David Cohen (historian)

David Cohen (Deventer, December 31, 1882 - Amsterdam , September 3, 1967) was a Dutch classicist and one of the two chairs of the Jewish Council during the Second World War.[1]

David Cohen

Education and career until 1940

Cohen was a teacher in The Hague and became a private lecturer at the University of Leiden. In 1924 he became a professor by special appointment at the same university.[2] Two years later he was appointed full professor of Ancient History at the Municipal University of Amsterdam. Cohen was one of the founders and editor of Hermeneus - Monthly Magazine for Ancient Culture , the first edition of which appeared in 1928.[3]

World War II and after

In 1941 Cohen and Asscher were appointed by the German occupiers as chairs of the Jewish Council for Amsterdam.[4] In September 1943, Cohen and Abraham Asscher were themselves arrested and taken to the Westerbork transit camp.[5] Later they were deported from there, Cohen to the Theresienstadt concentration camp . There he survived the war.[2]

After the war, the presidency of the Jewish Council was severely criticized. In 1947, the Jewish Honor Council forbade him to fulfill a position within the Jewish community; this decision was canceled in 1950. Cohen did, however, regain his professorship after the war at the University of Amsterdam, where he retired in 1953.[1]

Family

Cohen was the father of the architect Herman Cohen (1914-2005), who helped build the state of Israel from 1939 to 1967. One of his grandchildren is the doctor and former PvdA politician Rob Oudkerk. He was a brother of the well-known writer Josef Cohen.

Literature
  • David Cohen, Roaming and Wandering. The Jewish refugees in the Netherlands in the years 1933-1940, with an introduction about the years 1900-1933 . Haarlem: De Erven F. Bohn NV, 1955.
  • Piet Schrijvers, Rome, Athene, Jerusalem. Life and work of Prof. dr. Dr. David Cohen . Groningen: Historical Publisher, 2000, ISBN 9789065544711
  • Herman Cohen, Jew in Palestine. Memories 1939-1948 . Amsterdam: Meulenhoff, 1995, ISBN 9029050284
  • Erik Somers, President of the Jewish Council. The memories of David Cohen (1941-1943) . Introduced and annotated by Erik Somers. Zutphen: Walburg Press, 2010, ISBN 9789057305368
gollark: Though saying "we'll just magically fix everything for Easter" isn't... really good in either way.
gollark: You have to make tradeoffs between saving lives now and keeping the economy from imploding, and can't just go "we'll save one extra life even if it costs a trillion $".
gollark: We use a lot of economic output on stuff like healthcare and education and whatnot which have a large impact on future quality of life.
gollark: As I have said a lot, the economy does *matter*.
gollark: I'm staying at home and live in the middle of nowhere anyway, so I can hardly *check*.

References
  1. Voren, Robert van (2011). Undigested Past: The Holocaust in Lithuania. Rodopi. ISBN 978-94-012-0070-7.
  2. "Cohen, David - TracesOfWar.com". www.tracesofwar.com. Retrieved 2020-04-21.
  3. "Cohen, David | Encyclopedia.com". www.encyclopedia.com. Retrieved 2020-04-21.
  4. "Cohen, David | Encyclopedia.com". www.encyclopedia.com. Retrieved 2020-04-21.
  5. "The Terrible Choice". www.jewishgen.org. Retrieved 2020-04-21.
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