De Nacht der Girondijnen by Jacob Presser

They failed and were brought to hospital. After the Dutch surrender (14 May), he and his wife Deborah Appel seriously attempted suicide by cutting their wrists. When Germany invaded the Netherlands on, he was shocked. Presser was affected by the then rising anti-Semitism in Nazi Germany and critically wrote about it. Jan Romein was was one of the instigators of publishing the most famous Ego document of Dutch WW2 history, the now iconic Diary of Anne Frank. But what or who determines culture? The term Ego-Dokument was first coined by Presser in 1958. Both Presser and Romein were interested in socio-cultural history. In 1930, he came into contact with the historian Jan Romein who helped him to get a job as an instructor at the Instituut voor Historische Leergangen, which launched his academic career. He married an ex student of him: Debora Suzanna Appel (1 December 1913, Amsterdam – 26 March 1943, Sobibor) on 30 July 1936 in Amsterdam. Then he taught history at the newly founded Vossius Gymnasium (1926) in Amsterdam, where many prominent Dutch persons became his student. He graduated cum laude in 1926 on the origins of the Treatise of the Three Impostors. At the University he studied history, art history, and Dutch. He attended the University of Amsterdam after finishing a commercial vocational college and having worked in an office for two years. The Pressers were secular Jews, who hoped that the International socialisms In 1903 he emigrated to Antwerp for economics reasons (unemployment). His father Gerrit Presser (12 July 1874 11 AM Amsterdam - 4 August 1936, Amstelveen‎), was a diamond cutter.

Presser was born at the Waterloopplein 17, in the pre-war Jewish quarter of Amsterdam, in a family of rather poor secular Jews.

Photo: Ben Merk / Anefo, license cc-by-sa-3.0 Biography

De Nacht der Girondijnen by Jacob Presser