Loe de Jong

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Loe de Jong (1966)

Louis de Jong (born April 24, 1914 in Amsterdam , † March 15, 2005 there ) was one of the most famous Dutch historians and journalists .

Loe (pronounced: Lu [ lu ]) de Jong is best known for his fourteen-part work Het Koninkrijk der Nederlanden in de Tweede Wereldoorlog ("The Kingdom of the Netherlands in World War II "), which he wrote by himself except for the last volume and is regarded as the standard work on the time of the Second World War in the Netherlands and the Dutch East Indies , today's Indonesia .

Life

Loe de Jong was born into a Jewish family and his father ran a grocery store. From 1926 to 1932 he attended the Vossius Gymnasium in his hometown. There he was impressed and influenced by his young history teacher Jacques Presser . From 1932 to 1937 De Jong studied history and a minor in social geography at the University of Amsterdam . From 1938 to 1940 he worked as a journalist and foreign editor for the left-wing weekly De Groene Amsterdammer (The Green Amsterdam).

Loe de Jong (1942)

After the German attack on the Netherlands on May 10, 1940, he realized that as a Jew and as a left-wing journalist, he was in great danger. He planned immediately to flight to safe countries, which, to him a few days later on May 15, 1940 the day of the surrender of the Netherlands with his wife to London succeeded. There he became both reporter and director of Radio Oranje , the radio station of the Dutch Verzet ("Resistance"), which broadcast from Great Britain to the occupied fatherland.

As a result of National Socialist persecution in World War II, De Jong lost many family members, including his parents, his twin brother Sally and his aunt, the local politician and trade unionist Alida de Jong . This tragic loss, as well as the persecution of the Jews in general, shaped the rest of his life. He felt guilty for surviving the war.

In the penultimate year of the war, he was able to persuade Minister Gerrit Bolkestein from the Ministry of Education, Culture and Science to found an imperial institute after the war to deal with the chronology and the collection of eyewitness accounts during the Second World War in the Netherlands.

On September 15, 1945, the Rijksinstituut voor Oorlogsdocumentatie (RIOD, Reichsinstitut für Kriegsdocumentatie), today's Nederlands Instituut voor Oorlogsdocumentatie (NIOD, Dutch Institute for War Documentation), was founded and Loe de Jong was entrusted with the management of the institute as director. He held this position until his retirement in 1979. After his retirement, De Jong worked on completing his work on the war in the Netherlands.

From 1960 to 1965 he presented the documentary series De Bezetting (The Occupation) on Dutch television , which he also moderated. Since the events of 1940 to 1945 had been repressed during the reconstruction period, the television series brought them back into public discussion.

His great work on World War II was not accepted unchallenged. One point of criticism was that De Jong was too guided by the subjective terms “good” and “bad”. On the one hand, this led to the fact that he glorified the role of Dutch resistance fighters , on the other hand, he paid little attention to the role of Dutch collaborators . His descriptions of the war events in the Dutch East Indies also sparked criticism.

Appreciation

In the Berlin exhibition Crime and Enlightenment. The first generation of Holocaust research , which was developed by the Memorial and Educational Center Haus der Wannsee Conference and the Touro College Berlin and will be shown in January / February 2019 in the Haus am Werderschen Markt , will be Loe de Jong as one of 20 pioneers in Holocaust research presented.

Fonts

  • The German Fifth Column in World War II. Deutsche Verlags-Anstalt, Stuttgart 1959 (German translation of his doctoral thesis De Duitse Vijfde Colonne in de Tweede Wereldoorlog , 1953 ( online )).
  • Het Koninkrijk der Nederlanden in de Tweede Wereldoorlog , 14 volumes. SDU-Verlag, The Hague 1969–1991.
  • De Bezetting. three volumes, SDU-Verlag, The Hague 1990, ISBN 90-12-06335-3 , ISBN 90-12-06336-1 and ISBN 90-12-06337-X .
  • Felix Kersten and the Netherlands. In: Hans-Heinrich Wilhelm, Louis de Jong: Two legends from the Third Reich. Source-critical studies. Deutsche Verlags-Anstalt, 1974 (= series of quarterly journals for contemporary history , vol. 28), ISBN 3-421-01680-1 .

Web links

Commons : Loe de Jong  - collection of images, videos and audio files

Footnotes

  1. ↑ Shirley Haasnoot, Johannes Houwink ten Cate, Eva Rensman: Loe de Jong . In: Historisch Nieuwsblad , year 2001, issue 1 (Dutch).
  2. ↑ Wim Berkelaar, Jos Palm: "Ik wil wekken en waarschuwen". Gespreken over Nederlandse historici en hun eeuw . Aksant, Amsterdam 2008, ISBN 978-90-5260-208-0 , p. 88.
  3. ^ Conny Kristel: Geschiedschrijving als opdracht. Abel Herzberg, Jacques Presser en Loe de Jong over de jodenvervolging . Meulenhoff, Amsterdam 1998, ISBN 90-290-5498-0 , p. 68.
  4. ↑ Crime and Enlightenment. The first generation of Holocaust research , on the website of the Federal Foreign Office , accessed on January 30, 2019.
personal data
SURNAME Jong, Loe de
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Jong, Louis de
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Dutch historian and journalist
DATE OF BIRTH April 24, 1914
PLACE OF BIRTH Amsterdam
DATE OF DEATH March 15, 2005
Place of death Amsterdam