Jacques Presser

Jacob (Jacques) Presser (24 February 1899 in Amsterdam – 30 April 1970 in Amsterdam) was a Dutch historian, writer and poet, known for his book Ashes in the wind (The destruction of the Dutch Jews) on the history of the persecution of the Jews in the Netherlands during World War II. Presser made a significant contribution to Dutch historical scholarship, as well as to European historical scholarship.

Presser was born in the former Jewish quarter of Amsterdam. His family was rather poor (his father was a diamond cutter), and his parents, who were secular Jews, had Socialist leanings. Presser, himself, in later life, also gravitated towards the Left. As a child he lived for a while with his family in Antwerp, Belgium.

He attended the University of Amsterdam after finishing a commercial vocational college and having worked in an office for two years. At the University he studied history, art history, and Dutch. He graduated cum laude in 1926. Then he taught history at the newly founded Vossius Gymnasium (a grammar school) in Amsterdam.

In 1930, he came into contact with the renowned historian Jan Romein who helped him to get a job as an instructor at the Instituut voor Historische Leergangen, which launched his academic career.

Presser was affected by the then rising anti-Semitism in Nazi Germany, and he wrote critically about it. When Germany invaded the Netherlands in 1940, this was a very great shock for him; he even attempted suicide, unsuccessfully. Because of the Nazi anti-Jewish policies, he lost his job at Vossius Gymnasium; nevertheless, he managed to find work as a teacher at the Jewish Lyceum.

In early 1943, his wife Deborah Appel was arrested and deported to the Sobibor death camp, where she died. The loss of his first wife marked Presser for life. Yet he managed to escape from the Nazis by going into hiding in several places, including in a small town named Lunteren.

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