Henri Polak

Henri Polak (22 February 1868 – 18 February 1943) was a Dutch trade unionist and politician. Polak is best remembered as a longtime president of the General Diamond Workers' Union of the Netherlands (ANDB) and as a founder of the Dutch Social Democratic Workers' Party in 1894. Targeted as a Jew, a marxist, and a trade unionist, Polak was arrested by the Nazis in 1940 but died early in 1943 before he could be deported.

Biography Early years Henri Polak was born 22 February 1868 in the Dutch city of Amsterdam. He was the son of a diamond cutter and jeweler named Mozes Polak and his wife, Marianne Smit. He attended a Jewish primary school until the age of 13, at which time he was pulled out of school to go to work to help support his parents' large family as an apprentice diamond cutter.

In 1886, following an argument with his father over a girl he was seeing, Polak's commitment to improving the cultural activities of union members, many of whom were formally marginalized and ghettoized in Dutch society, was as important to many union members as his ongoing efforts for the improvement of wages and shortening of the workday.

Polak was also instrumental in the establishment of the Dutch Confederation of Trade Unions (NVV), of which he was the first president (1905–1908).

Henri Polak was also active as a nature conservationist. He held a high position in the Dutch Society for Preservation of Nature Monuments in the Netherlands (Vereniging Natuurmonumenten) until he withdrew during the Nazi occupation of the Netherlands. Polak did this because members of the Dutch national-socialist party (NSB) joined the board.

As co-founder of the Social Democratic Workers' Party, Polak also held several functions in this party. He was a councilor in the municipality of Amsterdam and then in Laren, spent several months in the House of Representatives and then many years in the Senate.

From around 1903 he and Pieter Jelles Troelstra edited the Sociale Bibliotheek book series.

In June 1932 Polak was recognized with an honorary doctorate degree from the University of Amsterdam for his services to the Dutch labor movement and for his cultural work on behalf of the country's working class.

Final years Following the Nazi invasion of the Netherlands in May 1940, Polak attempted to flee the country to safety in Great Britain. His attempt at departure came too late, and he was arrested about six weeks after the invasion and imprisoned in Amsterdam. With his health failing, he was transferred to another facility at Wassenaar, from which he was unexpectedly released in July 1942, just as deportations of Dutch Jews to Nazi death camps was beginning.

Polak's health failed him and he died in a hospital in Laren of pneumonia on 18 February 1943 at nearly 75 years of age. Shortly after his death his wife Milly was deported to Westerbork concentration camp (Judendurchgangslager Westerbork) where she died in 1943.

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