BOAS, HENRIETTE

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).

[F. J. Hoogewoud (2^nd ed.)]