Henriëtte Boas

Henriëtte Boas (Amsterdam, 10 oktober 1911 – Badhoevedorp, 27 juni 2001) was een Nederlands classica en publiciste.

Boas werd geboren in een joods gezin en groeide op in de Den Texstraat, in Amsterdam. Tijdens de Tweede Wereldoorlog werkte ze als omroepster bij de BBC in Londen.

Boas was tientallen jaren actief als schrijfster van ingezonden stukken waarin ze de verkeerde weergave van feiten in kranten corrigeerde. In de Weinreb-affaire behoorde zij tot de tegenstanders van Friedrich Weinreb en diens verdedigers Renate Rubinstein en Aad Nuis.

Tot op hoge leeftijd reisde ze heen en weer tussen haar woonplaats Badhoevedorp en bibliotheken en boekhandels in Amsterdam. Boas overleed op 89-jarige leeftijd in het Slotervaart Ziekenhuis te Amsterdam, nadat zij in haar eigen woning ten val was gekomen. Na haar dood werd de dr. Henriëtte Boas Stichting opgericht. Filmmaker David de Jongh maakte een portret over haar: Ik lees de krant met een schaar.

Externe link

• Ik lees de krant met een schaar
• Dr. Henriette Boas Stichting

Literatuur

Inteview uit 1985 met Frènk van der Linden in Tot op het bot, Amsterdam, 1999

Source: http://nl.wikipedia.org/wiki/Henri%C3%ABtte_Boas

http://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/jsource/judaica/ejud_0002_0004_...

BOAS, HENRIETTE (1911–2001), Dutch classical scholar and journalist. Boas was born in Amsterdam, the eldest daughter of Dr. Marcus Boas (1879–1940), a learned private teacher of classics. She studied Ancient History, Greek and Latin and wrote her Ph.D. dissertation on Aeneas' Arrival in Latium (1938) at the University of Amsterdam. From February to May 1940 she was in Paris doing research, and from there she managed to get to London, where she worked in the Dutch section of the BBC. From 1947 till 1951 she lived in Palestine/Israel and wrote for various newspapers. After her return to the Netherlands she worked as a correspondent for the Israeli newspapers Haaretz and the Jerusalem Post and the English weekly Jewish Chronicle.

Between 1959 and 1981 she taught Greek and Latin at various schools in Holland. She continued to write for the above newspapers and in Dutch she contributed to Aleh, the quarterly of Dutch immigrants in Israel, and to Jewish periodicals in the Netherlands. She wrote on Dutch topics in the first edition and Year Books of the Encyclopaedia Judaica as well as for the American Jewish Yearbook (1987–99). She also participated in symposia and lectured on Dutch Jewish literary and historical topics.

The Dr. Henriette Boas Stichting (Amsterdam) established the Dr. Henriette Boas Prize for journalists and other popular writers who make outstanding achievements in the field of Dutch Jewish history and culture. Shaul Kesslassi and Daphne Meijer made a documentary film about her life called Ik lees de krant met een schaar (NIK-Media, Hilversum, December 2004).

http://www.nefesh.nl/english/henrietteboas_en.html

Film

“I Read the Newspaper with Scissors”

Portrait of Dr.Henriette Boas (1911-2001)

This is the story of an uncompromising woman almost everybody loved to hate. Born in 1911 as the child of Marcus Boas, a Jewish professor who dedicated his life to science, Henriette Boas was considered a genius. At the age of 2 she would quote Homer to her father’s students. She graduated form the university with honors. But the woman widely considered a great mind “only” tirelessly wrote thousands of letters to the editor. Most Dutch readers knew her as ”Dr. Henriette Boas, Badheovendorp”. Anyone who made even the most trivial mistake could expect a letter signed by her. She was the persistent watchdog whenever anything was written about Israel or Judaism. In this capacity, she was often frowned upon by Jews and gentiles alike. Henriette Boas, a woman who admired intellect and despised emotion, never got married. She said she was married to the Jewish cause.

A troublesome woman constantly finding fault?

A true warrior with a strong sense of justice and a love of truth?

The woman who made writing letters to the editor her life’s work was an outsider by nature. Her uncompromising character led her to expose two of the most controversial affairs in the post-war Netherlands. The film shows Henriette Boas and the role she played in the Netherlands, and also the individual Henriette Boas from her birth in 1911 to her death in 2001 at the age of 89.

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Obituary in Jerusalem Post

Tuesday, June 26, 2001 -- Henriette Boas, former Amsterdam correspondent for The Jerusalem Post, who died in Amsterdam on Saturday, was buried there yesterday at the Jewish Cemetery. She was 89.

Born in Holland in 1911, Boas amassed a cornucopia of knowledge but was "not an easy woman," recalls Dr. Jozef Michman, a former Yad Vashem director and Education Ministry official who was her classmate in Amsterdam and had known her since she was 12.