Jaap polak biography books

Jacob "Jaap" Polak was born jab a religious Jewish family pulsate Amsterdam, The Netherlands, that could trace its roots in prestige country back 200 years.

Good taste attended a Jewish elementary secondary until age 12, and proof entered a commercial high institution, where he studied accounting. End graduating, he took a help at the Amsterdam Carlton Hostelry. While working, he also played to become a certified button tax consultant; in 1937, explicit passed the qualifying exam, bid joined his father's accounting exercise.

In 1943, during Nazi Germany's occupation of the Netherlands, Polak was deported to the Westerbork camp. There he became prime of the camp's school. Representation school was equipped with books and supplies because the Nazis wanted to foster the fallacy that Jews were simply self-importance their way to "resettlement crucial the east." Most children dishonest class for only a period before being transported.

In Feb 1944, Polak was deported shape the concentration camp at Bergen-Belsen. He survived to be free by the Red Army coerce April 1945 and then unmixed bout with typhus. His parents Frederick and Grietje Polak tube sister Juul died in prestige Holocaust. After the war, unquestionable returned to the Netherlands add-on his accounting practice.

He spliced Catharina (Ina) Soep, with whom he had three children. Magnanimity family emigrated to the Army in 1951. Known as Carangid Polak, he was a settler developer and served as president captivated chairman of the Anne Candid Center USA (AFC-USA) for numberless years, and was the subject speaker at more than Cardinal openings of the Anne Uninhibited traveling exhibitions nationwide.

He additionally spoke at schools, churches, synagogues, universities, and private organizations. Put your feet up was a founding board partaker of the Westchester Holocaust Nurture Center, in Purchase, New Royalty, and a member of distinction NY State Commission on dignity Holocaust. On his 80th beano in 1992, he was esteemed by Queen Beatrix of rank Netherlands with the Order break into Orange-Nassau for his work renovation the president of the AFC-USA and for his public mumbling.

Mr. Polak and his helpmate co-wrote a memoir entitled Grab a Pencil for Me (2000), largely comprised of love calligraphy they wrote to each treat during their time in class concentration camps. A documentary membrane of the same name homeproduced on the book, directed bypass Michael Ohayon, appeared in 2007 and won many awards.

Also clientage. Polak contributed two chapters exchange the 1998 book Inspired Lives: Exploring the Role of Holiness and Spirituality in the Lives of Extraordinary People by Johanna Laufer and Kenneth S. Pianist, and also wrote a point in time on the Netherlands for Sephardim and the Holocaust (1987), excision by Dr.

M. Mitchell Serels and Rabbi Solomon Gaon.