Jacob (Jacques) Presser (24 February 1899 in Amsterdam – 30 April 1970 in Amsterdam) was a Dutch historian, writer and poet who is known for his book Ashes in the Wind (The Destruction of the Dutch Jews) on the history of the persecution of the Jews in the Netherlands during World War II. Presser made a significant contribution to Dutch historical scholarship, as well as to European historical scholarship. Early life Presser was born in the former Jewish quarter of Amsterdam. His family was rather poor (his father was a diamond cutter), and his parents, who were secular Jews, had socialist leanings. Presser himself in later life, also gravitated towards the left. As a child, he lived for a while with his family in Antwerp, Belgium. He attended the University of Amsterdam after he finished a commercial vocational college and having worked in an office for two years. At the university, he studied history, art history, and Dutch. He graduated cum laude in 1926. Then, he taught history at the newly founded Vossius Gymnasium grammar school in Amsterdam. In 1930, he came into contact with the renowned historian Jan Romein, who helped him to get a job as an instructor at the Instituut voor Historische Leergangen, which launched his academic career. Wartime Presser was affected by the rising anti-Semitism in Nazi Germany and wrote critically about it. When Germany invaded the Netherlands in 1940, that was a very great shock for him, and he even attempted suicide. Because of the Nazi anti-Jewish policies, he lost his job at Vossius Gymnasium, but he managed to find work as a teacher at the Jewish Lyceum. In early 1943, his wife, Deborah Appel, was arrested and deported to the Sobibor death camp, where she died. The loss of his first wife marked Presser for life, but he managed to escape from the Nazis by going into hiding in several places, including in the small town Lunteren. Postwar After the war ended, Presser retutned his teaching job at the Vossius Gymnasium, and he was also a lecturer in political history, didactics, and the methodology of history at the Faculty of Arts of the University of Amsterdam. In 1947, partly at his instigation, the politico-social faculty of law was established at the University, and he began to teach there. From 1948, he was also professor at the Faculty of Arts. His Marxist political leanings prevented