hajo Meyer | |
---|---|
Born |
Bielefeld, North-Rhine Westphalia, Germany |
12 August 1924
Died | 23 August 2014 Heiloo, The Netherlands |
(aged 90)
Nationality | German-Dutch |
Fields | Theoretical physicist |
Hajo Meyer (12 August 1924 – 23 August 2014) was a Jewish German-Dutch physicist and an anti-Zionist political activist.
Born in Bielefeld, in 1938 Meyer fled Nazi Germany to the Netherlands alone, without his parents. He went into hiding in 1943, but was arrested after a year and spent ten months in Auschwitz. His parents, who had also been deported to Auschwitz from Germany, did not survive.
After the war, Meyer returned to the Netherlands, and studied theoretical physics. He eventually became director of the Phillips Physics Laboratory (NatLab). After his retirement he took courses in England and worked as a builder of new violins and violas.
In his later years, Meyer became politically active, including as director of A Different Jewish Voice. He wrote Het einde van het Jodendom (The End of Judaism) in 2003, which accuses Israel of abusing the Holocaust to justify crimes against the Palestinians. He was a member of the International Jewish Anti-Zionist Network. He participated in the 2011 "Never Again – For Anyone" tour. He claimed Zionism predates fascism, that Zionists and fascists had a history of cooperation (Nazi/Zionist cooperation was the subject of 51 Documents: Zionist Collaboration with the Nazis, which was collected and edited by Lenni Brenner), charging, among other things, that Israel wants to foment anti-Semitism in the world to encourage more Jews to migrate to Israel.
Meyer spoke in favor of Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions against Israel. Meyer was a member of the Dutch GreenLeft.