I’m Jacob Boas,
historian, author, translator.


Jacob Boas was born in Transit Camp Westerbork (1943), the concentration camp in northeastern Holland from which the bulk of Dutch Jewry was sent to the killing centers in the East. Liberated in 1945, Boas grew up in Amsterdam and Montreal before moving on to California, where he earned a Ph.D. in history. He lives in Portland, Oregon, with his wife, Patricia.

His books include Boulevard des Misères: The Story of Transit Camp Westerbork (1985); We Are Witnesses: Five Diaries of Teenagers Who Died in the Holocaust Mr. HOLOCAUST (I presume) (2005, Dutch only); Writers’ Block: The Paris Antifascist Congress of 1935 (2016), and Until Further Notice ... Theresienstadt On My Mind (2024).

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Photo by Karen Weliky