Anton de Kom
1898 – 1945
Writer, anti-colonial activist and resistance fighter
Author of the seminal We Slaves of Suriname (1934) — the first major work to describe Surinamese colonial history from a Surinamese perspective.
Anton de Kom was born in Paramaribo in 1898, son of a free, formerly enslaved father. He moved to the Netherlands in 1920, worked as a bookkeeper and joined the socialist and anti-colonial movement.
In 1932 he returned to Suriname and opened an 'advisory office' for workers and small farmers. When thousands flocked to his office, six demonstrators were shot and De Kom was banished to the Netherlands without trial.
In 1934 We Slaves of Suriname was published. During the German occupation he joined the resistance, was arrested in 1944 and died in April 1945 in Sandbostel concentration camp. Only in 1982 was his body re-interred in Suriname.
In 2020 the Dutch government posthumously rehabilitated him and in 2022 his work was added to the Canon of the Netherlands.
Sources
- Anton de Kom — Wij slaven van Suriname (1934)
- Rob Woortman & Alice Boots — Anton de Kom: biografie (2009)