Ben Polak

Benjamin Sally "Ben" Polak (12 September 1913 – 24 July 1993) was a Dutch medical doctor and politician. A member of the Communist Party of the Netherlands (CPN), he served as alderman of Amsterdam from 1946 until being forced to resign in 1948, and as a member of the Dutch Senate from 1956 to 1960. Polak was temporarily expelled from the CPN in 1953 due to him questioning the Doctors' Plot, but was let back into the party the same year after the supposed plot was proven false. He was also a practicing physician, who became a professor of medicine at the University of Amsterdam in 1977.

Early life Ben Polak was born on 12 September 1913 in Nijmegen to Mozes Samson Polak, an Orthodox Jewish cantor, and Goldina van der Hove, a socialist. His father died when he was 12, and the family moved to The Hague, where his mother raised him in a more liberal manner and where he attended secondary school. In 1932, Polak began studying medicine at Leiden University, where he became involved in the Zionist student movement. along with the left wing of the local Zionist student organisation. and despite only being allowed to treat Jewish patients he regularly helped resistance members and people in hiding. Although a declaration the next day by Leen Seegers, the other CPN alderman, was able to mollify mayor Arnold d'Ailly who stuck to condemning the communists, others saw the reaction as too weak. Following a CPN campaign urging the Labour Party (PvdA) to follow the example of the Czechoslovak socialists instead of their current "reactionary" stance, a vote of no-confidence in Polak and Seegers was passed on 24 March, although both kept their seats, claiming the Amsterdam municipal council had no legal standing to remove them.

In an article in De Waarheid the next day, Polak was accused of "devious scheming" and of attempting to turn several Jewish party members against the party and the Soviet Union by spreading doubts about the veracity of the doctors' plot. On 10 March, Polak resigned from the Amsterdam municipal council and North Holland provincial council. As a senator, he focused primarily on justice, social affairs, health, defence, and education. though his patients came from all ranks of society. He became known as a progressive minded doctor, who performed controversial medical procedures including abortion and euthanasia. He paid special attention to survivors of World War II, helping them get social benefits and participating in several commissions to advance their interests in the 1980s.

Polak also became active academically, helping found an institute for educating general practitioners at the University of Amsterdam in 1969 and serving as an academic employee there until 1970, when he became an assistant professor (lector). In 1977, he became a full professor (hoogleraar) which he would remain until his retirement in 1984. Polak additionally participated in the leadership of a wide range of medical associations, including the Medical Committee North Vietnam from 1978 to 1988, the Royal Dutch Medical Association from 1976 to 1982, and the Vereniging tegen de Kwakzalverij. He served as chairman of the board of trustees of the newspaper Vrij Nederland from 1978 to 1988.

Ben Polak died on 24 July 1993 in Amsterdam.

Personal life Ben Polak was married four times to three different women, and had a reputation as a womanizer. In 1940, he married Petra "Pim" Eldering, the daughter of a Remonstrant preacher and a fellow CPN member, with whom he had two sons in 1940 and 1942. In 1947, the two divorced, and Polak married Letty Bronzing, but at the request of his sons Polak remarried Eldering in 1950. He divorced Eldering a second time in 1969, after which he married Mireille Smit in 1977.