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Survivor, Agitator Geerlings, A.J.M.

2020

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Download date: 05. Oct. 2021 LONNEKE GEERLINGS

SURVIVOR,SURVIVOR, AAGITATOR.GITATOR. ROSEYROSEY E.E. POOLPOOL ANDAND THETHE TRANSATLANTICTRANSATLANTIC CENTURYCENTURY VRIJE UNIVERSITEIT

SURVIVOR, AGITATOR

ROSEY E. POOL AND THE TRANSATLANTIC CENTURY

ACADEMISCH PROEFSCHRIFT

ter verkrijging van de graad Doctor aan de Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam, op gezag van de rector magnificus prof.dr. V. Subramaniam, in het openbaar te verdedigen ten overstaan van de promotiecommissie van de Faculteit der Geesteswetenschappen op woensdag 13 mei 2020 om 15.45 uur in de aula van de universiteit, De Boelelaan 1105

door

Apollonia Johanna Maria Geerlings

geboren te Noordwijkerhout promotoren: prof.dr. S. Legêne prof.dr. D.M. Oostdijk

Lonneke Geerlings

SURVIVOR, AGITATOR

ROSEY E. POOL AND THE TRANSATLANTIC CENTURY

2019 This dissertation has been financially supported by:

Netherlands Organisation for Scientific Research (NWO) The Eccles Centre for American Studies at The British Library European Holocaust Research Infrastructure (EHRI) German Historical Institute (GHI) European Association for American Studies (EAAS) Catharina Halkes fonds CLUE+, Research Institute for Culture, Cognition, History and Heritage

© 2019 Lonneke Geerlings I have tried to find all copyright holders of the used material in this dissertation. If you believe that material has been used without permission, you are requested to contact the author.

Cover photo: Rosey Pool together with (from left to right) Richard Morrison, Samuel W. Allen, Mari Evans, Margaret Burroughs (sitting) and Margaret Danner (outside of cropped area), at the Second Writers' Conference at Alabama A&M College, Normal, Alabama, December 1966. Source: Jewish Historical Museum Amsterdam, F010641. ‘That piece of yellow cotton became my black skin.’

ROSEY E. POOL, ca. 1968

TABLE OF CONTENTS

INTRODUCTION 13 Historiography 14 Theoretical concepts and definitions 16 Sources 19 Digital tools 22 Chapter overview 24 CHAPTER 1: AMSTERDAM A ‘VAGUE JEWISH ANCESTRY.’ GROWING UP IN AMSTERDAM. 27 From Girls Scouts to the Socialist Youth 33 Among the ‘in-crowd’ of future socialist leaders 39 International comradery 42 Solidarity of a loner 48 CHAPTER 2: BERLIN JEWISH, LESBIAN, REVOLUTIONARY SOCIALIST. RADICALIZATION IN NAZI BERLIN. 51 Political radicalization 56 Anti-fascist activism across borders 58 A peak out of the closet 60 ‘Who of us dares that!!’ 64 A Jewish woman in Nazi Berlin 66 Mass movements, individual decisions 69 CHAPTER 3: WESTERBORK ‘A LITTLE BIT OF LUCK AND A BIT OF PLUCK.’ ESCAPING THE HOLOCAUST. 73 The ‘race madness’ spreads 76 Observing Anne Frank 79 Forging papers and rescuing children 81 In the lion’s den 84 Westerbork, the portal to hell 86

7 A not-so-great escape 89 A literature snob in hiding 98 REAL resistance and women’s work 103 CHAPTER 4: AMSTERDAM ‘WHO’D BE INTERESTED?’ OBESITY AND TRAUMA IN POST HOLOCAUST AMSTERDAM. 107 A ‘consciously living Jewess’ on the run from herself 112 A transatlantic Black-Jewish alliance 114 I, too, am America 116 A heavy burden 119 The thin line between passion and obsession 124 CHAPTER 5: LONDON ‘23A PARADISE,’ A BLACK ATLANTIC SALON. STIMULATING AFRICAN AMERICAN POETRY FROM LONDON. 127 Black and Unknown Bards 134 ‘Everyone knows Rosey’ 142 Spider in a Black Atlantic web 149 CHAPTER 6: HILVERSUM THE ‘RACE QUESTION’ ON DUTCH TELEVISION. OR: HOW TO LEARN DUTCH IN FIVE STEPS. 153 ‘We were both out of our minds’ 157 Audrey Hepburn 162 An intimate dinner with W.E.B. Du Bois 164 High expectations 167 Black emancipation and white innocence 173 CHAPTER 7: THE DEEP SOUTH ‘ANNE FRANK’S TEACHER’ IN THE USA. 1959-1960 LECTURE TOUR (EXTENDED). 177 Up North 180 Going South 186 Media circus 195 CHAPTER 8: MISSISSIPPI SHADOWS OF THE HOLOCAUST OVER MISSISSIPPI. A TRAUMATIZED ‘OUTSIDE AGITATOR’ AT TOUGALOO COLLEGE. 199

8 Ernst Borinski’s ‘stigma management’ 201 Creative writing as ‘group therapy’ 206 Mississippi or Nazi-occupied Europe? 210 ‘She cannot stop now’ 212 Participating in CORE passive resistance classes 215 Confronting her own past 218 CHAPTER 9: ALABAMA MULTIDIRECTIONAL SILENCES IN ROCKET CITY, USA. TEACHING AT ALABAMA A&M COLLEGE. 221 ‘Bootsie’ 223 Rembrandt and Claude McKay 226 Segregation and isolation 230 ‘Nazi scientists’ in Alabama 232 Silences and gaps 235 CHAPTER 10: LAGOS & DAKAR BEING FRIENDS WITH LANGSTON. A ‘VERY WHITE’ WOMAN AND THE END OF THE SIXTIES. 239 Lagos, Nigeria 244 Between A-list and blacklist 249 Dakar, Senegal 251 The curtain falls 255 CONCLUSIONS 259 Survivor, agitator 260 Contact zones and comfort zones 262 A profound impact on a local scale 263 A versatile stimulator 265 EPILOGUE PURSUING GHOSTS 269 ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS 272 ENDNOTES 277 SOURCES 345 Justification sources 345 Archives 348 Oral history interviews 354

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Digitized sources 354 Periodicals 355 Bibliography 356 ABOUT ROSEY E. POOL 379 List of publications 379 Selection of poems 388 Her private library 394 ABBREVIATIONS 422 LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS 424 ENGLISH SUMMARY 430 NEDERLANDSE SAMENVATTING 432 INDEX 435

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Figure 0.1 Rosey Pool together with Fannie Jude’s granddaughter, Huntsville, Alabama, 1965. Source: JHM.

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INTRODUCTION

Rosey E. Pool (1905-1971) hardly lived an ordinary life. She witnessed the rise of the Nazis in Berlin firsthand; she taught many pupils, including Anne Frank; she operated in a Jewish resistance group; she escaped from a Nazi transit camp; she witnessed independence movements in Nigeria and

Senegal; and she was involved in the American Civil Rights Movement. Although each of these moments would have been sufficient for a book in itself, her life as a survivor/agitator culminated in the fifties and sixties. This was the time when all finally seemed to come together for Pool. Her claim about ‘anti-otherisms’ - her thesis that merged together systematic exclusion, whether this was anti-

Black racism or anti-Semitism - was finally in vogue with emancipatory movements across the Black diaspora and the western world alike. Simultaneously she was an outcast in all of the places she operated in. After one of her American travels in the early sixties, one poet was amazed that ‘one so removed’ was interested in the Black cause. Pool’s response was swift and clear: ‘believe me: since

1933 I was anything but “removed” from all that,’ she wrote, ‘and the years 1940-45 in Holland under nazi occupation when the yellow jew stars were our darker skins completed my education.’1

This research starts off with a set of puzzling questions. Apart from answering what Pool’s actions were and what her significance was, this dissertation wants to examine how Pool’s life was determined by her own conscious decisions, but also by the specific historical contexts, places, and networks she operated in. This led to one first, basic question: who was Rosey Pool? What did she do, what were her accomplishments, and how can she be characterized? Secondly, I want to find out what her personal motives were. What drove her to each of these hotbeds of history, to take action outside of her own comfort zone and into these historic contact zones? Thirdly, I want to know what

Pool’s influence was on the public discourse of race, both within the US and within the Netherlands.

Did she transfer ideas, literature, or protest repertoires across the Atlantic, and in what way did her

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networks play a role in this? And finally, again a basic but pertinent question, related to historiography: how is it possible that this woman has escaped the attention of historians?

Historiography

This dissertation/biography sheds light on some key issues pertaining to the twentieth century, from the 1910s to the 1970s. Rosey Pool’s life compels us to explore networks of transnational anti-fascist activism, Jewish resistance during the Holocaust, while her postwar life - or, perhaps more appropriately, her post-Holocaust life2 - touches upon some different historical narratives which are often studied in isolation, such as the role of whites and Jews in the Civil Rights Movement, the residues of Old Left activism in the Cold War, LGBT history, but also the double edged role of trauma in political activism.

With Pool being at different crossroads in history, this book showcases various entangled histories. It is thereby highly indebted to what Michael Rothberg has called ‘multidirectional memory,’ which argues that debates on the Holocaust enabled the articulation of other histories of victimization, which subsequently became an essential part in the claiming of rights by colonized peoples, women, and minorities alike.3 Pool often united the global and the local in her activism and work. She could easily tell about individual lives, often with a microscopic precision, before moving on to major arguments. She was prone to tell the story of Anne Frank to American audiences to reveal similarities between Nazism and Jim Crow. She promoted the career of actor Gordon Heath in the

Netherlands to fight racial prejudice and anti-Black racism. And when she was in Mississippi in the early sixties, it was her own life story that generated a historical background of racial oppression in the western world. Often Pool made such links rigorously, with sweeping, sentimental statements.

Nonetheless, she often succeeded to impress her audiences.

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Despite Pool’s extraordinary life and significant achievements, she is largely absent from existing historiography but also in other archives, except her own. Historical women tend to be more invisible, both in archives as in historiography.4 Luckily, I did not have to start from scratch entirely.

The work of other scholars was indispensable to explore Pool’s contexts and contacts. Remarkably,

Pool was often missing in those histories as well. A notable exception has been the work of Anneke

Buys, whose 1986 unpublished manuscript on Rosey Pool’s life5 is based on thorough and detailed research that has been of tremendous importance. An extended enumeration of Pool’s work and actions than an actual biography, her work differs greatly from this dissertaton. It does not support the one-sided focus on Pool’s religious experiences, in particular her affiliation with the Bahá’í Faith.

This book places Pool’s affiliation with the Bahá’í Faith as part of her lifelong religious quest. And although her religious beliefs probably fueled some of her actions, she rarely operated in synagogues, churches, or Bahá’í houses of worship: instead she operated in mainstream institutions. Moreover, I have actively tried to interpret and contextualize Pool’s actions, which Buys did not. Yet, her research remains a vital starting point for most of my endeavors, as it provided an almost complete overview of Pool’s work. Also the interviews that Buys held during the 1980s were crucial for my understanding of the first forty years of Rosey Pool’s life. Yet each one had to be carefully examined, as these were significantly but also products of their time.6

Rosey Pool’s eventful life also led me to delve into some more unfamiliar territories: lesbian subcultures in Nazi Germany, histories of obesity, African American tourists in the Soviet Union,7 and the history of the Bahá’í Faith. Repeatedly I was led to ‘other’ voices in history: those of the oppressed, of protesters, and people on the fringes of society. Whether detailing Pool’s anti-fascist affiliation, with her anti-colonial work, or with her anti-segregationist activism in the American

South, her life was very much a countercultural story, focusing on the ‘other’ - or shadow history as

15

you may call it - of her time, and to approach grand historical narratives from a different point of view.

Theoretical concepts and definitions

Pool lived through what has been called ‘the Age of Extremes,’8 and as a Jewish, lesbian, (former) socialist woman, she did not have an easy life. Most key moments in her life were decidedly terrifying, and her multilayered identifications easily made her the subject of ever-changing power relations.

Being ‘a minority of one,’ as she called it,9 her different belongings and shifting identities allowed her to easily relate to various other marginalized groups, including Blacks, children, blind people, women, or a combination of these marginalizations, such as Black women. Intersectionality is thus a central theme in this book, as it is both a concept as well as a method, and flexible and ambiguous enough to explore cross-connections between different social categories and underlying power structures.10

Almost equally important have been theories about identity and gender as performative acts, which are performed in specific historical places and times, always in relation to others.11 I do not describe Pool’s ‘essence,’ which would imply that she would have had a singular, stable identity throughout the sixty-six years of her life. I prefer instead to look at the different roles she took on at different moments in time, forcing me to critically examine and deconstruct her public appearances.

Often I have tried to define the ‘hypothetical reader,’12 picturing the audience she had in mind, which greatly defined the parameters of her message. Generally speaking, she addressed a specific (radical) socialist audience before the war, while after 1945 she tried to target a broad and wide-ranging audience, which in practice nevertheless meant: a white audience.13 This attempt to appeal to the general public clearly had a downside as well, which becomes apparent if we take into account her sexual orientation. This was displayed rarely or not at all, depending on the context she operated in,

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and was often only perceivable through ‘lesbian clues’ only known to insiders.14 Her identity was thus what we would now call highly fluid, performed and perceived differently across time and place.

Closely related to these identity politics for this portrait of Rosey Pool are theories about memory. These are likewise constructed at specific moments and influence memories so much that the contemporary context can almost be seen as a co-constructor of the recalled memory.15 Pool’s writings reveal a complex mix of obviously plotted narratives, re-interpretations of past events, and, as a possible side effect of the disruptive psychological effects of trauma on memory, even completely false recollections.16

Pool’s vocabulary needs to be tackled with an equal dose of critical acumen. Her writings are peppered with the word ‘negro,’ but also statements that ‘the black man’s soul’ had preserved poetry, rhythm, and music, ‘[African] treasures with could not be destroyed, the invisible, unalienable cargo of slaveships...’17 Her choice of words has become so outdated that it tends to lead astray from Pool’s presumed intentions and her notable racial sensitivity for her day and age. Her comments on whiteness, for example, which scholars now define broadly in terms of power relations,18 are likewise surprisingly contemporary to our standards. Pool for instance said that ‘in our world white still is a symbol of the pure and the good,’ while ‘black symbolizes the evil and impure.’ She also thought it was outright ridiculous that Biblical figures were ‘pictured with light skins and blue eyes,’ all because

‘[w]hite men were the masters’ and controlled much of the wealth and power in the world, as well as the history books.19 Black and white were thus not just (skin) colors to Pool. They refer to values, ideas, and power structures.20 To emphasize this, the word ‘Black’ is in this thesis occasionally written with a capital ‘B,’ meant to signify Pool’s awareness that this label pertained to a transnational identity and consciousness.21

Problematic in a different way are the words ‘Jew’ and ‘Jewish.’ These are labels Pool rarely adhered to and ambiguously identified with. As a secular socialist she did not practice Jewish religion,

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Jewish practices, nor did she speak Yiddish or Hebrew. In other words, there was little ‘distinctly’

Jewish about Pool, other than the not unsignificant fact that she was targeted as a Jew during WWII.

The yellow Jew star even proves that point: because Jews were generally so well assimilated into western societies, a sign was needed in order to distinguish them from whites.22 Actually, by describing Pool as ‘Jewish,’ Nazi race laws are inherently silently accepted, while also overriding differences and division among Dutch Jews - such as Zionists and assimilationists, orthodox and liberal, Ashkenazi and Sephardic, leftwing and rightwing Jews, and class. There is little to none genetic or biological proof for different human ‘races,’ including that of a ‘Jewish race.’ In this book

‘race’ is therefore treated as a social construct that comes with traditions, customs, and social realities.

Bearing in mind these limitations, Pool’s Jewish background cannot be avoided.

If there is any central tenet in this dissertation, it centers on transnationalism. This biography tends to go beyond ‘methodological nationalism’ that dominated much of twentieth century historical writing.23 Much of Pool’s energy was directed at what Paul Gilroy later coined as the Black Atlantic, which he loosely defined as a ‘desire to transcend both the structures of the nation state and the constraints of ethnicity and national particularity.’24 Researchers and professionals have since then used the term to describe a fusion of Black cultures with other cultures from around the Atlantic, and especially focused on mobile, upper class intellectuals and artists that embodied those ideals, most of whom were privileged enough to travel. I tend towards the latter interpretation of Black Atlantic.

Much of her attention and energy was directed at Black communities in the US. But still, African,

Caribbean, and Black European writers played a decisive role in her agitating. It was telling that Pool opened her 1968 book Lachen om niet te huilen with a quote from the Martinican Négritude writer

Aimé Césaire about a ‘great negro cry,’ which Pool saw as a result of ‘the passion, the intensity which are inherent to coloured man.’25 Blackness was to her a global awareness, and through its transatlantic connectedness it was empowering to all its members, or so she believed.

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Pool’s life was cosmopolitan, albeit not in the jet set type of way that we might imagine.

Rather she aligned with what Stuart Hall described as ‘the ability to stand outside of having one’s life written and scripted by any one community.’26 Like other transnational lives, Pool transgressed national boundaries, and showcased a transnational consciousness and identity.27 She showed a conscious anti-nationalistic worldview and embraced various transnational movements and ideologies, including socialism, anti-fascism, the Négritude movement, the Bahá’í faith, and Black Atlantic networks. Yet although she moved to London, she never fully embraced the triangle Europe, Africa, and the Americas, as most of her attention was directed at North America. Much of Pool’s narrative is therefore framed in what Mary Nolan has rightfully called the ‘transatlantic century,’ which peaked from 1914 to 1968 with European-American exchanges predominating in both directions. Her life was not a coherent story, as transnational lives in practice often consist of a mix of ‘mobility, confusion and sheer messiness,’ as one scholars has put it.28 Pool’s urge to really ‘belong’ somewhere was mixed with continual feelings of unhomeliness, and paradoxically became one of the key reasons she traveled the world.

Sources

The archival material used for this dissertation can roughly be divided into her private and public outings. Her public works include a handful of early book reviews, translations, one poem, and reports on events (see appendix for Rosey Pool’s list of publications). Her output multiplied after 1945, with dozens of poetry collections, theater pieces, and books. The highpoint of her work were five poetry anthologies she edited in the 1950s and 1960s, although the vast majority of her work consisted of what she called ‘bread and butter jobs,’ often necessary to pay the bills.

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Although these public writings all include personal notes, for a biographer there is nothing better than private sources, especially letters. When Pool turned fifty-five years old, in 1960, she started sending parts of her correspondence archive to Howard University, a historically Black university (Washington, DC), which wanted to set up an African American history collection.29 With

883 letters, this archive gives a fair impression of Pool’s highpoint as a transatlantic mediator and editor. The materials that Pool kept to herself were donated after her death by Pool’s life partner ‘Isa’

Isenburg to the University of Sussex (Brighton, United Kingdom). With another 715 letters, this is the second largest archive on Pool, yet significantly also the most personal one. It includes photographs, scrapbooks, and even her own library, which offers a fascinating insight to how she lived her life.

Yet Pool was also a diligent curator of her own archives in many ways. Her ‘official’ archive in the US only contained what Pool considered ‘valuable material’ that she wanted to be ‘preserved for future generations.’30 But also in her British archive her attempts to nudge her own legacy are visible, for example when she wrote on one folder: ‘Librarian please note. This section contains very important documents.’31 Both collections were largely created in her own self-image. In other words, it was something she could create at her own liberty after she had to destroy all of her correspondence from before 1940 after the German invasion.

Her scrutiny to wipe out this entire period from her archives raises another issue: that of privacy. My truth searching was not unproblematic and I was confronted with a moral dilemma. Does a biographical subject have a right to privacy?32 Should I write about all of my findings? Do - or should

- we know anything about Rosey Pool? To make it clear: Pool herself would absolutely have hated this chapter. When in 1968 one journalist described her as ‘homophile’ she was deeply shocked to find such information about her ‘most private life.’ She wrote a letter to the editor, but decided not to post it at the very last minute, saying: ‘[M]y whole life and all my work are directed to not put people

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in boxes, and to not put labels on them.’33 After thoughtful consideration, however, I did decide to include many parts of Pool’s private life, because it explained so much about her life and work, while it also offered the possibility to tell the story of Nazi Germany’s oppressed people, stories that are rarely told and thereby easily forgotten.

Her postwar archives were not merely treasure troves waiting to be discovered: her papers were also a ‘repository of absence,’34 leaving as much out as in. Needless to say, her deliberate obfuscation of even the simplest details of her life are extremely time-consuming for a biographer.

However much I have been able to uncover, there are still some key issues that remain unclear about her life. The gaps and silences in her papers forced me to read ‘against the grain’ in order to detect subtle or hidden messages.35

Additionally, many of these materials were created in hazardous times, including WWII and the Cold War. The historian James Smethurst called Pool’s postwar correspondence ‘fascinating documents of Cold War political circumspection,’ as ‘the correspondents cautiously come out of their political closets,’ often by mentioning names that revealed their sympathies, while still holding on to a plausible deniability.36 Many of the people she corresponded with assumed their letters were read by intelligence agencies, at least occasionally. The things that were thus not said in these letters were often just as telling as what was being said.

This also counts for the numerous scrapbooks she left behind. With photographs, newspaper clippings, interviews, and receipts from restaurants, these offer a revealing insight into Pool’s international travels (see for instance figure 7.10). The seemingly random selections create an illusion of reality and offer us a sense of being near the biographical subject.37 But despite its apparent opacity,

Pool’s personal life is largely absent. Her life partner Ursel ‘Isa’ Isenburg is carefully left out, as are some of the hate mail and threats she received in the Deep South. This reveals that these scrapbooks were thus not entirely private and casually put together after all, and were likely created as instruments

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to impress visitors at her home, or for herself to look back at some of the highlights of her own career.

Her papers included other sources that share that same feeling of authenticity or transparency, including photographs, audio recordings, and video tapes. Yet much like the written sources, these also were recorded within a certain frame, with a particular topic in mind, and a limited scope.38

The supposed clear line between secondary sources and primary, autobiographical sources - which some historians have called ‘the most dangerous sources of all’39 - thereby becomes extremely troublesome. On top of her 2,000 plus letters in these archives, Pool also left behind nearly 150 articles, poems, books, edited poetry collections, popular biographies, introductions, book and theater reviews, and translations. Many of these were a means to an end: ‘to end the curse of a segregated society,’ as she once wrote.40 The personal was political, which becomes especially apparent in her

1968 essay collection Lachen om niet te huilen (‘Laughing to Keep From Crying’). Although Pool pitched it to the publisher as a book about the African American struggle for Civil Rights, it can be seen as her memoir, revealing stories about her early youth in the Jewish Quarter, as well as her views on life. Practically all of her writings contain autobiographical elements (including anecdotes or personal recollections). I have used some of them, while also reflecting on them as constructions and as products of their time.41

Digital tools

To fully understand Rosey Pool’s transnationalism and the role of intersectionality in this, this dissertation thoroughly examines the organizations Pool operated in, the collective actions she undertook, and the world(s) she inhabited. By systematically researching Pool’s networks, it becomes abundantly clear that Pool acted as part of various collectives, but also that her achievements were to a large extent facilitated by the resources that were available to her through her social ties.42 With

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various digital tools and with the help of computational experts,43 this quantitative approach proved to be a valuable addition. It allows me to get a metaview of her life and her connectedness to the outside world.44 Since they are based mostly on Pool’s own archives, this ‘egocentric network’ merely shows Pool’s own and therefore limited window on the world. Yet this view also leads to new insights and conclusions. It confirmed my assumptions about unequal archival representation, with the sheer overrepresentation of the fifties and sixties (see Figure 0.2). It also leads me to focus on individuals that she shared similar traits with, and with whom she often had an intense contact.45 For the sake of narration, these networks are not discussed in depth. Network visualizations are strategically used to exemplify arguments and clarification however. The data is freely available for other researchers as well.46

250

200

150

100

50

0 1930 1943 1945 1947 1949 1951 1953 1955 1957 1959 1961 1963 1965 1967 1969 1971

Figure 0.2 Graph depicting total amount of archived correspondence sent and received by Rosey Pool, period 1930 to 1971 (n=1730). Various sources.

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Chapter overview

To bring structure to Pool’s fractured and frantic life, this book focuses on ten loosely defined ‘contact zones,’ which Mary Louise Pratt described as ‘spaces where cultures meet, clash, and grapple with each other,’ and where (the remnants of) world history are played out.47 These spaces were marked by highly asymmetrical relations of power. With Pool shifting between being a member of subordinated groups and dominant culture, her own position shifted as well. The selected contact zones were meeting points for transnational individuals and organizations, connecting the local with the global.

Through these contact zones, crucial yet often forgotten intermediaries of culture, like Pool, can become visible.48 But as Leif Jerram has rightfully pointed out, while ‘space’ may refer to a specific geographical location, ‘place’ stands for the ‘values, beliefs, codes, and practices that surround a particular location, whether that location is real or imagined.’49 Bearing this in mind, the chosen specific places and their accompanying historical contexts were sometimes chosen symbolically, including chapter five that actually mostly takes place in Baarn, London, and Paris, and is yet called

‘Hilversum,’ the well-known center of Dutch television. These places crucially shaped, determined, and demarcated Pool’s role, her position, as well as her identity. Influenced by theories about transformative travel,50 each of the selected locations reveal a significant change that Pool underwent, whether personally or politically. To understand her action, we need to understand the location she operated in.

The book starts with Pool’s youth in Amsterdam, where being bullied as well as her activism in the socialist movement firmly shaped her beliefs. The second chapter focuses on her time in Berlin, a city that was a revelation to her sexually and politically, turning her into a fierce anti-fascist, but meanwhile marked her as Jewish. Chapter three focuses on the Nazi transit Camp Westerbork, and the couple of years that forever affected her life as she escaped the Holocaust. It was only in 1945 that

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she truly turned to the African American cause, a decision that was largely stimulated and formed by the context of postwar Amsterdam. Chapter five focuses on a small and yet crucial contact zone: Pool’s own home in London, which became a salon of the Black Atlantic. Chapter six Pool marks her first appearance on Dutch television, which turned her and her co-stars into national celebrities. Chapter seven takes place in the Deep South, where Pool talked about one of her former pupils, Anne Frank.

The next chapter again returns to the South, but now to Tougaloo College in Mississippi, where Pool grew out to become an ‘outside agitator.’ Inspired by the African American struggle for equality, Pool in 1966/1967 again returned to the South, this time to Huntsville, Alabama, where the remnants of the past were perhaps most clearly visible, except in her own writings. The final chapter weaves together two Pan-African festivals in Lagos (1961) and Dakar (1966), as well as Pool’s crumbling and fading position by the end of the 1960s.

Narrating her life story is important because it answers the main question of this research: how was Pool’s life determined by her own conscious decisions, or by the specific historical contexts, places, and networks she operated in? The title of this dissertation, Survivor. Agitator, touches on this incongruous duality that marked Pool’s life. She was a survivor of the Holocaust, an event that overwhelmed and disempowered her. And yet she grew into an agitator, who actively sought out tubulent action throughout her whole life trying to empower herself and others. This biography transcends a passive/active dichotomy, in other words. Surprisingly, this was not something that suddenly appeared after the Second World War, but it was something that went much deeper and started much earlier. Yet for a full understanding we need to go to the first years of her life in

Amsterdam, where it all began. ⌇⌇⌇

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Figure 1.1 Roosje Pool, around three years old, with her mother, Jacoba Pool-Jessurun. Amsterdam, ca. 1908. Source: JHM.

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CHAPTER 1: AMSTERDAM A ‘VAGUE JEWISH ANCESTRY’

GROWING UP IN AMSTERDAM

Rosey E. Pool was born as Rosa Eva Pool in 1905 in Amsterdam, although everybody knew her the first years of her life as ‘Roosje’ or simply ‘Ro.’ She grew up at the border of the Jewish Quarter in a

Jewish family, and although she did not define herself as such, her Jewish childhood had a profound impact on her. This period of her life also showed that Pool wanted to be part of something larger than herself, which became painfully apparent when she was bullied by her peers on school because she was overweight. Other than that, young ‘Roosje’ was a typical young socialist of her time: she was raised non-religiously, flirted with vegetarianism, went to demonstrations, and dreamed of social uplift. This chapter traces Pool’s first steps in becoming Rosey E. Pool, by reconstructing her actions through her performances on stage, in writing, and on national radio.

Rosey Pool grew up in a ‘mixed’ Jewish family: while her parents were both Jewish, her father was of

East European Ashkenazi descent, and her mother was of Portuguese Sephardic descent. Such a

‘blended’ marriage would have been unthinkable before the late nineteenth century. Before that there were two separate Jewish communities in the Netherlands, each with their own customs, their own organizations, and their own distinct accents. Until the Batavian revolution, Jews were formally a separate community with self-government, operating independently from the state. But after 1795,

Jews were also recognized as citizens, allowing them to move around freely and take on professions they were previously closed out from. It was the start of Jewish emancipation and integration in Dutch society. Throughout the 19th century, modernization and also secularization drastically changed the formerly tight-knit Jewish communities. An increasing number started to abandon Jewish religious

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customs, traditions, and language, and integrated into Dutch ‘gentile’ society. Jews were well represented in Amsterdam, the nation’s capital. With a population of about 12 percent Jews, and its countless Jewish shops, the famous Jewish market and the Jewish Quarter, Amsterdam was lovingly called Mokum Aleph (literally ‘City A,’ the best or first city) and occasionally ‘Jerusalem of the West.’1

When Rosey’s father, Louis Pool (1876-1943), arrived in the city in the early 1880s, Dutch society was divided among different pillars - Protestant, Catholic, liberal, and socialist. Each pillar had its own newspapers, schools, shops, and hospitals. Jews that integrated in Dutch society could be summarized into two categories. While upper and middle class Jews often merged with the liberal pillar, the lower classes were often intrigued with the promise of socialism. Although Louis Pool came from a family of Jewish cattle traders and was thus part of the upper middle class, it appears that his family became impoverished after his father passed away in 1882. Together with his mother and three siblings he left Rotterdam and via Woerden they arrived in Amsterdam in 1887, in the heart of the

Jewish Quarter. It was only a matter of time before Louis Pool left his Jewish religious background behind. When he was in his early twenties he joined the Social Democratic Workers’ Party (SDAP).

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Figure 1.2 Family tree Rosey E. Pool. Created with Aldfaer 7.2, edited by author.

In those circles he probably also met Jacoba Jessurun (1880-1943), a commissioner’s daughter. She was a real Amsterdammer, born into a family of diamond workers and traveling salesmen. They married in 1901 - not in a synagogue, but in the Handwerkersvriendenkring, an association for Jewish laborers and craftsmen. Afterwards they moved in above the cigar shop that

Louis Pool had taken over in 1898, on the Nieuwe Hoogstraat 18. Louis Pool became a busy volunteer and later he even became a board member of a local SDAP chapter. Soon he was in touch with famous political ‘dissidents,’ including the legendary SDAP founder Frank van der Goes, the first translator of Marx’s Capital in Dutch.2 Rosey’s father was teetotaler and active in the Dutch Association for the

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Abolition of Alcoholic Beverages (also known as the ‘Blue knot’). In his advertisements he ironically advised his clientele to purchase his tobacco as ‘the best cure against alcohol abuse.’3 From his shop,

Louis Pool also collected money for poor children and provided free tobacco and discounts on coffee to unemployed laborers.4 Socialism was clearly his way of life. On the first floor was a ‘tiny living room’ according to one eyewitness,5 which was used as a meeting place for SDAP meetings and preparations for activism. However, after the birth of Rosa (‘Roosje’ or ‘Ro’) in 1905, and of her brother Jozef (‘Jopie’ or ‘Jo’) in 1915, the political work of her parents was put on a hold.

The first years of her life Rosey Pool was called ‘Roosje,’ literally little rose. She only changed it to the more sophisticated ‘Rosey’ when she was a teenager, inspired by her grandmother’s

Anglophilia. Both her parents and her grandparents had big hopes for the young girl, hoping for the family’s upward mobility. Her mother went to great lengths to keep her away from her extended family, who lived in the deepest corners of the Jewish Quarter. Young Roosje herself did discriminate between social classes, she recalled. When she showed an interest in ‘the busy, shiny-eyed, Spanish or

Papiamento-speaking women of my mother’s Portuguese-Jewish family’ her mother put a stop to it.

Although Rosey’s fascination is betrayed by her choice of words, her mother did not want her little girl to come near the livestock market above the Portuguese Religion School in the Weesperstraat.

Her mother was especially horrified by the live chickens, with their feet tied together and their heads dangling down, waiting to be sold. ‘My parents were very open-minded people,’ Pool wrote. ‘But well... “there are boundaries.”’6

Most Dutch Jews lived hybrid lives, being both Dutch and Jewish at the same time.7 Rosey’s parents also coincided the socialist lifestyle with a handful of Jewish traditions. ‘They were Jewish at

Rosey’s home, but not religious,’ one acquaintance remembered. ‘They probably had a white tablecloth on the Sabbath, that’s it,’8 referring to the traditional Jewish festive day. The Pool family’s everyday Dutch was in a natural way peppered with Yiddish words and expressions. Although Pool

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occasionally spoke of her ‘vague Jewish ancestry,’9 she recalled that her family contrasted their own world (that of the ‘yids’) with that of the others (the ‘gojim,’ gentiles): ‘When we were having a particularly delicious meal,’ Pool remembered, ‘someone might say: “I wouldn’t care to give that to a goy.” And when someone told a lousy joke, the listener would respond: “Where did you get that goish story?”’10 Much later she somewhat reluctantly admitted that at home they referred to non-Jews as

‘stupid, annoying, and inferior.’ And yet, those comments were not meant to be hurtful, but merely to mock. And, not entirely unimportant: ‘they remained within the inner circle of yids.’11 The

Jewish/gentile divide was partly a social construct and partially self-imposed as there were little formal restrictions. Rosey’s street was clearly mixed:

Next to us was a non-Jewish milkman, on the other side of the road a craft and fancy soap store,

ran by two unmarried sisters. Eikelenboom that store was called. I do not know if that was the

name of the shop or of the sisters. Next door, non-Jews had a shoe shop. Just around the corner,

in the Zanddwarsstraat, there was the Hennetje, a non-Jewish licorice and children’s candy shop

and the non-Jewish barber shop with its wooden outdoor sidewalk. […] [O]n the first and second

floor a Jewish diamond worker family [lived] as well as a non-Jewish woman who worked

outdoors.12

Somewhat anachronistically Pool compared her old neighborhood to American inner cities of the

1960s: ‘Just like Negros and white people in the United States live in the same street, but do not live together,’ she thought Jewish-gentile relations were over here.13 But although Pool later occasionally spoke to American audiences about ‘the old Amsterdam jewish “ghetto”’14 from before the war, this was certainly not a strict segregation and there were differences. Most notably, Pool had no recollection of being othered based on her race. ‘I cannot remember that people smoused [literally:

‘kiked’] openly in our neighborhood,’ Pool said. Then again, there were certainly similarities. On both

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sides ‘mild anti-Semitism’ was common and even broadly accepted, including jokes and (positive) prejudices.15 More formally and seriously was that Jews were also barred from a wide range of high professional and political positions.16 Such limitations likewise appeared in Rosey’s elementary school.

The reputable Anna Visscherschool was conveniently located opposite of their house and had ‘a vast majority of jewish pupils,’ Pool remembered, but all of the teachers were not. ‘I cannot remember ever having known a jewish teacher,’ she wrote. ‘Maybe there weren’t any in those days....’ 17 Jews could integrate in Dutch ‘gentile’ society, but there remained invisible walls to the Jewish ‘ghetto’ that were impossible to climb.

Figure 1.3 Roosje Pool, about 16 years old, together with her brother Jozef (‘Jopie’). Amsterdam, ca. 1921. Source: JHM.

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From Girls Scouts to the Socialist Youth

As one of the few from her class, Rosey went to go to the First Girls HBS, one of the highest levels of higher education.18 Some classmates remembered her as ‘outgoing’ and ‘very cheerful and fond of laughing,’19 but that she also liked to study. This made her a bit of a mix of both of her parents. While her father was a sophisticated ‘gentleman’ with a love for literature and business, her mother was the more outgoing one, with a captivating personality.20 Rosey inherited her quality to socialize and easily made friends, although she did not get along with everybody. For reasons unknown she could not stand one particular classmate called Ine den Hollander, whose brother ironically became a specialist in African American history.21

The event that had by far the biggest impact on the young Roosje was when she was bullied as a child. The reason, she thought, was that she was an ‘exceptionally fat child,’ and the other children called her names like ‘fatty’ or ‘rolypoly.’ There was one nickname that especially got to her: bulletje bloedworst, ‘fatty bloodpudding.’ This always reminded her of the time she witnessed the slaughtering of a pig at her father’s family farm in Woerden. ‘It was a nightmare,’ she recalled, when the hot blood gutted from the pig moaning his last breath. Whenever she heard ‘fatty bloodpudding’ her own heart was ‘ripped’ open, she once wrote, in the same way ‘the butcher’s knife had ripped open that poor leg- bound pig’s.’22 Later Pool reflected that being bullied as a child made her more receptive and sensitive concerning race, and especially issues of non-whites. Pool’s obesity became a stigma that separated her from her peers. And as ‘a fat minority of one,’ as she put it, she did not have a problem at all to understand discrimination in any form.23

Considering her personality, it is unlikely she accepted being a passive or submissive victim.

She was probably more of a ‘provocative victim,’ the type which is rejected because of outstanding behavior.24 Rosey was a striking appearance, and she was never afraid of upsetting others. Some

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eyewitnesses recalled that even in the cigar shop of her parents, the young Rosey would start provocative discussions with professors who came there to buy cigarettes. Yet Rosey was also a sensitive child, and for a while she retreated into herself. ‘When the other children were making trouble, she kept aloof and continued to focus on her work,’ one anonymous source revealed. ‘Friends that visited her were kept busy by her mother, she hardly paid them any attention.’25 Around that same age she displayed a cheeky rebellion that was perhaps related to this. One classmate remembered that once ‘Roos had drawn something on a school desk.’ She could not remember what it was she drew, but when the teacher confronted her with it, Rosey lied and outright denied the whole thing.26

We might conclude that there was something troubling her at this point in time. However, lying at such an early age can also be sign of intelligence: it is an indication that a child understands that different people may have different knowledge of the situation, and that there is a difference between what the child knows and what people around him or her know.27

Pool thus was an intelligent and curious child, and she also showed a remarkable curiosity about the divine. It was not Judaism that caught her attention, though she only entered a synagogue once, after a teacher had come into her classroom and shrieked in dismay: ‘What is this here, a classroom or a jewish church?!’28 This stirred Rosey’s interest and at her own request her mother took her to the Portuguese synagogue, one block away. Rosey thought the ‘time-worn decorum’ was so disappointingly boring that she was immediately cured of her religious curiosity. When she was a young teenager she rekindled her spiritual quest, however. Rosey joined the Girl Scouts where Mies

Beugeling became one of her best friends. ‘I always had Jewish friends,’ Beugeling recalled, reminiscing that Rosey often dropped by on Sundays with her mandolin. ‘One time she confided in me, that she did not feel much for her own faith.’29 Although Rosey was actually raised non- religiously, this friend took her to the Dienaren van de Ster in het Oosten (‘Servants of the Star in the

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East’), the youth club of the local Theosophical Association. Rosey was clearly wandering through her early life, and seemingly searching to solve a spiritual gap in her childhood.

She seemed to have found closure to her religious inquiry when she turned sixteen years, when she seemed to fully embrace the socialist lifestyle of her parents. Perhaps this was brought about by the emergence of the anti-militarist movement in the early 1920s, largely caused by WWI (in which the Netherlands had remained neutral). Yet around 1921 she entered the more politically-oriented

Arbeiders Jeugd Centrale (Labor Youth Central, AJC), the SDAP’s youth organization that was a sort of socialist scouts.

The AJC became Rosey’s playing ground where she could explore and develop her talents. ‘I’ve always wanted to write, teach and perform, and I am doing exactly that,’ she noted.30 She took her first steps on the stage at the age of 18, when she performed in a play with a local theater group called

‘Intimate Original Art.’31 Within the AJC she continued this, including reciting poetry and singing.

Rosey merely seemed to recite the work of others, and she received recognition from her peers who found her interpretations extremely captivating. Several eyewitnesses recalled she was ‘wonderful in storytelling’ and praised her talent for public speaking as well.32 The loneliness of her former school days were now left behind as she was trying out different opportunities: people enjoyed this quirky girl eager to sing on the stage. Her membership of the AJC clearly showed her desire to be part of a group; however, the urge to become an autonomous individual was so strong that she could hardly deny it.

Her performances were not only the result of her artistic interest, but they were also politically motivated. The 1920s were wildly idealistic, with people dreaming of a new world based on social justice, uplifting of the masses, and class solidarity. Socialist prominents tried to stimulate individual self-improvement through cultural education, which was practiced with an almost religious zest to become Kulturmenschen, ‘civilized human beings.’ She was for example closely involved in the Instituut

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voor Arbeidersontwikkeling (‘Institute for Laborers Development,’ IvAO), an organization that wanted to bring high culture to ‘ordinary’ social democrats while also attracting new followers with entertaining talks.33 This was related to a central idea in the socialist movement of this day; the idea that not only society, but also people themselves could be transformed and uplifted, and could become the best version of themselves within a lifetime.34 Pool’s talks on Flemish folk stories (Figure 1.7) fitted in that tradition to educate workers and let them grow into better people. Pool received a raving review when she gave her audiences a full-on experience by speaking Dutch with a Flemish dialect.35

Her passion and enthusiasm for the subject never failed to make a great impression on her audiences, which soon made her a socialist personality that needed few words of introduction. ‘Rosey Pool will be there with her books and her storytelling,’ another organization announced at one of her other lectures, ‘and that says enough.’36

‘Rosey’ was becoming a recognizable brand, and her main specialty was Dutch literature, focusing on labor issues. She frequently read poetry by Frits Tingen, a blind socialist poet, work by the German poet Leonhard Frank, and Dutch socialist icon Henriette Roland Holst. Yet her favorite poet was Margot Vos, a Dutch socialist poet, who often wrote about the exploitation of laborers and feminist issues. So, Rosey willingly stepped into the spotlight, but always with a goal that was more or less the same: to fight for the underprivileged - a theme that would become stronger throughout her life.

Whenever Pool told her life story in the years after WWII, she never told anyone about her life in the socialist movement. She found that there was only one noteworthy thing from that period, and that was when in 1925 she ‘discovered’ the poetry of the African American poet Countee Cullen.

This discovery became, according to her, ‘the beginning of a life-long interest in the poetic selfexpression of America’s darker ten percent.’ 37 (see also chapter 5) In the postwar context of the

Cold War, Pool practically censored her entire ‘red’ phase, by claiming that Black poetry had been

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her sole interest in this period: ‘Perhaps [there are some] that remember how I sung spirituals when

I was a young student and recited Langston Hughes on AJC evenings,’ Pool said in a radio interview in the late 1960s.38 But although some eyewitnesses indeed recall that Pool was already interested in the Black cause,39 the available sources contradict that this was her only or even main interest. She actually showed a wide interest in various subjects, and the ‘Black cause’ was perhaps just one of them, although there is no evidence she ever talked about this in public.40 It is likely that the ensuing Cold

War encouraged her to rewrite this episode from her life.

Figure 1.4 Roosje Pool, around 24 years old in a reform dress, accompanied on lute by Wim Gaffel, and Jeanne Mug sitting between them, ca. 1930. Source: Meilof, Een wereld licht en vrij 307.

A highlight was the yearly Pentecost meeting in the countryside. AJC members took care of entertainment by playing music, singing, reciting poetry and literature, dancing, and performing theater plays. At the Pentecost meeting of 1930 - that attracted around 2,100 visitors - Pool sang a

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song called ‘Burn, Rise, Burn,’ which was perhaps the song she was singing on one of the few photographs that survived this period (see Figure 1.4). The (now lost) lyrics were printed out on a handout so that everybody could sing along.41 ‘She had a beautiful voice,’ one friend remembered, and, also not unimportant he said, she ‘spoke without a Jewish accent.’42

This comment is revealing, because the AJC actually offered enough opportunities to explore

Jewish culture. Jeanne Mug-de Gooijer for example, who sits to Pool’s right in this particular photograph, was one of those who was well known for her performances of Hebrew and Yiddish songs at AJC meetings.43 The presence of Jewish youngsters - like Pool - in cultural activities was so rife that many even spoke of a ‘Jewish atmosphere’ with the AJC, which one eyewitness interpreted as ‘a desire to live in a more outgoing way.’44 During this period Rosey did not appear to be particularly interested in Jewish culture or religion, nor did she bore any visual trace of being Jewish. Only once did Pool show interest in writers who wrote about Jewry or Jewish topics, when in March 1927 she read poetry of the recently deceased socialist poet Hyman Overst (1883-1927), a Jewish socialist

‘people’s poet’ who was not only known for his revolutionary poetry, but also his stories about the

Jewish ghetto. She did occasionally speak at specifically Jewish labor organizations, including the

Jewish Diamond Club Concordia as well as the previously mentioned Handwerkersvriendenkring.

Although these were general meeting places for the socialist movement, they most often attracted workers of Jewish descent.45 Pool remained ambiguous about her Jewish background, probably with a good reason. Her friend’s comment about her not having a Jewish accent was certainly considered to be a compliment, which reveals the ambivalent position of secularized Jews in prewar Dutch society.

If Rosey’s youth is to be summarized, it was that she was a ‘new woman’ who embraced the modern age. The reform dress that she wears in the photograph (Figure 1.4), a dress without a corset, was an outspoken symbol for freedom and with it the unrestrained possibilities for women that

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modernity brought. Pool liked to explore the many paths that were available to her, and she refused to be pinned down by her background.

Among the ‘in-crowd’ of future socialist leaders

In July 1923, two months after her eighteenth birthday, Rosey Pool obtained her HBS high school diploma. As was common for women in her day and age, she chose for a one-year course as a secondary school teacher in Dutch.46 Some people who knew her claim that she actually wanted to go on straight to university, but that her father expected her to have a ‘useful’ education first.47

Reportedly, Rosey was furious and eloped with her boyfriend out of protest. Eventually when the thrill of her elopement had worn off, her mother had to come to get her. ‘The boyfriend was a vegetarian,’ Pool confided years later to an American friend whose daughter also had ran away, ‘and when my mother turned up somewhere in Belgium to find out if I wanted to link up with my family, gosh was I happy to run home with her. I remember I ate a huge steak that night at a hotel in Liège.

Never tasted any steak better [sic].’ 48 Apparently Rosey had taken over her boyfriend’s vegetarian lifestyle - which was quite bon ton among socialist intellectuals - yet she never made it her own. The herbivore boyfriend was carelessly left behind.

She did not tell that same American friend that her escape was part of a scandalous affair.

During her flight Pool found out she had become pregnant. For a moment her life was about to embark on a completely different course. She had a miscarriage, however, and it seemed that afterwards everyone, including Rosey herself, tried to forget the flight and the pregnancy ever happened. Almost miraculously and despite this turbulent period, Rosey did obtain her teacher’s degree within time.49 She probably went on to the university, taking courses in Germanic Languages.

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Her student days were again a formative period, and firmly cemented her political beliefs, and they allowed her to improve her organizational skills. She started out ambitiously, taking courses while also volunteering in several boards. Perhaps this ambition was stimulated by her role in her family. Her younger brother, Jopie, was not intelligent. Some eyewitnesses called him ‘a bit slow’ and

‘not the brightest bulb in the box.’50 Perhaps he had some sort of mental disability, but he was in any event unable to pursue an education. As if Rosey still wanted to realize her parent’s dreams of social mobility, she now took decisive steps to kick start her career in the socialist pillar.

Almost instantly she enrolled in the Social Democratic Student Club (SDSC), and became treasurer of its Amsterdam chapter. It often met at the Handwerkersvriendenkring, the same place where her parents got married two decades before. The SDSC was both a student association and political discussion group, and its members discussed about the aims and future of socialism, often operating from ‘strong principles,’ one eyewitness recalled.51 As this was the only leftist student club in town, it was the place to be for ambitious socialist intellectuals. These were the future leaders of the leftist and socialist Netherlands, and Pool was surrounded by future doctors, professors, politicians, and ambassadors (see Figure 1.5).52 Next to Rosey Pool, for example, stands Hilda

Verwey-Jonker, who later became a prominent politician. She called the motley crew on the photograph an ‘in-crowd’ of the socialist movement.53 Verwey-Jonker also recalled that the SDSC was utterly different from the ‘flirty’ associations in Leiden and the ‘bourgeois’ ones in Amsterdam.

The SDSC offered a place for ‘good intellectual contact.’54

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Figure 1.5 Rosey Pool (on the left) on a meeting of the Social Democratic Study Club (SDSC), near the Handwerkersvriendenkring (association for laborers and craftsmen) in the Roeterstraat, Amsterdam, 1927. She stands next to Hilda Verwey-Jonker. Source: IISH.

Surrounded by ‘good’ socialists, Pool clearly blossomed. On one of the few remaining photographs from this period (Figure 1.5) she is donned in a flower dress in which she hardly appears to be an ambitious young woman. Her weight also contributed to that. One eyewitness even tenderly remembered her as ‘a very cozy, fat mummy,’ 55 hardly a compliment for a 22-year-old woman. Yet against the odds, Pool actually had a string of admirers. One fellow SDSC member recalled one specific admirer, called Jan Oudegeest Jr., who was ‘madly in love’ with Rosey, who stood out with her eloquence and wit. He courted her for quite some time, but Rosey was seemingly unaffected by it and ignored him.56

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Perhaps she was struggling with her sexual orientation, but she could also simply have been too busy, caught up in what insiders called the ‘school of revolution’ - with countless talks, lectures, film screenings, and poetry readings. This next generation elite was trained in socialism, discussing topics as Marxism, humanism, anti-colonialism, anti-nationalism, anti-militarism, and other classic leftwing topics. Although there is only evidence of a few events she attended, Rosey likely attended many more. At the age of eighteen she went to a massive anti-fleet law demonstration, protesting against the use of colonial naval forces in the Dutch East Indies.57 And in 1926, when she was 21 years old, she was deeply impressed with a ‘wonderful lecture’ of SDAP leader Willem Albarda. She seemingly wholeheartedly supported his Marxist thesis of how the economic situation and big business conglomerations increased the ‘proletarianization’ of the people. ‘[T]he world is on its way to Socialism,’ Rosey wrote hopefully after his talk.58 A new world seemed to be around the corner, and perhaps she envisioned becoming a revolutionary herself as well.

International comradery

Being a member of the socialist pillar, Rosey was from an early start used to ideas about internationalist solidarity and the worldwide struggle of the proletariat. Those ideals became apparent in January 1926, when she went to a conference in Leiden of the Dietsch Studenten Verbond, a student organization that focused on Middle Dutch (‘Diets’). Over 160 students from the Netherlands,

Flanders, and South Africa met there for a conference to discuss their ‘common language’: Middle

Dutch. In SDSC’s journal, Kentering (‘Turning point’) Rosey wrote that she had truly looked forward to the event, where young people, ‘who spoke the same “Diets” language with only a difference in dialect’ finally could get to know each other’s ‘national character,’ and she dreamed that everybody would conclude that they were actually one. However, she was extremely disappointed when the

Leiden delegation opened the conference by stating that ‘the highest honor of a people is expressed

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in nationalism,’ Rosey quoted them in disgust.59 That went fully against the socialist idea that nationalism was an artificial construct meant to keep people (and laborers) apart. Her loathing clearly shows how much of Pool’s thought was influenced by the internationalist socialist movement, which predicted a proletarian revolution that would make nationalism redundant.

In SDSC’s Kentering she also published her own writing for the very first time. The first poem she ever published was inspired by an AJC Pentecost meeting, when she was 21 years old:

Party Music which sings happy days - sing through my entire heart, The sound of those happy days surge - pierce my happy heart. There were people - young! And all were mates - happy! The flag song was sung, A May sun is blossoming like never before.

Oh, the flapping of the flags in the air, To feel the rising of those bright colors, Above the world. In a happy sound, The world full of young scents of spring.

The Communal voice then convened across the earth: ‘Young Comrades - come!!’ The earth-beauty then bedecked itself, And every flower shone. Many young hands reached for each other, Around every head a beam of light then shone, Future dream lands then lay bare, And life became a lovely round dance.

After Pentecost, May 1926 Rosey Pool 60

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Replete with socialist references - flags, May, and comrades - this poem actually makes it difficult to see anything of Pool’s personality in it. Yet some elements stick out. Although the narrator seems to be part of the ‘round dance’ of young and idealistic youngsters, there is also an observant tone. A distant, descriptive tone (‘There were people’) is combined with an insider’s view (‘life became a lovely round dance’), in which the writer appears to be one these young, idealistic people. The poem seemed to reflect Pool’s personal, perennial struggle between a radical autonomy and her longing to be part of a group. The phrase ‘all were mates’ depicts an ideal that was sadly often out of reach for Pool: for people to be one and be at peace with each other, although she was herself a bit of an outcast. It is, in other words, likely that the poem merely showed how Pool wanted the world to be, just as she wanted her own life to be. Ironically, this poem was a noticeable sign that Pool wanted her voice to be heard, and yet she did not write down her own voice: it was the communal voice that was represented.

In her public appearances she always recited the works of others, never that of herself. Pool gained notoriety with her poetry recitals, which usually accompanied lectures by notable figures, usually men. She made appearances after lectures about topics such as ‘The future of the class struggle,’

‘Alcohol and Civilization,’ and - as a sign that her spiritual quest was still not quite over - with a talk about ‘Socialism and Theosophy.’61 Her captivating recitals gave her rapid fame in what insiders lovingly called ‘the movement.’ According to one friend, she was able to ‘narrate wonderfully,’ and easily kept the listeners interested.62 By the end of 1927, her fame had grown so much that the 22- year-old Pool was already introduced as ‘Miss Rosey Pool, the famous young Amsterdam recitist,63 while photographs of her were prominently featured in socialist newspapers in order to attract listeners

(see Figure 1.6).

Most of her recitals were in or near Amsterdam, but it was only a matter of time before Pool was also asked to come speak for the new socialist radio station (VARA, founded in 1925). The significance of this radio station should not be underestimated. It grew substantially in the years after

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1925, largely because it was one of the few that not only broadcasted party propaganda, but also

(classical) music, lectures, and poetry readings, all to reach and uplift the ‘masses.’64 This approach created a huge gap between the young, energetic radio makers and the socialist ‘establishment,’ including the prominent leader Henri Polak, who feared that radio would only distract workers and would be a hindrance ‘for enjoying good literature, serious study, […] practicing music and visiting performances.’65 This reactionary statement was a faint sign the SDAP was out of touch with the changing times, and in the following years VARA radio grew so rapidly in membership it even outnumbered the actual party itself.66

Pool fell smack in the middle of this exciting, progressive new medium. She now reached a national audience, and her fame increasingly grew within the socialist pillar and beyond. Pool recited after radio lectures by notable politicians like Carry Pothuis-Smit and Goswijn Sannes,67 but also made several appearances together with pianist Nora (‘Noor’) Kinsbergen. It is likely this was a relative from her mother’s side,68 and the two young women also collaborated in the Socialistische Kunstenaars

Kring (‘Socialist Artists Circle,’ SKK). Pool was one of the founders of this club, alongside Nora

Kinsbergen and Jef Last, as well as socialist greats, such as Fré Cohen, Henriette Roland Holst, and

Peter Alma. With lectures about ‘The certainty of Socialism’ and ‘The Proletarian View on Life’ this club seemed to align with other socialist organizations. Although their goal, to bring socialist intellectuals and laborers together in a peaceful fraternization, sounded peaceful and innocent, this group was part of the radical left wing of the SDAP.69 It was a direction that Pool was increasingly drawn to.

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Figure 1.6 Rosey Pool (left, bottom) is included in an announcement for a VARA propaganda evening of the Bond van Sociaal-Democratische Vrouwenclubs (Union for Social Democratic Women’s Clubs), 1 October 1927. Figure 1.7 Advertisement for lecture with Roosje Pool on Flemish folk stories, 5 January 1927. Sources: Delpher.

As her reputation and her career were taking off, she drastically changed her life in mid-

1927: she got engaged to a German lawyer and moved to Berlin, as will be explained in the next chapter. Her old life was abruptly left behind, and along with it her reputation that she had so carefully built up over the past few years. There is something odd about her sudden disappearance. ‘[She] suddenly popped up in the AJC,’ one eyewitness remembered, ‘and disappeared just as quickly for inexplicable reasons.’70 Some thought she had had a falling out, perhaps with Max Haringman, one

AJC leader with whom she was close friends. One eyewitness retrospectively compared her to a 1980s

Dutch politician who was forced to resign after it was revealed that he did not have a university education. What he seemed to suggest was that something similar was the case with Pool: ‘She presented herself better than she actually was,’ the friend said puzzlingly.71

This does appear to be the case. Although the archives of the Germanic Studies department at the University of Amsterdam are lost, this department was particularly small. With only a few professors and a handful of students, it was a tradition that each individual graduate was announced with their full name in national newspapers. Pool’s name indeed pops up in newspapers of August

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1927, around the time she was supposed to graduate as well, but not for an academic degree: it was announced that she obtained a primary school teaching certificate for German,72 a much lower degree.

Although it remains possible that she took some separate university courses, it is highly unlikely she ever graduated. On future resumes Pool often left it in the middle whether she graduated or not, presenting her CV ambiguously:

I was trained to be a teacher in elementary schools before entering Amsterdam University to read

Germanic languages with drama as a side-line and my main interest on poetry. (Folk literature

and music entered into that too, and has stayed with me.)73

Her rush to leave the Netherlands in 1927 as well as her efforts later in life to deliberately cover up this period from her life appears an admittance of guilt. There was obvious shame associated with this period. Perhaps it was unease about her own behavior, as she was living a lie that was bound to come out. As she was a creative woman, it is curious why she did not use her imagination to tell the story from a different point of view. An easy solution might have been to do what her friend Jef Last did: he also dropped out of university and started working as a sailor, which he afterwards fabricated into a heroic story of a socialist intellectual who immersed himself in the lives of true laborers rather than with stuffy academics. Pool could easily have used the same narrative, but she chose to remain silent.

Perhaps such an adventurous story was not an option for women. But something else was also going on. These socialist youth organizations were supposed to be places where you could make friends for life - but for many of Pool’s friends, life would last much too short. Recollections about this period became an emotional minefield as she got to think about those that did not survive the war, especially as so many Jews but also (radical) socialists were killed by the Nazis. Yet it seems that her creativity

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was blocked whenever she thought about this period, and that her silence was not so much a choice as a necessity: this joyful period brought back too many painful memories.

Solidarity of a loner

Acting collectively and being part of a group was so self-evident in the early twentieth century, that it would be anachronistic to emphasize Pool’s individuality too much in this period. While always desiring to be part of something larger than herself, Pool never fitted in well with this communal thinking. She clearly stood out and she also showed a strong will to do public performances in the spotlight or, to stay in the spirit of the times, on whatever soapbox was available. The 1920s was also a period of personal and professional growth, and it was her irresistible charisma, her playfulness, that made her rise above others in various settings.

During her experiments her passions and her own voice, she eagerly tried out different identities. Remarkably, none of these experiments were aimed at Judaism, although she did have a clear religious interest at the time. Perhaps that was stirred by fierce religious sentiments in the socialist movement. One historian remarked that that sentiment was ‘painful’ for Jewish socialists,

‘even when they did not go to the synagogue any more every Saturday.’74 It was regarded as a rejection of a part of themselves, and it seems that this adamant secularism paradoxically also stirred a spiritual interest in Pool. It was an interest she never quite lost, and she would spent the rest of her life in search for religious fulfilment: first in Theosophy, then Catholicism, and later in life in the Bahá’í faith.

The socialist movement as well as modern life required Pool to leave behind many things: the Papiamento-speaking family she found so captivating, the ‘Jewish church’ she so curiously explored, but also the impoverished part of her family that was still slaughtering pigs, while she started

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to make a living out of teaching, literature, and poetry, which put them worlds apart. Her former self thus became a casualty in the social mobility that she and her parents aspired to. The gap was immense and required a transformation: socially, culturally, and intellectually. As a teenager and in her twenties

Pool was trying to become a better person, but also a different person.

It seems that this was somehow related to some of the lies she told throughout her life.

Although it is dangerous to project too much of her later identity on the young ‘Roosje,’ there do seem to be some consistencies in terms of creative narrating of her life story and her life goals.

Whether it was lying about not having carved things in her school desk, or prevaricating about attending university, or even her strive for self-improvement - Pool was continuously trying to be somebody else than she actually was. They were signs of what Pool wanted to become, instead what she actually was. Pool certainly embraced that desired self-image, and not only wanted to transform herself into a better person, but also improve society in general. Yet if these were growing pains, she only fully matured in Berlin, where her new life was about to begin.

⌇⌇⌇

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Figure 2.1 Rosey Pool dressed in black, possibly at the funeral of her grandmother (Roosje Pool-van Blankenstein, 1849-1935) in December 1935. Source: JHM.

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CHAPTER 2: BERLIN JEWISH, LESBIAN, REVOLUTIONARY SOCIALIST RADICALIZATION IN NAZI BERLIN

Rosey Pool told a journalist in the late 1960s it had been sheer coincidence that she moved to Berlin in 1927, through a marriage.1 However true that may have been, this comment does not explain why she stayed there so long. Pool lived in Berlin for almost twelve years, from 1927 to 1939, witnessing the transition from the Weimar Republic to Nazi Germany. In the midst of this turmoil she herself transformed as well. The city was a revelation to her, and politically, socially, and sexually, and in many other ways, Pool embodied the Zeitgeist of the Weimar era. But from the middle of the 1930s, the Nazis sought to destroy everything she believed in and everything she was: a Jew, a lesbian, and a socialist.

The 22-year-old Rosey Pool left her promising career in the Netherlands behind when she fell in love with a German Law student called Gerhard F. Kramer (1904-1973). They probably met at an international student conference in 1926, shortly before Kramer graduated.2 An ambitious student, he worked his way through college, while acting as president of a Berlin social democrat student union.3 Eyewitnesses described him as a ‘decent man,’ and said that he was ‘very handsome [...] when he was young.’4 Pool fell in love and was ready to settle down, as was expected of young women her age. Also, the rumors about her pretended university education made her even more willing to leave

Amsterdam behind, preferably as soon as possible. Barely a year after she met Kramer, she moved with him to Berlin. She clearly could not wait to embark on her new life.

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Figure 2.2 Gerhard Kramer in Wehrmacht uniform, photograph from his Wehrmacht pay book, 1940s. Source: Hartford Courant.

When Pool arrived in the Weimar Republic in 1927, it was clear that the country had profound political and financial problems. War reparations had to be paid after the First World War, hyperinflation drove people desperate, and war veterans flocked the streets begging for money. Yet an unexpected economic boom in the last half of the 1920s turned the country in the exact opposite direction, which became generally known as the goldene Zwanziger Jahre, creating great prosperity, especially for a happy few. The city itself also changed. Once narrow streets were replaced by majestic boulevards and futuristic skyscrapers, and an underground railway that provided four million inhabitants access to the new dazzling metropolis. Berlin’s cultural life blossomed too: expressionist movies, modernist Bauhaus architecture, and an extravagant nightlife turned Berlin into the center of modernity. ‘The old Berlin had been impressive,’ one historian wrote, but ‘the new Berlin was irresistible.’5 From all over Europe people came to see the ‘Chicago at the Spree’6 with their own eyes, and Pool was one of those Wahlberliner (Berliner by choice).

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Pool and Kramer seemingly enjoyed a blissful life together during the first years of their relationship. They divided much of their time between Berlin and Amsterdam7 and they eagerly learned each other’s languages. Pool reputedly acquired a Berlin accent while Kramer became fluent in Dutch and even learned some Dutch Jewish expressions through Pool.8 Like her fiancée, Pool became a Werkstudent, probably taking courses at the Friedrich Wilhelm University while working on the side, part-time.

What kind of jobs she held is hard to reconstruct. Someone remembered she had been a rehearsal pianist for Bertolt Brecht’s legendary Threepenny Opera.9 Other eyewitnesses said that Pool worked as an interpreter for the court of justice,10 while one journalist wrote down that she had worked at a Berlin art trade firm.11 One friend suggested that Pool had worked at the Institut für

Sexualwissenschaft of the famous sexologist Magnus Hirschfeld.12 Moreover, one relative claimed she moved around in the highest cultural circles of Berlin, and that she once even played piano together with Albert Einstein.13 How appealing all these telltales may be, it is impossible to ascertain whether any of these actually happened, due to limited archival material on this period.14 However, it seems that many of these memories say more about Weimar Berlin’s ‘wild’ image as well as Pool’s ‘wild’ choice to go there, rather than Pool’s actual life at the time.

It is clear that Pool worked as a Dutch-German translator, at least occasionally.15 Multiple eyewitnesses also confirmed that she had a job at an antiquarian bookstore, possibly Van Waegeningh, which was just around the corner of the central Potsdamer Platz.16 The name of the Karl Marx Schule also pops up in various interviews: Pool worked at this progressive school, possibly as a substitute teacher.17 Pool herself later claimed that she was in touch with the photographer Marion Palfi who then worked as an actress at the Theater am Kurfürstendamm.18 It seems certain that Pool had a vivid interest in theater, and some friends especially remembered her keen interest in vaudeville theater.19

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Occasionally she wrote pieces about Berlin theater and film for Dutch magazines. In one

Dutch revolutionary socialist journal, Pool did not hesitate to sympathize with communist filmmakers

(but she was afraid to use her own name, signing the piece with ‘R.E.P.’). ‘In the middle of one of the most miserable workers districts in Berlin there is a large theater,’ Pool wrote. ‘A beautiful, firm building, which declares its mission in shining letters: Die Kunst dem Volke [‘The Art to the People’].’20

Clearly thrilled she wrote about the ongoing Volksbühne movement which offered laborers relaxation and education. Her interest in art was visibly politically motivated, fueled by ideas that art should serve a proletarian revolution.

Just how much Berlin propelled her far left sympathies reveals her admiration for the play

Kreuzabnahme (‘Descent from the Cross,’ 1927) by the controversial director Ehm Welk. In this play the Russian proletariat needs to liberate itself in order to lose its cross (not only religion, but also their enslavement by the capitalists). It was ‘Lenin’s will, Lenin’s spirit, Lenin’s power’ that could awaken the proletariat. ‘The entire playhouse cheered loudly at the end of the play,’ Pool wrote, ‘when parts of music rang, the Marseillaise, the International, and the heavy pounding of thousands of feet, the forward going red army, the will of the proletariat!’21 She did not disclose that the play was so controversial that it had to be discontinued - as was a previous play by the same director, Gewitter

über Gottland (‘Thunderstorm over Gottland,’ 1926). Instead, Pool saw great potential in these plays, and she was in awe of what she called the ‘enormous educational power and propagandist worth of theater plays.’22

Her taste for film was equally radical. She was impressed by the non-narrative documentary

Melody of the World (1929) by the abstract film maker Walter Ruttmann, which depicted laborers all over the world, much like she also enjoyed his documentary Berlin: Symphony of a Metropolis (1927).

But the best movies came from even further east, or so she thought: ‘A curious phenomenon is happening when we look at the programs of Berlin film theaters,’ she wrote. ‘Week after week the

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biggest, most capitalist cinema’s show nothing else than Russian films. The Sovkino and other Russian productions dominate Berlin film life.’ And Pool enjoyed it with all her socialist heart.

One of her favorites was the Russian director Vsevolod Pudovkin, whose innovative and vibrant Soviet montage represented both a style as well as an ideological tool to bring dialectical materialism to the masses.23 Pool was impressed by his silent film Storm Over Asia (1928) which depicted the struggle of the communist Mongolians against the White pro-tsarist Russians, although she was less impressed by Pudovkin’s mise-en-scène, which she dismissed as ‘american grotesque.’24

Pool regarded the popularity of Soviet movies in Berlin as a sign that ‘the grand public slowly also gets fed up with the sugarcoated Hollywood movies.’25 This would be her only written reference to the USA during this period.

Posters of avant-gardist films Pool saw in this period: Figure 2.3 German film poster for Berlin. Die Sinfonie der Großstadt (Walther Ruttmann 1927). Figure 2.4 Soviet film poster for Storm over Asia [or: The Heir of Genghis Khan] (Vsevolod Pudovkin, 1928). Figure 2.5 Soviet film poster for The Living Corpse (Fyodor Otsep, 1929), starring Vsevolod Pudovkin.

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Political radicalization

Many regarded the appeal of expressionist movies as a form of escapism during turbulent times, because Berlin was changing rapidly after Pool settled there. The Wall Street stock market crash of

1929 became a turning point for the entire world economy, even reaching Germany. Despite its prospering image, the economy of the Weimar Republic was incredibly unstable and needed little to fall back into a full-blown economic crisis. The country was now faced with even more unemployment and popular discontent, all stimulating the growth of radical groups, both on the far left and on the far right. The moderate German social democrats were rapidly losing support, especially to the communists who believed that capitalism was yesterday’s ideology. Although there is no evidence that

Pool ever became directly involved in German socialist or communist groups, her letter to Henk

Sneevliet is especially revealing (and coincidentally the only piece of correspondence that survived this period).

Henk Sneevliet (1883-1942) was a prominent Dutch communist. His international activism brought him to the Dutch East Indies and China, and he knew Lenin quite well. However, he parted ways with the Dutch Communist Party (CPN) in 1927 because he opposed Moscow’s rigid influence.

He moved towards the ideas of Leon Trotski, who predicted a permanent state of revolution, an anti- capitalist theory that argued a workers’ state was the one and only option. Causing a split in the Dutch communist party, some regarded Sneevliet a ‘Trotsky traitor,’ a radical dividing the Dutch Left.26

Sneevliet continued his convictions, however, and ultimately founded the Revolutionary Socialist

Party (RSP). As the name suggests, this party longed for a proletarian revolution.

It must have been an honor for the twenty-five-year-old Pool that she could translate one of

Sneevliet’s publications. While he was a living legend, she was probably still a student when she translated his article on colonial abuse in Dutch Indonesia, a thesis that she seemingly wholeheartedly supported. ‘Dear Comrade!’ she addressed him, when she sent him her German translation, adding a

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cover letter in which she condemned the German Social Democrat government. ‘It is tragicomic to see the fear in Berlin for the communist riots,’ she wrote. ‘Last Saturday/Sunday a police force comparable to 1 May 1929 [was used], with full regiments of Reichswehr. Some courageous fighters!’ she exclaimed mockingly.27

Through her Dutch contacts like the poet Jef Last - whom she also mentions in this letter -

Pool was probably aware of Sneevliet’s critique of social democrats.28 In her letter Pool firmly positions herself outside of her former Social Democrat milieu, perhaps in an attempt to prove to him that she had made the transition to revolutionary socialism as well. Her sympathy towards the communist rioters - whether this was lip service to Sneevliet or not - placed her in the same category as many communist contemporaries.29 Around this same time she held a declamation in the Netherlands at a lecture by Année Rinzes de Jong - chairman of the Association of Religious Anarcho-Communists

(BRAC), a group that was convinced that real politics took place outside of parliament.30 It was clear that she had now taken a far leftist position within the political spectrum.

More proof of her radicalization was her involvement with the (also Dutch) Socialist Youth

Union (SJV), the youth club of the radical Independent Socialist Party (OSP).31 Her former friends at the labor youth group AJC considered the OSP a ‘leftwing deviation,’32 and the AJC banned all

OSP members in 1932. The exiled members then founded the SJV, and Pool eagerly turned far left after this separation as well. Ideologically she was now closer to Sneevliet’s revolutionary RSP than the more mainstream social democrat AJC. Yet, she never became a hardcore member of the radical

SJV. This was partly because her life in Berlin made her an outsider. She was now worldlier and more cosmopolitan than her peers. ‘[S]he liked to laugh,’ one eyewitness, a laborer, remembered. But ‘[s]he was a typical intellectual, which made her more distant from me.’33 Such divisions within the Left would lead to disastrous consequences for Rosey Pool and many others.

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Anti-fascist activism across borders

Back in Germany socialist and communist groups fought each other viciously, in what has been called a ‘brotherly quarrel,’ from which the National Socialists greatly benefited.34 Initially the National

Socialists were seen as a new splinter movement or even as a new interpretation of socialism - the press even modelled the abbreviation ‘nazi’ on ‘sozi,’ a nickname for socialists. Yet their emphasis on nationalism, violence, and war, showed that fascists were a different breed from socialists. During the heated German election campaigns of 1930 to 1933, in the midst of the worldwide financial crisis, the fascist movement grew and street violence became more common.

Pool and her husband Gerhard Kramer openly opposed the Nazis, well before racial theories became a cornerstone of their propaganda. By the late 1920s, Kramer had emerged as a prominent lawyer who held public speeches in favor of Social Democracy. Yet when the NSDAP aggressively campaigned for the 1930 Reichstag elections, Kramer became even more outspoken, lecturing in Berlin about ‘the dangers of national socialism’ and ‘the fascist danger.’35 Pool herself also wanted to caution the Dutch about the upcoming fascism. In early 1931 she came to Amsterdam to talk on ‘The Fascism in Germany,’ telling about her own, firsthand experiences.36

In September 1932 Pool and Kramer even made a joint appearance, again in Amsterdam.37

The German elections two months before proved an utter disaster from the couple’s point of view: the NSDAP had become the second biggest party. Slowly the Dutch started to pay attention to what was happening in Germany and the couple especially found a willing ear in the labor movement. The hall of an Amsterdam trade union was packed when Kramer said - in his best Dutch - that the Dutch peace movement was fiercer than its German counterpart. Yet during his time in Holland he had also noticed that many Dutch people did not take Hitler seriously. He warned the audience not to mock the Nazis:

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[I]t is not the correct way of challenging. The triumph of the national socialists during the

elections [of July 1932] and the big support [they received] are to be explained through the awful

circumstances of this time, but also because they don’t ask the masses to reason like social

democrats do. They influence the masses pretty well through hollow phrases and by keeping [the

people] ignorant.38

Kramer did not criticize Nazi ideals, but for a good reason: ‘The Nazis have never said what they actually want,’ he said. And since they did not ‘have a program […] it cannot be challenged.’39

Although Kramer was still a staunch Social Democrat - which was the only ‘reasonable’ choice according to him - his early cries against the Nazis were far from mainstream in Social Democrat circles. He evidently set himself apart from the ruling SPD, which opted for a ‘wait and see’ policy towards the far right.40 In the years that followed, Kramer continued his principled stance against fascism, and when the Nazis took power in early 1933 he abandoned his position as a Staatsanwalt

(prosecutor) and instead became a Rechtsanwalt (lawyer). He was now defending the regime’s suspects, including the Jewish communist Sally Epstein in 1933-34, who was accused of the murder of the SA brown shirt Horst Wessel.41 Kramer became a member of the NSDAP when he saw no other option, during the 1940s.42

Pool’s own role in the 1932 Amsterdam event was minor. As a big finale, ‘Mrs. R. Kramer-

Pool,’ as she was announced,43 read parts from Opstandelingen (‘Insurgents,’ 1910), a classic by the

Dutch socialist writer Henriette Roland Holst, and from the German expressionist writer Leonhard

Frank’s De mensch is goed (‘Man is good’). And although the audience often longed for such ‘light’ entertainment after heavy and often lengthy speeches, Pool was clearly the support act. This was in sharp contrast to a few years earlier, when Pool had been a well-known figure with the VARA socialist

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radio, when both her name and photograph were used to attract audiences. Now Kramer stood in the spotlight while Pool had shifted to the background.

To a friend Pool remarked that she merely had had a ‘supporting role’ during her marriage to Kramer.44 By the early 1930s Pool had merely become the spouse of a public speaker whose only task it was to support her husband in his ambitions by standing next to him. For someone like Pool, who was a widely known performer in the Dutch socialist movement, and who had a sparkling, restless personality, this was much to accommodate. Yet, for a while it seems that she tried to convince herself that this was the right thing to do. In 1930 she translated a poem about the position of women in the labor movement. It encouraged women to support the class struggle by letting their husbands go to meetings after work. ‘And don’t you keep him back when red flags are burning,’ it said,45 echoing

Pool’s own submissive role as an obedient wife. Yet soon Pool became tired of playing second fiddle.

A peak out of the closet

The political situation deteriorated rapidly as the 1930s progressed. Street violence became ever more common, between Nazis and Communists, but also that of the paramilitary Sturmabteilung (SA) against Communists, Social Democrats, and Jews. The ever-grimmer political climate as well as Pool’s strained relationship with Gerhard Kramer led Pool to move around in more radical circles, both in

Amsterdam and in Berlin. Somewhere during this period she was associated with the Karl Marx

Schule in Berlin’s labor quarter Neukölln. It was probably here where Pool first met Lena Fischer, a

Berlin local about whom little is known besides that she was a lesbian.46 Pool and Fischer started a romantic relationship that probably lasted many years. It was serious between them: they shared an apartment in Berlin and Pool also took Fischer with her to meet her parents. They were even planning to move to Amsterdam together.47

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Pool wrote about this relationship in cryptic yet autobiographical poems from the 1940s, some of which are dedicated to ‘L.F.’ - undeniably Lena Fischer. ‘I was deeply connected to Her in friendship,’ one of those poems said.48 The word ‘friendship’ was used more often in lesbian circles, which could both mean a ‘romantic friendship’ or an intensive platonic one.49 In another poem she talks about a gezellin (‘companion’), clearly referring to a life partner.50 The impact of this mystery woman on Pool’s life was perhaps even deeper than the available material suggests: it is possible that this woman was the love of her life. Yet the relationship between Pool and Fischer suddenly came to an end when Fischer was arrested and never heard of again. Perhaps she was sent to a concentration camp, perhaps because of political reasons, or because the Nazis saw lesbians as ‘degenerates.’51 Pool wrote that she was ‘suddenly and cruelly parted’ from someone that she deeply cared about52 and also wrote she was deeply connected to an anonymous woman in a dark time: ‘The nights she lay in my arms. Fear, about what was to come, often hold back the sleep.’53 Of all the things that the Nazis did in the 1930s and beyond, this had the greatest impact; they took away the love of her life.

Figure 2.6 Figure 2.7 Figure 2.8 ‘Lena F.’ and unidentified Picture of ‘Lena F,’ ca. Picture of ‘Lena F,’ ca. 1920s. person, ca. 1920s. 1920s.

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Pool kept her love life largely to herself, and afterwards she meticulously covered up this period in her archives. Yet in her private scrapbooks some loose photographs can be found of a woman, dressed in a sexually ambiguous style with short-cut hair and trousers. One of Pool’s students in Amsterdam, a teenager, remembered that Pool treasured a portrait of her Berlin girlfriend, ‘dressed as a man,’ 54 not realizing that this was a lesbian dress code. Had this pupil been somewhat older, then she might have remembered the 1930 movie Morocco, in which Marlene Dietrich wore a suit and tie and kissed another woman, crossing both gender and heterosexual norms. Yet many heterosexuals innocently believed that women in male suits were just ‘modern’ or the dress code of liberated ‘new women.’ In popular culture it indeed often was, but Lena Fischer’s clothing style (Figures 2.6 to 2.8) obviously went further than Marlene Dietrich’s feminine tailored pieces. In these pictures, probably taken around 1927 or 1928, this woman wears androgynous clothes in Berlin’s famous ‘Garçonne’ style.55 Her blazer and loosely tied necktie leave little to the imagination: she was a part of Berlin’s lesbian subculture.

It is unclear whether Pool was a part of the same subculture, or whether she visited any of

Berlin’s famous lesbian establishments, like the Monokelbar at the Kurfürstendamm, the lesbian bowling club the Lustige Neun, or the Toppkeller at the Schwerinstraße. Pool also did not seem to partake in Berlin’s dress code. She always refused to use the term ‘lesbian.’ After the war she even disliked the Dutch word vriendin (‘girlfriend’) - saying it was too ‘piquant’ to her taste.56 Yet there are strong indications that she was indeed part of Berlin’s lesbian subculture; she was just less flamboyant and made use of more subtle gestures to indicate that she was. Her theater reference that she played a ‘supporting role’ was a well-known reference from lesbian life, referring to the double role many lesbians had to play as lesbianism was not accepted everywhere.57 Also, Pool occasionally wore a pinky ring, which was an insider’s signal that she was ‘one of us.’58 Likewise some of her poems from the

1940s contain overt lesbian references, like the poem ‘Sapphic ode to Emily Dickinson.’59 Of the

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poems she wrote under the header Vriendinnen - then apparently still an okay term - one poem stands out the most. It describes a woman nicknamed ‘Bobby N.’ - a female mechanic who works at a service station and who drinks beer, against a backdrop that is reminiscent of Berlin:

In leather jacket or blue overall,

Not in the dress that vain women wear,

Short, dark hair in a waveless drop,

On [a] motorcycle, which

trembles and shakes like a brute,

Through the fierce shore of the metropolis

You have led your life recklessly.

Life caught you as in a flame;

Too bright, too fierce; perhaps your heart knew

That such glaring would never last long.60

The final stanza seems to be directed at Lena Fischer, whose life was also dramatically cut short.

Remarkable is that the poem idealizes the overly macho woman who wants to be seen as ‘one of the guys’ in the garage she works at. With this nostalgic yet fatalistic view of Berlin’s lesbian scene, this poem reveals that Pool was aware of and probably personally knew what sexologist Hirschfeld called

‘sexual intermediaries,’ individuals who explored the boundaries between men and women.61 Perhaps this is what friends had in mind when they said that Pool had had a ‘rather wild youth’ in Berlin.62

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‘Who of us dares that!!’

While Pool was exploring Berlin and its lesbian subculture together with her girlfriend, it was obvious that her relationship to Kramer was doomed. Their lengthy engagement (since 1927) was put to an end in August 1932. Not with a separation, but surprisingly with a wedding, perhaps in a final attempt to make the relationship work, or perhaps so she could continue to live in Germany. Yet by 1933 they were already separated, although the divorce was only finalized in June 1935.63 One of Pool’s pupils remembered that it was Kramer who initiated the divorce, ‘probably because [Pool] was homosexual,’ he said, ‘but the official, public reason [for the Nazis] was because she was Jewish.’64

All of this seems to suggest that Pool was a lesbian or perhaps bisexual. But it is safe to say that Pool was simply too ambitious to accept a marriage and housekeeping as a career in itself, choices that were deep-rooted within heterosexual life. Pool was a ‘very emancipated woman’ according to one eyewitness: ‘She was the first and only woman I have ever seen who wore a monocle at home.’65

Seemingly unaware that the monocle was a famous lesbian dress code (both in Berlin and Paris),

Pool’s sexuality and her ambition are unconsciously linked together here. And perhaps there is something to say for this: it was not uncommon that a sexual revelation occurred at the same time as a social rebellion.66 Often these were part of a simultaneous transition which required a more thorough exploration of the inner self. And as heterosexuality was the norm, or even (silently) compulsory, coming out as or even being a lesbian inherently meant distancing oneself from those norms. It was, in other words, an act of defiance against Nazi rule.67

In the midst of Nazi Berlin, Pool was torn between society’s expectations of women and her own mind and ambitions, forcing her to act ‘contrary instincts.’68 To find true love but also to find herself, Pool had to resist patriarchal structures, starting with her own marriage. It is possible that

Pool preferred an open marriage (not uncommon in Communist circles) or at least expected more freedom inside her relationship with Kramer. The few sources that discuss his private life suggest that

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Kramer saw a serving role for women - in the kitchen.69 Curiously, he did not think Pool’s name was worth mentioning in any of his recollections.

Pool’s interpretation of one Soviet film that deals with adultery is perhaps revealing in this context. In the same review article mentioned before, Pool wrote that she particularly liked The Living

Corpse (Fyodor Otsep, 1929) which featured Pudovkin in the lead (Figure 2.5). An adaptation of

Tolstoy’s eponymous novel bearing the same name, this Soviet movie tells the story of a man whose wife doubts whether to stay with him, or pursue another man, who also competed for her hand. The husband cannot stand this, contemplates suicide, but instead runs away. After a while, his wife assumes that he is dead and marries the other man. But then her first husband reappears. The woman is charged with bigamy, and a judge rules that she must leave her new husband or be exiled to Siberia.

Unexpectedly her first husband shoots himself, however, and the film ends with the woman shouting hysterically that her first husband had always been the love of her life. The suicide-and-resurrection theme was not uncommon in Soviet cinema. Yet the silent film with limited intertitles was ambiguous enough for Pool to have an entirely different reading of the movie, centering on the female experience.

Pool wrote that the man ‘knows that his wife loves another, he wants to see her happy, with the other

[but] the church will not approve of the divorce.’ She explained that also in real life marriage legislation prohibited divorces, which she called ‘narrow-minded and inhumane.’70 Pool described in awe how the protagonist ‘disappears in the darkest corners of the proletarian life,’ living a life in poverty - all to set his wife free. ‘Who of us dares [to do] that!!’71

As she herself was also in love with ‘another’ around this time, the review was perhaps more autobiographical than Pool had intended. A couple of years later Pool finally dared to set herself free, both from her marriage and from heterosexual norms. The city of Berlin was largely responsible for that. Many of her Amsterdam friends had thought of her as ‘asexual’ or even ‘sexless,’72 but in Berlin

Pool finally recognized undefined feelings of ‘otherness,’ enabling her to come out of the closet.73

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More importantly, she no longer had a ‘supporting role’ to play. She again retained the leading role in her own life.

A Jewish woman in Nazi Berlin

With the Nazi claim to power of 1933, the Weimar Republic soon became a faint memory.

Thousands of soldiers marched through the streets and Nazi flags besmeared Berlin’s architecture.

Initially Pool had observed the Nazis from afar, paying special attention to their songs, as a sort of anthropologist looking at a weird breed or unidentified species.74 But soon she had to admit that things were getting out of hand. Germany ‘was going through a period of major political problems,’

Pool wrote much later in a dry and distant manner, ‘which culminated in the burning of the Reichstag building in Berlin in February 1933 and the rise of Adolf Hitler.’75 But that was of course just the beginning of all the trouble. Through her leftwing network and Kramer’s inside information from the judicial system, including that of the notorious anti-Jewish Nuremberg Laws of 1935, Pool was at an early stage already aware of how the Nazis treated their opponents. Still, it was simply unfathomable that the worst was yet to come.

For a Jewish, lesbian, and (revolutionary) socialist woman, the rise of the Nazis bore serious implications for Pool. Intimidation of opponents was a key Nazi strategy and within months after the

Nazi takeover in January 1933 all opposition was eliminated. The Nazis hunted down ‘November criminals,’ by which they meant Jews, republicans, democrats, and communists. Pool’s life in Berlin almost reads like a Kafka novel as the Nazis opposed everything she was and everything she stood for.

In 1933 women were barred from the workplace and barely admitted to universities.76 The Karl Marx

Schule was closed by the Nazis that same year. Subsequently, lesbianism was denounced as a

‘perversion.’ Socialists and communists were declared as enemies. Moreover, after the Reichstag was set on fire by the Dutch communist Marinus van der Lubbe, all Dutch people living in Berlin were

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put under house arrest too.77 All these separate ‘anti-otherisms’ - as Pool later called them78 - explicitly targeted Pool on various grounds. The situation became increasingly unsafe and hazardous.

The most far-reaching attack to be expected, however, was on her Jewishness. Something she had always seen as a minor element of her life story, suddenly defined her. Jews became the scapegoat and were blamed for nearly everything, from individual discontent to international conspiracies. Pool probably experienced from up close the early anti-Jewish boycotts and consequences of legal exclusion.

The infamous book burning of 1933 took place only a few hundred meters away from the antiquarian book store where she worked, and likely included books she read. Soon people were physically attacked as well, and rapidly violence became commonplace. In a rare comment on her Berlin days,

Pool remarked that she ‘saw old men trampled in the streets, killed only because they looked Jewish.’

That same journalist quoted her: ‘At this time people were taken from their homes and […] placed in collective camps simply because they were Jews.’79

Figure 2.9 Books and writings deemed ‘un-German’ are burned at the Opernplatz, Berlin, May 1933. Source: Wikimedia Commons.

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Pool looked for opportunities to leave Nazi Germany, if only for a short while. She possibly took elective courses at universities in Munich, Paris, and Spoleto (Italy). Yet, she did not leave her new home town behind entirely, and her name still popped up in Berlin address books of 1936 and

1937.80 It was probably around that time that she started with ‘small’ acts of resistance, perhaps helping the underground communist party or the International Red Aid. To an American journalist she said that she became ‘a one-man underground system’ in Berlin who ‘helped Jewish people to flee

Nazi controls’ to get to the Netherlands.81 One of those might have been the Berlin typographer

Susanne Heynemann (1913-2009), who married the much older Dutch diamond trader Benjamin

Lopes Cardozo (1887-1942), a communist who probably closed this sham marriage to protect a comrade.82 These, and other unknown rescued people, were the first steps in Pool’s resistance work that she would continue when she finally returned to Amsterdam in late 1938 or early 1939.83 This was, of course, extremely late. Perhaps Pool had hoped that German fascism was just a temporary fad, as many continued to believe despite all the signs to the contrary.84 Or perhaps she wanted to continue her anti-fascist activism, which required her to remain in enemy territory. Unfortunately, she stayed long enough to see Lena Fischer disappear, but also to experience the Nazi violence firsthand. An

American friend remembered a meeting with Pool in the late 1950s:

We were talking about a Brecht play - possibly Threepenny Opera itself - and Rosey sang a few

measures in German with marked vocal flair. I said: Rosey, I didn’t know you sang! She said: I

played the piano for rehearsals in Germany. I said: I didn’t know you played! She said: Oh yes,

but the Nazis broke the bones in my hands and I couldn’t play any more.85

It is unclear where, when, or how this molestation supposedly happened. This memory is just as chaotic as Pool’s time in Berlin. In later life she would release shocking revelations like those, often

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without ‘a vestige of complaint or self-pity.’86

Her date of arrival in the Netherlands, in January 1939, suggests that she was still in Berlin during

Kristallnacht, a final turning point for Nazi Germany. Also known as the ‘Night of Broken Glass,’ this pogrom showed widespread mob violence against Jews. Dozens of synagogues, Jewish schools, and stores were destroyed that night. With German authorities not intervening, there was no doubt about it: Jews were living targets.87 It was the final push for Pool to get out of there, as quickly as possible.

There was now no doubt about it: Hitler’s regime was a ‘dictatorship of fear and murder,’ Pool wrote.88

She immediately returned to Amsterdam.

Mass movements, individual decisions

Rosey Pool’s time in Berlin was a turning point in Pool’s life in which she had redefined herself. The political situation shook her deeply: it showed that the labor movement, which she so wholeheartedly supported, stood no chance against nationalistic frameworks that national socialism brought, but also increasing threats of war. Yet perhaps the most painful fact Pool had to take in were the bystanders who let it all happen out of complacency or out of fear to be the next target, and thereby were an undeniable part of what Pool later called ‘mass insanity.’89 It shocked her to see that ‘[m]any German parents and teachers took part in Hitler’s anti-Semitic programs,’ she later said.90 Race ideology was not the biggest threat, she thought: indifference was. To her, apathy was the exact opposite of solidarity.

Pool believed in active fighting for the oppressed labor class. Bearing this in mind, it is not strange that she later turned to the African American cause, which was by the 1930s known among communists as the cause of the ‘negro proletariat.’ In light of her later life, it is nevertheless astounding that there is not a single indication that she showed an interest in African American poetry or culture in this period. In the sixties Pool briefly remarked that there was a protest of Berlin’s Transport

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Workers Union in 1931 to support the Scottsboro Boys, leaving in the middle whether she was there or not.91 She did suggest that she knew all plays that were staged in this period in Berlin. In a 1953 article on Black actors on European stages she wrote: ‘the writer, who lived in pre-Hitler Berlin from

1927 until 1933, can safely say that to her knowledge no Negro ever appeared on the German- speaking stage in straight plays [i.e. non-musical plays].’ 92 The way she addressed herself here, in the third-person, shows the complex history of Pool’s time in Berlin: she was there, and yet she was not.

Pool later claimed that in Berlin she wrote a dissertation called Die Dichtung des nordamerikanischen Negers (‘The Poetry of the American Negro’),93 but said that the Nazis ruined her academic career. ‘Back in Amsterdam in 1938,’ Pool later recalled, ‘I found that the Gestapo had confiscated all my scientific work which I left in Berlin at my rather hurried departure, [and] that they had seized all my papers and destroyed the research material of so many years.’94 The only formal supervisor on this topic would have been professor Friedrich Schönemann, a pro-Nazi Americanist at the University of Berlin.95 This might have been possible, but the topic should have fitted in with the Nazi’s racial theories that saw Blacks as an inferior ‘race.’ Although there is a possibility that her university enrollment records went missing, it is all together highly unlikely she ever completed a

PhD, or that she did a Habilitation for that matter.96 She did, however, put ‘Dr.’ in front of her name in years to come, especially when she was in England and the US. ‘I never dared ask her, what kind of doctorate do you have,’ one Dutch friend shyly recalled, ‘because I had a feeling that it was something she had merely given to herself.’97 But there was more to come that Pool did not want us to know - starting with her life during the Second World War. ⌇⌇⌇

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Figure 3.1 Rosey Pool around 1946, probably in Amsterdam. Source: JHM.

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CHAPTER 3: WESTERBORK ‘A LITTLE BIT OF LUCK AND A BIT OF PLUCK.’

ESCAPING THE HOLOCAUST

‘I managed to jump from the death train,’ Rosey Pool disclosed her war experiences briefly to an

American journalist.1 And no, she told another reporter: she did not know what happened to her parents. ‘They died in the gas chambers so far as I know.’2 Perhaps she wanted to shock people with her casualness, or perhaps she wanted to prevent an emotional outburst by taking control of the story.

Her life during WWII might have sounded exciting and heroic, even in comparison to other

Holocaust survivors: teaching Anne Frank, helping Jewish refugees, fighting in the resistance, and spectacularly escaping from a Nazi transit camp. Yet the reality of war was frightening, full of moral dilemmas and irresponsible risks, and the outcome extremely random. She refused to be seen as a hero, ‘I was just lucky,’ she admitted candidly.3

The year 1939 heralded in a new era for Pool. She left Germany and returned to the Netherlands, moving back in with her parents in the Nieuwe Hoogstraat. This move was motivated by an assumption that her homeland would remain neutral, like it had done before. ‘We would always be safe,’ Pool recalled the general thought at the time.4 Nazism was a temporary madness that could not last long, she surmised. Pool nostalgically remembered ‘those happy days’ of the late 1930s when the

Dutch enjoyed life ‘as if there were no Hitler regime across our borders.’5 But it was simply impossible to turn a blind eye on fascism. The Nazi dream of a German Vaterland developed in a hunger for territorial expansion, while political opponents and Jews were viciously attacked. German Jews tried to flee, and after 1933 about 50,000 fled to the Netherlands, often as a temporary station.

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Pool strongly identified with these refugees, as she herself had also been forced to leave

Germany behind. This close identification was one of the reasons she started teaching Dutch and

English ‘crash courses’ as well as occasional ‘English evenings’ at Tehuis Oosteinde, a popular meeting place for German migrants and refugees, primarily Jews.6 Her students were of all ages and from all walks of life.They all more or less shared a similar position: all had no perspectives to gain Dutch citizenship, to integrate in society, or any real chances to move on to other countries. In this demoralizing and hopeless situation, Pool actively tried to counter that by making her classes lighthearted and witty. Many found her attitude inspiring and one pupil recalled that Pool ‘brought a light of hope to masses of people.’7 However, being a beacon of light was not an easy task. Pool remembered one gentleman from Germany who wanted to learn English in order to emigrate, to

America. He became upset when he found out that the English language not only had a present tense, but also a past tense, which discouraged him deeply. ‘Und das alles durch den EINEN Menschen,’ Pool remembered him saying - and that all because of that one man: Hitler.8

Figure 3.2 Oosteinde 14-16, Amsterdam, Figure 3.3 Undated photo of Lloyd Hotel, a refugee in 1960. Source: Amsterdam City camp at Oostelijke Handelskade 34, Amsterdam. Archives. Source: Amsterdam City Archives.

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The tragic stories did not seem to discourage Pool at all. On the contrary, it appears that she actively sympathized with people on the fringes of society. Around that same time Pool also started to teach English lessons at the Lloyd Hotel, a refugee center near the eastern docks of Amsterdam.

The population of this camp changed continuously. Some refugees only stayed for one night, some a bit longer. But almost all were traumatized by the expulsion from their homeland. Some had been on the dramatic ‘Voyage of the Damned’ of the MS St. Louis, the ship that was denied entry in both

Cuba and the United States in mid-1939, after which they were forced to return to Europe, and landed in Amsterdam where the situation became even more hopeless now that they were out of money as well. Against that desolate and bleak background, it is simply astonishing the way Pool was perceived. Two pupils - who had both been on the MS St. Louis - fondly recalled this ‘very heavy, friendly Jewish lady’ and recalled her as a ‘born teacher.’ As there were no German-language syllabi available, Pool decided simply to make up teaching methods by herself. One pupil recalled an English song they learned in her class, a song about a ‘little nigger boy’ [sic] with ‘washy-whity wool’ hair.9 It was a sign that Pool had become interested in African American culture, albeit not in the most sophisticated manner.

While Pool remembered that the neighboring Dutch ‘welcomed thousands of refugees from

Germany,’10 in reality, Jewish refugees were scarcely admitted by the Dutch government and in mid-

1939 the country closed its borders to all foreigners entirely. Perhaps Pool rather recalled her own welcoming attitude towards these refugees, which was similar to the radical leftist circles she operated in. While moderate socialist groups took little to no action, small groups of revolutionary socialists and communists did reach out to these Jewish refugees.11 The actions of these far-left fringe groups were in sharp contrast with the rest of the Dutch population, which largely remained passive and silent. Most non-Jews saw these refugees as competitors on the already tight Dutch labor market, which was still recovering from the crisis of the 1930s. Yet also in Dutch Jewish circles many were

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not particularly welcoming either: many feared that these newcomers would exacerbate anti-Semitism in the Netherlands.12

By the late 1930s Pool found herself in radical socialist and communist circles. These groups had already started their resistance against the fascist threat, largely operating underground, and actively sought out to help the victims of fascism. It was also her character that drove her in this direction. Max Gruber, one of her students, remarked that Pool’s work with refugees was a ‘natural outcome’ of her personality. ‘She always took an interest in the oppressed, persecuted, or people otherwise in need.’13 Perhaps this character trait was a result of her childhood. Ever since she was bullied as a child, she learned to follow her inner moral values, independently of what others might think - an important characteristic of many helpers.14 This sense of doing the right thing had led her to far left, anti-fascist circles in the 1930s. There, her ideals were also noticeably influenced by Marxist writers and thinkers, such as the evolutionary biologist J.B.S. Haldane, who argued that ‘there is no difference between one and the other kind of people.’ Pool came to believe that words like ‘us’ and

‘them’ were artificial categories meant to divide people.15 She became convinced that there was only one category: there were only citizens of the world. And in the case of German Jewish refugees, she did not believe that the word ‘them’ was applicable to human beings either. Her own experiences in

Berlin made her actually feel one of them. So helping refugees therefore did not really feel like a choice. Like her other endeavors in which she sought to help people on the fringes of society, helping these refugees was a duty, a responsibility she felt she owed herself and mankind.

The ‘race madness’ spreads

Pretending that the Nazis were harmless was a daydream from which the Dutch were rudely awakened on 10 May 1940. On that day Nazi Germany invaded the Netherlands, and after short fighting and

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disastrous city bombings, the country was occupied. Soon, however, most people returned to their daily lives and the new circumstances became almost frighteningly normal. This was partially a strategy of the Nazis: the Dutch were seen as part of the Aryan ‘master race’ and were therefore treated more or less the same as Germans. But Pool quickly understood that those ideas did not apply to her.

She knew how the Nazis treated their opponents, and through her anti-fascist networks, it is likely that she heard at least rumors about mass murders and the systematic persecution of Jews.

She started to get rid of her paperwork, most of which were never to be found again. Already in June 1939 she donated some of her materials to a socialist archive in Amsterdam, including a book on the Russian revolution and even a printed speech of Adolf Hitler16 - another sign of her anti-fascist activism. It aimed to undermine the enemy by studying their tactics and arguments. Like many other radical leftists, Pool destroyed all of her letters and papers shortly after the occupation, as they could greatly endanger everyone involved.

Now that the country was occupied she started to ‘think three corners ahead.’ 17 Everyone who was ‘not unmistakably one of us,’ was ‘our enemy until he has proved the contrary,’ she later recalled.18 This ‘double life’ mentality came somewhat easier to her because of her activist experience, her time in Berlin’s lesbian subculture, but even her public performances as recitist and speaker. All seemed to have prepared her to take on different identities just about everywhere she came. Yet the war brought a completely new, never-ending alertness. ‘You looked around to see if somebody was spying,’ Pool recalled: ‘you were not even free in your own homes.’19

The use of real names during the war was often avoided, and Pool once claimed that her nom de guerre was ‘Harriet Tool,’ after Harriet Tubman, her ‘personal hero.’20 Tubman had played an important role in mid-nineteenth century America facilitating the escape of enslaved African

Americans to the free North. Pool later also surmised that her ‘underground group against Hitler’ was

‘called after Harriet Tubman,’ although at the time ‘I felt that we had hardly the right to do so.’21 The 77

absence of sources makes it impossible to verify these claims, but secret coded messages were a crucial part of the underground resistance. Also, the Underground Railroad would play a crucial role in Pool’s survival later on.

The first, relatively peaceful period of WWII ended in early 1941 as Nazi repression went from bad to worse. Through numerous decrees Dutch Jews were targeted, a process that was carried out in a bureaucratic and distant manner. ‘[Jews were] sent to special schools,’ Pool later recalled,

‘[they] couldn’t use parks, couldn’t show themselves outside.’22 Each separate measure seemed initially trivial, but all together they were catastrophic. Jews were increasingly cut off from Dutch society. The faint hope that the hatred towards Jews came only from one man, the Führer, also faded away. Now there were even Dutch individuals who took initiatives to bar Jews. By late 1942 ‘No Jews’ signs were almost everywhere, often put there by local municipalities or shop owners themselves.23

This was to have dramatic consequences for Pool herself, who was according to Nazi race laws a Volljude, ‘fully Jewish.’ One of the most tangible measures became the yellow star, a cotton Star of David that became obligatory to wear in public after May 1942. This was necessary ‘to distinguish us from the so-called “Herrenvolk” [master race],’ Pool wrote.24 Although Pool had never really felt

‘Jewish’ - as a child she had only once set foot in a synagogue, out of curiosity - she did not resist the anti-Jewish laws at first. On the contrary: she tried to make the yellow badge her own. ‘I wore it like my shoes, like my skirt,’ she wrote in one of her poems. ‘[I did] not feel insult or resentment.’ This changed, however, when she saw a child, who ‘walked alone with that yellow stain, which besmeared him like stinking slime, which I had worn without disdain.’25 It was only at that moment that it finally hit her what kind of ‘race madness’26 the Dutch had so quickly grown accustomed to.

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Observing Anne Frank

Pool witnessed from up close what happened to Jewish children when she started to work at the Joods

Lyceum in Amsterdam, probably as a substitute teacher in English. This ‘Jew school’ - as Pool called it27 - was for children from the age of twelve to eighteen, and had opened its doors in October 1941 when Jewish children were barred from the Dutch school system. Despite the threat of war, the Jewish

Lyceum was a school like any other. There were exams, children stared out of windows, and played games on the schoolyard. One pupil remembered that during Pool’s English classes they often made fun of her because of her posh British accent. ‘Oh, she was always so dramatic [orating, dramatically:]

“No sun, no moon” […]. We couldn’t stop giggling. Yes, we were never serious in class, we were very mean!’28 Pool herself tried to light up the mood as well by giving extracurricular lectures on ‘Humor in literature’29 and reading parts of theater plays in her classes. Like many of her colleagues, Pool felt a moral obligation to these children to ensure that their lives carried on as normally as possible.

Behind the scenes Pool took on a more serious approach, however. Together with a colleague she worked on a formal recommendation to prioritize Hebrew and English in the curriculum, to prepare the children for their emigration to Palestine; a suggestion that was quickly dismissed by the

Jewish Council, the institution founded in 1941 on Nazi orders. Her colleague wrote disdainfully that the reason for the rejection was that ‘they did not want to give the Germans the idea that the Dutch

Jews wanted to emigrate.’30 Fear muffled any type of open resistance. Through happenstance Pool’s influence grew. In the last few weeks of the school’s existence, Pool was appointed rectrix (‘female principal’) of the school, and from this position she tried to exert some influence. Every day children were either ‘taken away or went into hiding,’ she recalled,31 and the school became ever emptier.

Around May 1943 her eye fell on a talented, bright pupil called Hajo Meyer, who had just received a

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call for deportation. Pool bafflingly urged the rector (‘male principal’) to give this student ‘a list of his achievements of the written exam’ to take with him on the train to the East.32

At this moment in time nearly all Jews were deported from the Netherlands, which makes

Pool’s action dubiously naïve. Was she trying to keep spirits high? Or is it proof of how little Pool knew about the Final Solution? Considering her own background, it seems highly unlikely that she was naïve about the deportations. She had witnessed herself in Berlin how the Nazis easily physically attacked Jews walking on the street, but also let political opponents disappear, including her own beloved Lena Fischer. Contemporary sources also reveal that most of the teachers at the Jewish

Lyceum thought the deportations meant a certain death and although most felt powerless against it, they discouraged children to obey the deportation order.33 Pool likely shared these ideas, and it seems possible that Pool consciously wanted to create a paper trial for the boy. Hajo Meyer remembered that after taking his final exam, he visited a man he had never met before who then led him to a hiding place.34 Most likely then, Pool’s letters to the rector were merely a cover, just in case the Nazis would research the case.

Less bright children received far less attention from Pool. One child she did not notice that much was a young girl called Anne Frank. Pool recalled her as ‘your ordinary, pleasant girl to have in the classroom,’ but ‘not frightfully brilliant.’35 Pool gave private English lessons to Edith, Anne

Frank’s mother, and occasionally came to the Frank family’s home. Anne Frank would ‘scrutinize the visitor’ who entered their home, ‘with a pair of large eyes.’36 Pool always thought of her as ‘well, little bit awkward.’ She was even a bit annoyed by her curiosity and keen observance, ‘which none of us adults always like, you know?’37

One other thing she remembered was that Anne Frank had a ‘weird talent for impersonating people,’38 including herself. Once at school, Pool overheard a noise in the schoolyard. She climbed on a table to peek through the window to see what was going on. There she saw how Anne Frank did 80

‘an excellent and hilarious impersonation’ of the teaching staff.39 Pool was amazed how the girl meticulously caricatured her colleagues and finally Pool herself as well - mimicking ‘[e]very gesture and intonation.’40 This anecdote - whether it truly happened or not41 - not only shows Pool’s sincere interest in these children, but also her position as a curious yet hapless bystander. Yet she was not as powerless as this story suggests.

Forging papers and rescuing children

Shortly after the beginning of the war Pool had become involved in a resistance group that was established around Tehuis Oosteinde, the meeting place for German Jews. The Nazi invasion had caused great alarm among the Jewish refugees in Holland. Many feared a repetition of the pogroms they had experienced in Nazi Germany. Yet some of Oosteinde’s visitors decided to actively defy Hitler and resist. Some, like Alice Heymann-David, Nathan Notowicz, and Ernst Levi, already had experience with illegal work for the communist party, and now organized themselves in a bastion against Hitler. This group became known as the Van Dien group, a randomly chosen name. They were far less arbitrary when it came to choosing its members though. With care these three picked out ‘the good ones,’42 and Pool apparently was one of these.

In many ways Pool was a perfect candidate. They already knew her from Oosteinde and she spoke fluent Dutch and German. Moreover, all of her teaching jobs were part-time and her private classes at people’s homes enabled her to move around freely without raising much suspicion. But most importantly, her motives to help refugees were sincere, fueled by personal experiences and backed up by a firm ideological belief. Already in Berlin she had helped German Jews to get to the Netherlands and so it was almost self-evident that she enrolled in this underground group. Pool saw ‘nothing brave’ in that.43 It was simply something she had to do.

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Although the majority of the Van Dien group was Jewish, most saw themselves as anti- fascists who fought fascism in any form.44 One eyewitness dryly remarked that at the time the term

‘anti-fascist’ was simply used as a cover-up word for ‘communist.’45 And indeed, there were quite some leaders of the exiled Kommunistische Partei Deutschlands (KPD) among the leaders of the Van Dien group. Yet while both factions targeted fascism, the Van Dien group firmly differed from the KPD

Emigrationsleitung in that helping Jews was their top priority. Both the German KPD and the Dutch

CPN announced their solidarity with Jews. The CPN had organized the famous 1941 February strike to oppose anti-Jewish measures, and in their illegal newspaper they repeatedly wrote about the ‘mass murder’ that was taking place.46 Yet they also took selective action. Since socialism was only the logical outcome of history, such artificial walls between people would soon become outdated, they believed.47

Sadly, Jewish anti-fascists largely fought their own battle.48 Throughout the war, the Van Dien group helped dozens, possibly even hundreds of people. Pool recalled, again casually, the kind of resistance work this group did:

We just did things like finding hiding places for small Jewish children and Jewish adults, had to

get documents and microfilms from the Germans, kidnap people sometimes and lead people on

escape routes out of the country.49

Later on Pool said she and her group ‘kidnapped children away from death transports,’ specifying that they ‘took 72 children into safety,’ 50 an oddly specific number that is impossible to verify. She also forged identity papers, which required a good eye for detail. She cooperated with Martin Löwenberg, who belonged to the KPD Emigrationsleitung, the leaders of the German communist party in exile.51

Löwenberg, a resolute communist from Hamburg, arrived in Amsterdam around 1935 where he started a letterpress printing business. This became the perfect place to duplicate identity papers. Like

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any resistance fighter, Löwenberg understood that accuracy in the process of forging was absolutely crucial. In early 1942 he looked for four entire months to find a particular gray linen paper that matched original identification cards.52 In his search for a specialist and trustworthy printer, Pool likely assisted him, as she had a wide network among writers and publishers. Duplicating identity cards were a small acts of resistance, but nevertheless had a great impact. Soon she would take greater risks, however.

Probably around this same period, somewhere in 1942 or 1943, Pool had started working for the Joodse Raad (Jewish Council), seemingly as a secretary.53 From this position, as well as her educational work at the Jewish Lyceum and Tehuis Oosteinde, Pool became one of the happy few to acquire a Sperre, an exemption from deportation. This gave her relatively more freedom in these fearful times, or at least the illusion of more freedom. Pool also secured chores for both her brother and her father at the Jewish Council, which also provided them with a much coveted Sperre.

To this very day the Jewish Council is a controversial organization that arouses fierce debates among historians. Its attempts to carry out Nazi decisions, guided by an idea ‘to prevent worse,’ sadly became a fatal part in the Dutch community’s undoing. Their efficient implementation of Nazi decrees enabled the swift deportation of the majority of the 140 thousand Dutch Jews as well as the

German Jewish refugees.54 In hindsight they completely underestimated the true intent of the enemy.

And, this became an ever bigger topic of discussion after the war, their system with exemptions

(Sperre) created confusion, division, and false hopes in crucial times.

Pool’s personal affiliation with the Joodse Raad brought her suspiciously close of collaborating with the enemy. Later Pool even admitted that through this job she was indirectly and inadvertently employed by the Nazi regime.55 Her work can be interpreted in multiple ways. By doing this job she acknowledged and thus accommodated the Nazis.56 Perhaps her scattered resume pushed her towards temporary and part-time jobs like this one, simply because she needed the money. And then there is 83

another possibility: by working herself up in the enemy’s ranks she came in the position to exert influence and perhaps help people. Seen that she had more often concerned herself about the victims of the fascists - take for example her husband’s work in the Horst Wessel trial – it is not unlikely it was a conscious choice of hers. Yet, it remained a bold yet risky strategy to fight the fascist enemy.

Because although Pool after the war belittled her own work in the resistance, all of it involved great risks, some of which were outright irresponsible, or even utterly insane: around this time Pool even set foot inside a Nazi transit camp.

In the lion’s den

It was probably in 1942 that Pool occasionally set out to Camp Westerbork, about two hours northeast of Amsterdam, then still a refugee camp for German Jews. Like her work at the Lloyd Hotel, Pool also went here to teach the children in the camp. Yet, Pool was accompanied during those travels by

KPD leader Martin Löwenberg,57 a clear sign that the Van Dien group were actually exploring enemy premises and possibly assist resistance fighters who operated within in the camp.

Things drastically changed in July 1942, when the Nazis took over the refugee camp and turned it into a Judendurchgangslager (‘Jew transit camp’). They started to deport the Jews from the camp two weeks later, to what the Nazis misleadingly called ‘labor camps,’ in places with odd names like Auschwitz. These deportations with hundreds of people were chaotic and emotional. The paper work was done by the members of the Jewish Council, who had their hands full with registering new

‘residents’ of the camp. The Joodse Raad temporarily transferred some of their Amsterdam employees to the camp to assist as well. Pool, with certificates as Dutch-German translator and even a diploma in calligraphy and typing, was considered for a job, and she started working inside the camp in the summer of 1942.

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In an anonymous poem that clearly bears her style and even the signature ‘Rosa’ (her official and possibly German name), Pool mocks her administrative duties. She had to type dozens of letters, translate documents into German, cleaning her boss’s bed, and - one of her key tasks - typing lists

‘with about a hundred names!’58 Her schedule left little to the imagination: Pool was duplicating deportation lists. Yet the cavalier style of the poem seems to suggest Pool hardly realized that these chores were actually enabling the Final Solution. And how could she know this? What we now call the Holocaust, the systematic extermination of Jews, was unprecedented in human history, and therefore hard to even imagine. Some radical leftists and communists who warned about mass murder and even the use of gas were dismissed as paranoid horror stories. It seems to suggest that although

Pool was a fierce anti-fascist activist by now, she did not seriously consider the worst case scenario as a full-blown reality. But more likely, the concept of ‘choiceless choices’ provides an alternative explanation. Were these forced choices in abnormal times really conscious choices, or desperate acts of people who saw no other way?59

This makes it even more remarkable that in these hazardous times Pool still showed some remarkable signs of agency. While she worked at the camp administration, Pool received requests for dispensation, and the Van Dien group almost immediately tried to get some of their own people out of the camp. It was probably through Pool’s intervention that both the prominent scholar Kurt

Baschwitz as well as the resistance fighter Bruno Ast were released, on 9 August 1943. Baschwitz’s card went missing in the administration, very likely through Pool’s interference.60 So it appears that she had another, secret reason to be here: to spy on the enemy and to sabotage their actions.

Sadly, Pool received far more requests than only these two people, most of whom she was unable to help without raising moresuspicion. She did for example not succeed in getting the 16-year- old Cilia Jacobs and her 49-year-old mother Martha Jacobs-Gast off the deportation list. They were deported to Auschwitz where they were murdered.61 Whatever Pool believed these ‘labor camps’ were, 85

she was faced in Camp Westerbork with a moral dilemma. In order to help people, she had to continue her work, which included copying deportation lists of the trains leaving to Auschwitz. This made her an accomplice to whatever happened in those camps in the East. The longer she stayed, the more people she could help, but also put more people on the trains. She had to apply a ‘selective ethics’ in her ‘choiceless choices,’ in other words: helping some while disregarding the fate of others.62

Luckily for her, this harrowing situation did not last long and her job at Westerbork was merely temporary. By the end of that year, 1942, she was back in Amsterdam.

Westerbork, the portal to hell

By then she lived in the middle of the Jewish Quarter, on Nieuwe Prinsengracht 120, together with her parents Louis and Jacoba (‘Cobie’), as well as her brother Jozef (‘Jopie’) and his wife Anna Frank

(not to be confused with ‘Anne’). By the end of that year the district became visibly emptier with each deportation. Jewish men, no longer allowed to work, were asked to ‘voluntarily’ turn themselves in for

‘unemployment relief work’ in Germany. If these instructions were not followed, the Nazis turned to more aggressive measures. Pool was possibly ‘arrested by the Germans for [her] underground activities,’ she later told an American reporter. In an attempt to break her during her interrogation, her parents were taken hostage. ‘They had many ways to loose[n] my tongue,’ she sadly said, ‘but their torture of my parents was the worst.’63 She was put in solitary confinement where she communicated with other prisoners by knocking the rhythm of the Dutch national anthem on the heating pipes, to let them know she was ‘one of them.’64 Apparently she was released shortly afterwards.65

Pool was arrested again on 26 May 1943. After a ‘voluntary’ call to report for deportation failed, the paramilitary Waffen-SS, the German Grüne Polizei, and Dutch police teamed up and invaded the Jewish Quarter. Not even Pool’s ‘never-ending alertness’66 had foreseen this raid. ‘Heavy

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boots passed by the house,’ Pool remembered in a poem,67 before someone pounded on the door.

Belongings had to be gathered in an instant and she had to leave the house immediately. Outside her house a crowd had gathered along the canal side, their belongings hastily stuffed together in bags. A

‘sad row of people,’ that was forever burned into her brain.68 A group of 3,000 people were ordered to walk to the nearby Muiderpoort train station. After a long wait a freight train arrived. They were forced on board and taken away.

When the train doors opened again, she stepped out of the train with her parents, her brother, and her sister-in-law. The sight was sadly not unfamiliar to Pool: she again found herself at

Camp Westerbork. Yet this time she was on the other side, as a prisoner. After she was assigned a bunk bed, she started to find her way in this new environment. ‘Believe it or not,’ she wrote to a friend much later. ‘I tried to make my so-called “bed” something of a home.’69 After a few weeks even the watchtowers and barbed wire fences became familiar sights. Some recalled that the camp felt like a

‘village.’70 There was a school, a synagogue, a hospital, and a camp cabaret. People married and babies were born. And it did not feel like a real prison as everybody still wore their own clothes. This all was, of course, a conscious strategy of the Nazis to make the camp appear as normal as possible. Yet in reality Westerbork was the portal to hell.

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Figure 3.4 Camp Westerbork, the ‘Boulevard of Misery,’ the nickname that the camp prisoners gave to the main road, undated [ca. 1944]. Source: Wikimedia / Memorial Center Camp Westerbork.

Situated in the northeast of the Netherlands, Westerbork was a desolate place. Camp

Westerbork was always in transition. About four to ten thousand prisoners lived there, ‘depending upon how recently the death trains had come by,’ Pool surmised.71 Every other Monday a nerve- wracking ritual turned the camp upside down. On the ‘Boulevard of Misery,’ the strip in the middle of the camp, all prisoners were lined up for the reading aloud of the deportation list for the next morning, of trains going to Sobibór and Auschwitz.

Most prisoners did not stay long as they were forced on the first departing train to the East.

Pool’s loved ones were among those who were rapidly deported as well. After only two weeks in

Westerbork her parents were put on a train to Sobibór (8 June), while her brother and his wife were deported three weeks after that (29 June 1943), to Sobibór as well. All of them were killed almost instantaneously upon arrival. Pool was left behind, terrified, alone, but also desperately waiting for any sign of life. In a poem that she likely wrote inside the camp she wrote: ‘Friend, Parents, Brother,

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is life still bearable over there[?].’72 This hopeful poem suggests that despite her leftist activism and personal experiences, she did not know about extermination camps. It would be one of the few remarks she made about her family for the rest of her life. Years later Pool said that ‘[t]he human mind is not able to grasp the horror of the Nazis.’73 Indeed, perhaps even now the Holocaust remains stranger than fiction. And even for the people that did believe all the ‘paranoid’ stories that were going around, there was no choice: escape was impossible. Or, in the case of Pool, almost impossible.

A not-so-great escape

While most of the prisoners only stayed for a few days in the camp, at the most two weeks,74 Pool was now for over a month in Westerbork. Possibly she worked at the school within the camp, which again made her exempt from deportation. This offered her enough time to connect with the Alte

Kampinsassen - the ‘oldies’ of the camp, German Jews who had often been there since when the camp was built in 1939, as a refugee camp. This controversial group became the ‘camp establishment,’ and they were in control of almost everything. They had the best and most important jobs which gave them (temporary) exemption from the transports. Among those jobs was compiling a concept version of each week’s deportation list, which not so coincidentally rarely included any of the German ‘oldies.’

It seems easy to judge them, but in reality they were part of the divide and rule tactics that the Nazis applied to run the camp. Anyhow, the Alte Kampinsassen were more or less the ‘permanent inmates’ of Westerbork and any contact with them could greatly extend one’s stay in the camp.75

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Figure 3.5 Werner Stertzenbach, undated photograph. Source: Website Boekhuis.

It was especially Pool’s contact with Werner Stertzenbach that became decisive. This Jewish communist from Düsseldorf had arrived in the camp in 1941, and had since then grown out to become a central figure in the organization, but also in the camp’s resistance. Although he was trained as an accountant, Stertzenbach became a bricklayer in the camp and as such he was able to go beyond the camp gates. Shortly after his arrival a circle of German anti-fascists gathered together, all determined to fight fascism. This ‘anti-Hitler coalition’ consisted of Social Democrats, Communists, and, above all, people who had ‘experienced the persecutions, prisons and concentration camps of the Nazi regime first hand,’ Stertzenbach recalled.76 It became the core of one of Westerbork’s most successful resistance groups.

Pool quickly became good friends with Stertzenbach. She likely stood out because of her charismatic personality, but it were her outside contacts that were of crucial importance. Stertzenbach was surprised to find out she closely knew family members of his girlfriend, Stella Pach, who still lived in Amsterdam.77 From other prisoners he also learned about the work Pool had done for refugees and her work with the Van Dien group that had brought her to Westerbork before. One of her former

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pupils from the Lloyd Hotel, Max Gruber, had also become a member of Stertzenbach’s group, and he possibly gave a glowing recommendation. Gruber later explained that he was deeply impressed by

Pool’s ‘fighting spirit and her courage’ in Westerbork: ‘if she did something she did it fully, irrespective of the circumstances,’ he said. ‘One could always count on her.’78 Recommendations like those were essential preconditions for her eventual escape.

Of the more than 100 thousand people that were deported though Westerbork, only 210 were able to escape, mostly through organized resistance groups within and around the camp. Each of these escapes was a miracle, considering that they were ‘in the claws of the SS,’ as Stertzenbach said.79 So they had to be careful but were also forced to make impossible choices. To rescue someone often meant that someone else had to be ‘sacrificed’: if someone’s name was taken off of the deportation list, another person had to take their place. As escape options were limited, the group around Stertzenbach had to make strategic choices, whether a person was ‘useful’ in the sense that he or she could do resistance work after a possible escape. It was Pool’s excellent anti-fascist track record that convinced them that Pool needed to get out of Westerbork.

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Figure 3 .6 Network Each identified resistance to be group of part resistance of contained a the resistance groups core in group. of Amsterdam leaders. T he b lack dots signify people that were deceased a round the time o f h er es cape. V arious s ources. of Pool, T he f our p eople in th e outer c ircle around Westerbork were acquantances of and Westerbork from the perspective of Rosey Pool shortly before her escape, September but are notn 1943.

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The resistance group around Stertzenbach started to look for opportunities to get Pool out of the camp. This was no sinecure. Transit camp or not, Westerbork was a highly secured prison with barbed wire fences, a canal, and security dogs that guarded the camp both day and night.80 There was no standard procedure to get people out and there always remained a risk. So the group chose for the least dangerous option. On the ninth of July, 1943, Pool requested to be put on the list to emigrate to Palestine, the British mandate that was one of the few countries that accepted Jewish refugees, albeit extremely limited. There was no sign that Pool had ever been a Zionist or even felt very Jewish herself, but it was worth a try in order to get out of the camp. One day later the request was already denied by the Jewish Council. This was a major setback. Luckily, Stertzenbach had a few more tricks up his sleeve. He just needed help from outside.

Stertzenbach’s group was able to communicate with the outside world through the post room and couriers. Five days after the Palestine rejection, Pool requested to send a message to Nathan

Notowicz, a resistance fighter of the Van Dien group who was still operating on the ground in

Amsterdam - for now. Yet time was running out quickly. The systematic deportations continued relentlessly, and in the summer of 1943 almost all Van Dien resistance fighters went into hiding themselves. So Pool’s message needed to be clear and yet not raise suspicion of the camp guards who could possibly check messages, both incoming and outgoing. So Pool asked for the musical scores of the song Die Eisenbahn (‘The Railroad’), which she ‘needed for teaching in Wbk [Westerbork].’81

That was a blatant coded message. Pool had told the other members of the Van Dien group at Tehuis

Oosteinde many times about the Underground Railroad, the underground network of escape routes in

19th century America in which her hero Harriet Tubman had played an important role to help people escape slavery. When the message arrived in Amsterdam, Notowicz immediately understood what was really meant: Pool needed help from outside to get out.82

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In the summer of 1943 the resistance fighters in Westerbork and Amsterdam were working on a plan to get Pool out of the camp. But in late July the news of Mussolini’s defeat reached the camp and for a moment dispersed the dark clouds over Westerbork. ‘The end had come,’ Pool remembered the joyous feeling inside the camp. ‘To-morrow Hitler would retire. [...] Our nightmare was over.’83 Perhaps the resistance group did not need an elaborate escape plan after all, and there now seemed no particular rush in getting Pool out. Yet disaster struck on one Monday evening in early September: somehow Pool’s name was announced for the transport to Auschwitz of 7 September

1943. As there were only a few hours left and the deportation lists were final at that moment, there was little to be done. So the resistance group turned to their last resort, which gave no guarantees, but had worked before. Occasionally the group would take people off the train just before its departure, hide them, and smuggle them out of the camp at dark. The SS then thought the train had left with the required amount of people, and escapees would not be hunted down afterwards. It was tricky, but it was the last resort.

After a sleepless night it slowly turned morning. Pool went to the middle of the camp, where the deportation train was already lined up. Forced by the Waffen-SS and the Ordnungsdienst (OD) almost a thousand people entered the carriages, with their luggage, just like an ordinary journey. Pool also stepped in a cattle car, cramped together with dozens of others. Yet, as Pool later explained, just

‘as an S.S. man was about to seal the door’ she stepped out of the carriage and said to the guard that she was ‘on transport duty,’84 pretending to be of the Ordnungsdienst. Her fluent Berlin accent probably made the story viable, and her acting skills did the rest. When the guard remarked that she had no armband to prove her rank, she improvised: ‘Oh, I must have lost it in the bustle.’ The SS guard replied: ‘Don’t let it happen again,’85 and ordered her to go back to her barrack. As Pool returned, the train’s whistle blew and the train set off on a three-day journey to Auschwitz, with 987 people on board. Only eight of them would survive: most were immediately killed in the gas chambers, 94

others worked themselves to death. Some of the women on this train were even set apart for medical experiments by the newly appointed ‘physician’ at Auschwitz, Josef Mengele.86 Pool escaped a gruesome and painful death, in the blink of an eye.

Figure 3.7 Deportation train in Camp Westerbork, undated [ca. 1943-44]. Source: Beeldbank WO2.

Yet, there were some setbacks in those fortunate moments. Her unexpected meeting with an

SS officer had created another problem. She was noticed, so her name was taken off the deportation list, and her card was put back in the card index. Now she could not be smuggled out of the camp without being reported as ‘missing.’ The resistance fighters had to look for another opportunity. Then a chance suddenly popped up: the Red Cross announced to visit the camp for an inspection. Destined to give a good impression, Westerbork’s German camp commander decided that the camp needed to be neat and clean. Perhaps it were the Alte Kampinsassen who convinced him that a library87 would look good and they knew just the right person who could fill some of those empty shelves: Rosey

Pool. She could quickly obtain free books from the Jewish Lyceum and possibly also Tehuis

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Oosteinde, which were both deserted by then. The camp commander agreed and gave her permission to leave the camp.

Pool was allowed to leave the camp for two days, together with a man called Jakob Hermann

Bier, a former civil servant who had been a vital organizer at Tehuis Oosteinde before his deportation to Westerbork in the summer of 1943.88 Such business trips were rare but not unique. Occasionally prisoners were sent out, usually to buy luxury products for the camp commander.89 However, the only people who were selected for such ‘holidays’ were trustworthy inmates that would not run off, almost exclusively Alte Kampinsassen. Using this option as an escape route would surely mean that the

Stertzenbach group could never make use of this privilege again and would lose an important line of communication to the outside world. This choice would severely limit their further resistance possibilities within the camp. It could also lead to serious repercussions to all of the camp inmates.

Another option is that this was not actually an escape, but that Pool was sent out on an outside mission. Anyhow, at the last minute Pool’s companion, Jakob Hermann Bier, refused to come along.

So Pool left on her own on Sunday 19 September 1943, rather unspectacularly. She was probably escorted to the train station, from where she was curiously free to do as she pleased.90

At first it seemed that Pool just went on to fulfil her duties. She went to collect some books, possibly at the empty buildings of Jewish Lyceum or Tehuis Oosteinde, but she certainly went to the city of Utrecht, to visit Gijsbertus Martinus van Wees, a bibliophile and publisher. Pool had met this shy and rather unexceptionally looking man in late 1940, when they were introduced to each other by theater director Max Ehrlich. He was now also a prisoner in Westerbork and director of the camp theater. Yet before that imprisonment, van Wees had provided him several hiding places until their unfortunate discovery. However, Pool probably did not come to van Wees for a hiding place. It just seems that she came to get books for Westerbork. Van Wees, shocked, told her to go in hiding - he had even already arranged a place she could go to. Yet Pool did not give in immediately: somehow

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she was determined to go back. Van Wees persisted: ‘I swore her to go into hiding now that it was still possible.’ In order to convince her, he called in the help of two members of the Van Dien group,

Susanne Heynemann and Alice Heymann-David, who came rushing to the scene to persuade Pool as well. ‘After a conversation that almost took all night,’ van Wees remembered,91 Pool finally changed her mind. No, she would not return to Camp Westerbork.

This was just in the nick of time. Although there is no record of any repercussions for her escape,92 that was not even necessary as the deportation trains took people away anyway. A few days after Pool’s escape, the Netherlands were declared ‘free of Jews’ by the Nazis. With no new prisoners arriving in the camp, now also the ‘permanent inmates’ were put on transport, also the Alte

Kampinsassen. The resistance fighters of the Stertzenbach group were enlisted as well, although some were able to flee the camp just in time.

Figure 3.8 Person’s card Rosey Pool from Camp Westerbork. In red is noted that she went ‘missing’ on Thursday 23 September 1943. The stamp with the red letter ‘R’ is a postwar addition, signifying ‘repatrianten’ or ‘representant,’ meaning that Pool repatriated and thus survived. Source: Memorial Center Camp Westerbork.

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A literature snob in hiding

A few days later, van Wees took Pool to Baarn. In this small town midway between Amsterdam and

Utrecht a surprise was waiting for her. The hiding place appeared to be a comfortable room in a classy guesthouse, ran by three women, about which little is known except that they were all former teachers:

An and Aaf Bronkers, and Pool’s own grand-niece, Marie Jessurun. There was even another person in hiding: her cousin Joost Jessurun, then still a teenager. From her new room, Pool overlooked the pretty garden and a nearby water tower. This was in sharp contrast with the mud and watchtowers from Westerbork. In Baarn, Pool was slowly able to become her old self again: a cultivated citizen of the world. She again taught English, now to her cousin. Hr room, ‘first a little bit barren and impersonal, changed visibly,’ her friend Susanne Heynemann remembered: ‘She again had books around her, personal things.’93

The importance of literature to Pool’s wellbeing should not be underestimated. Luckily for her, her helper van Wees was a bibliophile who directly understood Pool’s intellectual hunger. Every week he came by to bring fresh books. Even after September 1944, when checks were severely sharpened, he kept coming to Baarn from Utrecht, now on his bicycle. This took over an hour and always involved the risk of being caught near the Soestdijk Palace, ‘where krauts were always roaming and frequently held inspections,’ he recalled.94 By then it became extremely dangerous for men to go out on the street, which could result in arrest and forced labor or even deportation. The only reason van Wees was never caught was probably because he looked so mundane that no one thought of him as a resistance fighter.95 And apparently he thought these risks were worth it. After all, could ‘life’ really be called ‘living’ without art?

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Figure 3.9 Sign in Baarn during WWII: ‘Jews not wanted.’ Undated. Source: NIOD.

Despite these distractions during those first months in Baarn, Pool mentally hit rock bottom.

Her time in the camp had kept her mind busy with activities, plans, and possibly resistance work, which all prevented her from overthinking things too much. Yet here in Baarn her world became small and her anxieties were spiraling out of control. She partially poured this whirlwind of thoughts and emotions into the poetry she wrote during this period. She wrote that even the rustling of the trees set her off to thoughts about her family. ‘The suffering that I banned from the day,’ she wrote in a poem, ‘At night, […] blows up walls and tears down the room.’96 She was alone, only accompanied by feelings of guilt and shame about her behavior.97 Had she done the right thing?

Could she have done more? She found herself in deep isolation, cut off from the world, in ‘the tower of a lonely country-house.’98 Or was she?

Although she might have felt lonely, in reality her existence was less lonely than one might expect. Hiding is generally a collective enterprise that required the help of dozens of people, both directly and indirectly.99 And from Baarn Pool had many contacts with the outside world (see Figure

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3.10). She communicated with other Van Dien resistance fighters with the help of messengers. They even had their own illegally printed newsletter, the Mitteilungsblatt der Interessengemeinschaft antifaschistischer Deutscher in den Niederlanden.100 Pool also received personal visitors. Her main contact person, van Wees, came by every week to bring food, money, and of course books.101 Susanne

Heynemann brought some of Pool’s possessions from her old home at the Nieuwe Prinsengracht, and also frequently came by with food and coupons.102 She received visits from a mysterious German soldier who brought food.103 Also her distant cousin Rudi Wesselius remembers that he occasionally visited the place when he was just a child. An early recollection was how he and his mother Eva (a cousin of Pool) first had to talk with the ‘old bats’ downstairs before his mother could see Pool.104

And finally as well, van Wees introduced Pool to a catholic priest named Baks who went to see her regularly in Baarn. Although Pool was ‘an agnostic in those days, or called myself one,’105 she was deeply impressed by the underground work and bravery of this priest: ‘He forged identity cards, stole rationbooks, [and] lied to the authorities until they believed the sun was […] the moon.’106 These visits enlarged her world, and offered her much-needed distractions, all from people she barely or did not know before the war.

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Figure 3.10 Network of Rosey Pool (middle) when she was in hiding in Baarn, 19 September 1943 to 5 May 1945. The men were possibly already deported or sent to Germany for war labor. Sources: Stichting 1940-1945.

Despite everybody’s good intentions, Pool lingered into a deep depression. After several months Pool was ‘in such bad shape,’ van Wees remembered, ‘that I proposed she would stay with me for a couple of weeks in Utrecht.’ 107 Pool immediately accepted the offer. She left Baarn behind, again risked her life by traveling to Utrecht, and stayed with van Wees for a while in the city center, where he had a three-room guesthouse. There they celebrated Christmas and Pool eventually stayed until mid-January 1944. She felt so much better after this ‘sleep-over’ that the visit was repeated five more times that year, ‘each time for a period of two to four weeks,’108 until the famine of the 1944/1945 winter. It is not unthinkable that Pool occasionally strolled around the city of Utrecht, especially since

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her resistance group had provided her with a fake identity card, possibly with her fake name ‘Harriet

Tool.’ These trips gave her a small taste of what life had been like before the war.

The visits to Utrecht allowed her to flourish again. Ever since her deportation to Westerbork she had lived in an intellectual desert. Once she was ordered to clean a SS barrack. When she saw a

German magazine, she eagerly started reading. Yet when she found out that it was about ‘salads and flowers and plants’ she tossed the magazine away.109 The Nazis deprived her of many things, but not of her snobbery towards pulp magazines. And this was exactly why literature and poetry became so important to Pool during her period in hiding; she was finally able to again decide what she read. She started to work on English and French translations of works by Joost van den Vondel, William

Shakespeare, and Voltaire, most of which dealt with freedom. She wrote down some works of Emily

Dickinson by heart - ‘a good thing to have a rather reliable memory,’ she wrote110 - and with the help of van Wees and Susanne Heynemann, she even published some of these translations with clandestine presses, like the bibliophile ‘Five Pound Press’ in Amsterdam, often using her own name.111

These activities were again some tremendous risks she took. After all, she was still a wanted fugitive. Yet there were few who considered such deeds as ‘real’ resistance - including some of those publishers themselves. Many thought it was an ‘elitist waste of paper’ or at the very best ‘illegal snobbery.’112 To Pool, however, literature was essential for her emotional wellbeing. Literature kept her going. In desolate and horrific times like these, books were a window on the world but also became beacons of hope, and a way to reassure one’s individual self that the Nazis so viciously tried to destroy.

This ‘illegal snobbery’ was one of the few ways Pool could symbolically defy Nazism.113 The Nazis had taken away the love of her life, her family, her freedom, her identity, and even her name. ‘I always had a name,’ Pool later wrote. But with the Nazi occupation ‘I lost my name, received a number and was addressed as Jewess.’114 So she clung on unto those things that the Nazis could not forbid with

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legislation: an independent thought, a free mind, and a will to survive. It was a sign that she had not given up.

REAL resistance and women’s work

The ‘longest five years’115 of Pool’s life ended at last with the Liberation on 5 May 1945. It was finally over. Then again, things were just about to start. Pool would question ‘constantly’ why it all happened.

‘[I]t is very difficult to say why [the massacre] ended the lives of my parents and [...] my brother,’ she said in a BBC interview in 1962. It also puzzled her why she was still there, of all people, ‘why with a little bit of luck and a bit of pluck I came through.’116 It was indeed a combination of random coincidences or ‘luck,’ together with an astonishing boldness or ‘pluck,’ that she slipped through this disaster. In the eyes of postwar Dutch society, however, her ‘pluck’ was hardly heroic. Compared to someone like Etty Hillesum - a writer who was on the same train as her to Auschwitz (Hillesum probably even dropped by to say hello shortly before the departure117) - Pool had made some ‘selfish’ choices. Hillesum was also in close touch with Werner Stertzenbach, and he offered her to escape from the camp as well. Yet Hillesum refused and decided to go with the transport to Auschwitz, because she wanted to ‘help the helpless.’ Stertzenbach thought that was ‘naïve’ - yet ‘honorable.’118

Comparatively, Pool’s actions were far less honorable, including the copying of deportation lists and her so-called ‘escape’ from Westerbork. Pool must have felt shame, disgust, and denial, especially as the Jewish Council was widely and fiercely denounced after the war.

Pool decided to remain silent about most of her resistance work after that. She never profiled herself as a resistance fighter in a Dutch context. Partially this was because of the narrow definition of ‘resistance’ that soon became dominant. ‘Resistance?’ one friend of Pool reacted with surprise during an interview. ‘No she wasn’t in the resistance.’ When the interviewer insisted that Pool brought

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children in safety, he replied: ‘Oh yes that may be, if THAT’S what you mean, but not REAL resistance, sabotage or anything.’119 In the eyes of many Dutch people, Pool merely did ‘illegal work,’ which was somehow valued much less than ‘resistance work.’ This makes it extremely difficult to verify the bits and pieces she told along the way. It remains unsettled, for instance, how much she knew about the Holocaust. From her anti-fascist activism, her time in Berlin, and even her visits to

Camp Westerbork she should have been prepared for the worst, yet her poems display that she still hoped for the best. A book of poems she published immediately after the war was called Beperkt zicht,

‘Limited sight,’ which referred to ‘the time in which these poems originated.’ It suggests she indeed had a limited view of what was really happening.120 In general, it seems that she did realize what the dangers of persecution were, but that she could not imagine the systematic destruction of a people as a whole.

While writing this chapter I initially tried to focus on Pool’s identification with the African

American cause, as this would become so important to her after the war. However tempting her analogies of the Dutch resistance and the Underground Railroad were, I decided to leave out most of it. It might have been possible that Pool sung spirituals like Go Down Moses and Didn’t the Lord

Deliver Daniel during ‘the reading aloud of the transport lists,’ like she claimed around 1968.121 And perhaps she guided two hundred women to sing I Know Moonlight ‘with the deathtrain waiting outside our barracks,’ as she recalled in 1970.122 We will never know, however, simply because the vast majority of eyewitnesses were murdered. But Pool’s claim, that Black poetry played a central role for her during the war is unsubstantiated. The fact that she published from her hiding place three translations, none of which were by African American authors, convinced me to see most of her postwar Black/Jewish comparisons primarily as products of her increasing American commitment after the war. These memories still might be true. Above all, they tell us something about how Pool wanted to deal with these experiences afterwards. When the war was over, things were about to

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change. She had awakened from a ‘nightmare.’123 She was now awake - and alive, and decided to take her destiny in her own hands. ⌇⌇⌇

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Figure 4.1 This network shows some (first degree) contacts of Pool which are linked to their environments (second degree contacts), revealing a hypothetical (secondary) network of Pool. The colors reveal the impact of the war and the Holocaust on Pool’s broader network (n = 275). The black dots signify individuals that died because of Nazi violence or concentration camps; the red dots stand for individuals that I was unable to trace in the archives, and likely did not survive. The white dots signify people who survived the war. Created with MS Excel, Gephi 0.9.2, and edited with Gimp by author. Various sources.

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CHAPTER 4: AMSTERDAM ‘WHO’D BE INTERESTED?’

OBESITY AND TRAUMA IN POST HOLOCAUST AMSTERDAM

In May 1945 Rosey Pool resurged from her hiding place. Much had changed since her deportation to Camp Westerbork, two years earlier. She had lost many friends and family during the past years.

Holland’s laughter ‘was extinguished in the gaschambers,’ she soberingly commented two decades later.1 This bitter homecoming was perhaps worsened by the huge amount of weight she had gained.

If she survived Westerbork and went into hiding, how did she become so heavy? With so many people who were practically starving, it was as if she was physically and mentally out of place. By the end of this decade she changed places with London, where she continued her career promoting African

American poetry, traveling around the world to convey her message. The immediate postwar period was crucial in this change of course as well as her seemingly unlimited work ethic.

Of the 110,000 Dutch Jews who were deported to concentration camps, only 5,000 returned to the

Netherlands.2 Many of these survivors encountered an atmosphere that one eyewitness called ‘cold, bureaucratic, formalistic, and above all repellant’ - a ‘small Shoah,’ an additionally traumatic experience on top of the actual Holocaust itself.3 At times survivors were even met with hostility or anti-Semitism upon their return. Also Pool did not experience a warm welcome when she went back to her former home at the Nieuwe Prinsengracht. She found out that the house was now occupied by an ‘N.S.Ber’ (a Dutch fascist) who had thrown away most of her books.4 And also the city of

Amsterdam did not feel much like home either. ‘Between the ruins I look for children’s dreams,’ she wrote in one of her poems, possibly referring to her own childhood, ‘[a]nd in front of the remains of

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a house I sobbed.’ 5 Every canal and every street evoked painful memories. Not only the people of

Amsterdam, but the city itself had betrayed her.6

On a picture from this period we see Pool standing alone in a field, and, as if the camera was set to take a family picture, the void around her depicts the emptiness in her life. The majority of her prewar network, mostly in leftwing, avant-garde, as well as Jewish circles, were simply gone, killed in

Nazi death camps or shot for their resistance activities. Based on the scarce information she revealed about her prewar networks, we get a faint impression of the devastating impact of the war on her primary and secondary networks (Figure 4.1). Although it appears that a majority of her network survived, it also becomes clear that the most casualties fell among those who were closest to her: her family.

The life she had before the war was gone and it seemed she no longer wished to be reminded of it. The past was behind her, or so she told herself. It was not until 1950 that she received a final confirmation from the Red Cross that her parents and brother were dead.7 Until then she was in limbo, and looking for people who might have survived was a heartbreaking and exhausting exercise.8

Whenever she met an old acquaintance the conversation one way or another always went to ‘And where have you been during the war?’9 And this was just something she did not want to talk about.

So she focused her attention on people she met at random, rather than being on the lookout for people that she had known before 1940.

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Figure 4.2 Rosey E. Pool, ca. 1946. Source: JHM.

Someone she randomly encountered while walking on the street was Otto Frank, who immediately asked her if she wanted to read the diary of his daughter - Anne Frank. Pool later boasted

(inaccurately10) that she was ‘the second person ever to read it.’ She also claimed, years later, that she discouraged Anne Frank’s father to publish the diary because, ‘I mean, who’d [...] be interested?’11

What she did not mention was that she made an English translation of the book in 1946 or 1947, perhaps because it was never used. Otto Frank thought her translation was not good enough although he never informed Pool about his opinion. He simply avoided the issue by not responding to her letters. ‘I never told Mrs. Pool, but paid her,’ he admitted to his publisher. 12 Pool’s manuscript was sent back and forth to people to give an impression of the diary, including the writer Meyer Levin, but the manuscript should be considered lost.13 At the time the whole thing was a small bump in the road to Pool, one of those what she called insignificant ‘bread and butter’ jobs. She got rid of her papers and cleaned her desk, like she did after so many projects. After all, she carelessly remarked 109

later, ‘nobody would ever have thought that this unremarkable child would become known worldwide.’14 She quickly shifted her attention to other projects.

After a short period of recovery in Baarn and Utrecht, Pool moved back to Amsterdam. The graphic designer Susanne Heynemann, her fellow resistance fighter who had persuaded Pool not to go back to Westerbork after her ‘escape,’ offered her own attic space in Amsterdam. Through

Heynemann and with help of the other members of the Van Dien resistance group, Pool started to reestablish her life. One of the first things she did were teaching Dutch language skills to German and (formerly) stateless Jews who decided to stay in the Netherlands.15 She also contacted the Dutch

Military Government, urging that German anti-fascists should be able to safely return to Germany if they wanted to.16 As mentioned, Pool wrote down her experiences during the war in autobiographical poems which were published under the title Beperkt zicht, ‘Limited sight.’ Hardly a bestselling book,

Pool did not explore a writer’s career any further.

In the first months after the liberation she relied heavily on the networks of her anti-fascist resistance group. It was probably through these ‘comrades’ that she met the Dutch artist Nola

Hatterman, whose enthusiasm occasioned a turning point in Pool’s life. Hatterman had been a professional painter of Surinamese people living in Amsterdam. Her ex-husband was Jewish while her new partner had been active in the resistance and the underground German communist party

(KPD). It should come as no surprise that ‘there was immediately a big understanding between us,’ as Hatterman later admitted.17 Both found inspiration in Black culture and their leftist backgrounds likely also generated an ideological bonding that was quietly understood. But it was certainly their utterly personal approach that made them click. Pool told Hatterman about the time she asked school children - possibly at the GICOL, more about that later - to write poems about racial discrimination.

She saw that in their poems many imagined to be Black themselves, sometimes even writing in the

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first person. This was an epiphany to Hatterman: ‘When I heard that,’ she said, ‘I thought, my god, that is what happened to me.’18

The meeting with Hatterman was a turning point for Pool in focusing on the Black cause, as the two women were magnetically drawn towards each other. Their mutual enthusiasm created a synergy that would last until 1953 when Hatterman left for Suriname. Together they organized cultural events, Pool held recitals at a Hatterman art exhibition, and Hatterman illustrated an article that Pool wrote about the ‘art of the negro’ in the former resistance newspaper Vrij Nederland.

Hatterman also made illustrations next to poetry that Pool translated from the American poets James

Weldon Johnson and Countee Cullen19 - a sign of Pool’s deepening interest for the Black cause, in which Hatterman played a crucial role. Both women inspired each other’s work and deepened their understanding of their joined interest for the oppressed and Black artists. More importantly, they shared ideas on how to communicate their passion to the outside world.

In April 1948 the two women joined forces at an art exhibition of Hatterman in the city of

Arnhem. Hatterman exhibited drawings ‘with and about Negroes,’ while Pool recited poems by

African Americans that one journalist found ‘moving in their simplicity.’ Although attendance was low, he saw it as a significant event: ‘What Mrs. Harriet Beecker [sic] Stowe did in her book “Uncle

Tom’s Cabin,” two voluntary ambassadresses of the black race try to do the same in our time, namely

Rosey Pool and Nola Hatterman.’20 This was an apt observation, because Pool and Hatterman were certainly not the first ‘voluntary ambassadresses’ or patrons of the Black cause. There had been white women before who went on the barricade for Blacks, often as a moral compass to society and above all as ‘ladies.’21 Pool’s contact with Hatterman placed her in that tradition, while this contact also enabled her to define her own public identity.

Pool once said that she ‘did not know one single negro’ before the war,22 but that was about to change after 1945. It was also probably through Hatterman that she met many Surinamese people 111

living in Amsterdam, including the anti-colonial activist and CPUSA founder Otto Huiswoud [also:

Huiswood] and his American wife Hermie Dumont, who had worked for the NAACP back in the

1920s.23 Although Pool was clearly fond of Hatterman, she disapproved of her ‘almost complete identification’ with the Black race, which she found ‘absurd’ and which could only lead to ‘a psychological “impasse.”’24 Pool rather preferred to keep a distance. But like Hatterman, her activism also started to become a fulltime profession. Her old life lay in ruins, but her new life had just started.

A ‘consciously living Jewess’ on the run from herself

Pool also started working as a teacher of English at the GICOL, the ‘Municipal Catch-Up Course for Pupils in Hiding.’ Although this was not a specifically Jewish school, most of the pupils as well as the staff were Jewish. Actually, Pool was rather ambiguous about her Jewish background throughout her life. At times she diminished it to an insignificant element of her family’s past, while on other occasions it became the center of her existence. Yet one of her former GICOL pupils, Meijer van der

Sluis, described Pool as a ‘consciously living Jewess.’25 Pool was redefining herself and this new world she was living in.

The GICOL was also the first school where she took her passion for African American poetry into the classroom. Many students agreed she was not your everyday type of teacher with her

‘revolutionary’ teaching methods.26 Especially her use of African American spirituals were unconventional - yet highly appreciated. She once invited the famous actress Enny Mols-de Leeuwe to the school to recite poems by Langston Hughes and Countee Cullen.27 Such events and Pool’s passionate stories about African American poetry and literature were an inspiration and comfort to the students, most of whom had just survived the Holocaust and had almost nobody. Apart from teaching, this school had a significant underlying goal: to make these youngsters feel human again.

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Pool was particularly successful in empowering these pupils. ‘She [was] more a sort of therapist than a teacher of English,’ van der Sluis later remarked.28

Although Pool’s interest for the Black cause was not specifically Jewish, her zest to help others and relentless fight against injustice perhaps was. It seems that after 1945 Pool certainly embraced tikkun olam, a concept in Judaism that literally means ‘healing the world.’29 Although Pool never used that term, her actions were certainly in line with this ideal and Pool most eagerly went about to make the world a better place. Pool’s postwar list of publications shows an unprecedented work ethic. Heartbroken but determined to live life to the fullest, she held poetry recitals, translated literature, and compiled poetry anthologies, while also working as a teacher. Yet in her efforts to heal others she ignored one person: herself. Perhaps as an attempt to avoid dealing with her recent trauma, she worked almost day and night on the Black cause and African American in particular.

Figure 4.3 All teachers of the GICOL, together with two children, in front of the train station in Baarn, 10 July 1947. Rosey Pool is the fourth adult standing from the left. Source: Van Rijsdijk, Reünie op papier 37. 113

A transatlantic Black-Jewish alliance

Simultaneously, Pool was working on an anthology of African American poetry, and she directly contacted American writers to gather material. Between 1945 and 1948 she corresponded with

Melvin Tolson, Richard Wright, Ann Petry, and Langston Hughes - all African American writers that are now well-known names, but were then quite obscure, especially in Europe. In these letters she used her own life story to explain her view on interracial solidarity. She asked Tolson for example for some publications because ‘nearly all the books I ever possessed on the subject were taken by the

Germans.’30 To Hughes she wrote that she knew what persecution, discrimination, and ‘modern slavery’ meant as she herself was ‘one of the millions that were put into concentration camps by the

Germans.’31

Dutch postwar society often found such comparisons ‘sentimental’ or an ahistorical over- identification. But among these African American writers, who were less burdened with the specific details of the recent Nazi occupation, she found a willing ear. Her requests fitted in perfectly with the

‘Double V’ campaign that dominated African American newspapers, which argued that the victory over fascism in Europe should be continued with a victory over Jim Crow at home.32 Perhaps Pool’s letters were also placed in a broader tradition of what was called the ‘Black-Jewish alliance,’ the idea that African Americans and Jews shared a historical bond and should support each other, a popular idea before and after the war.33 These new friends and her transatlantic letters served as Pool’s introduction in what would become an extensive American but also transnational Black Atlantic network.

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Figure 4.4 International correspondence of Rosey Pool with American authors between 1945-1949. The light gray lines depict back and forth correspondence; the dark gray line did not respond to Pool’s letter according to the archives. Visualized with VennMaker 2.0.0. and edited with Gimp by author. Various sources.

On the other side of the Atlantic Ocean Pool found encouragement and warmth. The poet and educator Melvin Tolson wrote that he was ‘very much interested’ in her poetry anthology and thought it was ‘a fine contribution to our One World.’34 Actually, of the at least four African American poets she approached, three sent back material to her, such as poems, clippings, and books. Langston

Hughes was one of the most generous of all. Perhaps it was the subtle namedropping of the Dutch writer Jef Last in her first letters, a mutual acquaintance who had translated Hughes’s work back in the 1930s (see also chapter 10). This was a sign that Pool and Hughes were part of a similar cultural vanguard that was left-oriented, and whose members were now forced to define their public presences as the Cold War arose. The rhetoric of the Old Left had had its day, but the old networks and international kinship that came with it did not. Hughes immediately ordered his secretary to send books across the ocean and poems from Black WWII veterans from the Pittsburgh Courier between

1945 and 1946.

Pool was pleasantly surprised by the countless poems that compared the Southern ‘senseless traditions’ with the ‘Nazi gloom’ and the ‘anti-ism’ that fueled the late war.35 One poem that made a

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particular impression, however, was written by a white woman from Georgia, who thought it was odd that Americans liked to point fingers to Hitler for his ‘killing, rape and torture of the Jews,’ while also justifying the ‘Segregation, Discrimination, [and] Hatred’ at home, in ‘a land where - “All men are created equal.”’ 36 Pool treasured all these in neatly arranged scrapbooks, and together with the other materials that these writers sent her, Pool built up an extensive library (see also appendix ‘The Library of Rosey Pool’). One eyewitness recalled how amazed he was when he first came to Pool’s home, and got to see books from Langston Hughes and works like Countee Cullen’s Caroling Dusk - ‘material which I only knew about by hearsay […] - way back in 1947.’37 Within a matter of a few months,

Pool had become a connoisseur with a growing reputation in Amsterdam and beyond.

I, too, am America

The timing for Pool’s new interest was perfect. Despite anti-Semitic upsurges, the Dutch came to see themselves as tolerant and anti-racist,38 and Black Americans were seen as a group that had suffered

‘as well.’ But Pool wanted to go much further than this: she also wanted to make a Jim Crow/Nazi

Germany analogy in order to condemn the racism of the past years but also that of the present, not only in the United States but also at home in Holland. Pool did not think that the Dutch were so tolerant as they believed themselves to be. To Pool it was obvious - Nazi Germany and Jim Crow were examples of the same ‘race madness,’ and the Dutch were infected by this disease as well and the virus was still far from gone. She had seen the passivity of the Dutch during the deportations. And she thought it was not indifference that was worst, but actually silent consent to these actions. Since words as ‘racism’ or ‘Holocaust’ were not yet in use, and as Pool had to be careful not to offend her audiences, she danced around the issue with great creativity. ‘[T]he race-madness that went over

Europe,’ she wrote in an introductory letter to Melvin Tolson in 1946, ‘has, alas, not died with nayism

[sic, Nazism].’39 116

However, the suggestion that the Dutch were somehow partly responsible for the Holocaust still created great opposition in the Netherlands. When she was preparing her first anthology of

African American poetry in 1945,40 negotiations with the publisher Querido failed after the (Jewish) editor demanded that the introduction had to be rewritten ‘without drawing parallels between the sorrow of jews and negroes.’41 Pool was deeply offended and complained to Langston Hughes that they found her approach too direct and ‘aggressive.’42 However, Pool was also pragmatic, and she decided to drop the comparison and focus solely on the African American situation. To Richard

Wright she wrote that she consciously wanted to address the ‘terrible inheritage’ [sic] from Nazism in the Netherlands ‘by the example of a people far-away’ - African Americans. In this way she could make her point without insulting her Dutch audience: ‘It never hurts so much when you see how somebody else cuts himself in the hand,’ she said, translating a Dutch proverb in English.43 Although the anthology with Querido never came about, Pool had certainly learned her lesson: in her future

Dutch endeavors she made the Black/Jewish argument implicit instead of explicit.

In mid-October 1945 she arranged a poetry recital program named ‘I too am America’ (after a poem by Langston Hughes) at the Concertgebouw, at an event of the underground paper De Vrije

Katheder. The African American cause was in line with the Dutch Zeitgeist, as the Dutch had ‘also’ faced a vicious oppressor.44 This was probably also the reason why the program was in such high demand that it was repeated five times in 1945 alone, with a reprise in 1948. Among the poets who were recited were classic Harlem Renaissance authors like Claude McKay, Waring Cuney, Countee

Cullen, James Weldon Johnson, and of course Langston Hughes. Similar to Nola Hatterman’s approach, the program bore a primitivist and orientalist stamp. The accompanying apinti drums by

Surinamese artists were interpreted by one reviewer as a ‘quivering to the African motherland.’45 All reporters fully agreed that an ‘injustice’ was being done to Black Americans, but only the former resistance newspaper Het Parool remarked that the American discrimination ‘could only be imagined 117

by us’ through the signs ‘forbidden for Jews’ from the occupation.46 Tellingly, the Germans were blamed for those signs, and not on ‘us,’ the Dutch. Such discrimination was resented as occurring outside the Dutch tradition, yet within the Dutch remembrance. Pool’s mission to force the Dutch into self-reflection was a tough job.

Figure 4.5 Program of I too am America, De Vrije Kathederclub, Amsterdam, 13 and 14 October 1945. Source: Sussex.

On top of this Dutch reluctance to face up to its ugly past there was another challenge, namely to make this argument sound not too leftist. Although the Soviets had also liberated Europe, communism had rapidly become suspicious again in Dutch society.47 The Americans were ‘good’ - communists were ‘wrong.’ The African American struggle for equality had already been a theme in

Popular Front movements before the war: Pool simply took those ideas and stripped them of their 118

‘isms.’ She no longer used the words ‘negro proletariat’ or ‘imperialism,’ but the ideas remained largely the same. Her tacit references to Communism were perhaps accepted or at least tolerated in the somewhat cosmopolitan Amsterdam, but in provincial areas this was certainly not the case. When

Pool repeated the program in Dordrecht one critic remarked that Pool mentioned the Philadelphia

Transit Strike of 1944, yet ‘Rosey Pool forgot to mention that the largest part of those harbor laborers were... communists!’48 Although this was not true, it does show how carefully Pool had to choose her words to get her message across.

A heavy burden

Starting in 1946 Pool almost frantically started publishing about African American culture and literature, especially in former resistance papers such as Vrij Nederland and J.M. (‘Je maintiendrai,’ I will maintain). Her arguments were consistent and straightforward, saying that Black Americans were limited by ‘race madness, social prejudices, and neglect,’ but that these things paradoxically also led that an ‘intense and soulful’ artistic inspiration.49 Occasionally her criticism was fiercer and went against the US as the ‘land of the free,’ for instance when describing Jim Crow laws as the ‘dark side of democracy,’ which was an unacceptable hypocrisy.50 Such statements were not at all controversial to Dutch listeners: most felt a love-hate relationship with ‘America,’ seeing it both as a promised land as well as the cradle of ‘vulgar mass culture.’51

It was a game changer for Pool to now focus on the United States. Her whole life before the war had centered around Germany - the center of civilization. Although Pool was still ‘fond of the german language,’ and she would speak German on a daily basis with her future life partner Isa

Isenburg. Yet she was never able to travel to Germany ‘just for pleasure’ ever again.52 Pool only returned once to Germany, in 1948, ‘for the first and only time after 1945,’ she wrote.53 In the

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American Zone she was hired as an advisor on how to de-Nazify the German education system and to re-educate its teachers.54 But when she stood one morning outside the railway station in Frankfurt she had a relapse while she saw the commuters:

To me every single one wore an invisible uniform. I heard myself asking myself: who of you were

my prison guards and torturers, who of you pressed the button of the gas-chamber in which my

parents were murdered, who of you shot my brother at Buna [Monowitz-Buna or Auschwitz III]

where he was a slave-labourer… I had to fight down the strongest urge to take the next train

back, home.55

The Nazi era had forever smeared Germany for Pool. Not only did she want to have a different focus than Germany - she simply needed to. And that focus became the US.

Soon a central part of Pool’s narrative became her story of how she ‘discovered’ African

American poetry. She dated that interest back to 1925, when she had just turned twenty years old and was a student at the University of Amsterdam. ‘I went to the University library and flipped through the card-index,’ she recalled, ‘there was nothing under “A,” American poetry.’ So she proceeded to ‘B’ and then to ‘C,’ where she saw that there was a book called Color from Countee Cullen, a Black

American writer. ‘When I asked for it, the book fell open at the poem Incident,’ she said.56 The poem hit her like a ‘sledgehammer,’57 she would tell countless times to audiences all across the world. In the poem a young Black boy smiles at a young white boy, but the latter pokes out his tongue and calls him ‘Nigger.’ Pool was deeply moved by the short but powerful poem. Surprisingly, this was not because of her Jewish background, she said - it struck her because she had been ‘an exceptionally fat child.’58 She believed ironically that her weight made her receptive to the suffering of others: ‘My own childhood experiences opened the door to the understanding of my darker brethren,’ she explained.59

120 Figure 4.6 Pool, visibly overweight, sitting behind her desk, probably at Paletstraat 14, Amsterdam, around 1947. On the wall hangs a drawing that is definitely from Nola Hatterman. Source: JHM.

In reality there is little evidence that Pool’s passion for Black poetry dated back to the 1920s.

Although some Amsterdam libraries owned works by Countee Cullen by 1930,60 it is unclear but rather unlikely that the book Color was available in the year 1925, the year it was published. Pool did, however, mention Color in a letter shortly after the war, in the summer of 1945.61 It thus seems that the year ‘1945’ was replaced by ‘1925’ in her recollections. It is also quite possible that antedating her experience was an inventive way to circumvent any accusation of being a communist, as the story was personal and non-political. Perhaps she did know Countee Cullen’s poetry before the war, but it got

121 a whole new meaning after it. Part of her identification was that she had gained an enormous amount of weight when in hiding. Despite the food shortages and the 1944 ‘Hunger Winter’ she was bigger than ever, which visibly showed. Her weight remained a life-long struggle that she blamed on a never- ending appetite, which she thought was typically Jewish,62 but also on biological reasons, mainly ‘a faulty link’ in her metabolism.63 It remains puzzling why she gained so much weight, especially in such times of austerity. Perhaps it was her forced idleness, perhaps it were her severe depressions, which are linked to overeating.64 Something was off, so much was clear.

Figures 4.6 to 4.10 Rosey Pool’s weight throughout the years.

Ca. 1908: Rosey Ca. 1926 Pool as Ca. 1947: Pool 1962: Pool around 1967: After Pool at the age of a student, around 42 years 57 years old. a crash diet, three. twenty years old. old. 62.

Her size made her an easy target in an post war society that was remorseless. How could one survive the war in hiding but become so heavy (morbid obese, we would now say)? Did she perhaps betray her family for food? Did she stay in some kind of luxurious concentration camp? Or did she perhaps collaborate with the Germans? These are just some hypothetical questions that she might have encountered, which she likely heard since postwar Dutch society showed not only an increased anti-Semitism, but also a great insensitivity and ignorance towards survivors.65 Pool’s physical appearance was the opposite of the (emotional) starvation she experienced during the war. Like in her

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childhood she again felt excluded and left out. This period was crucial as it brought back her original trauma at an all-time low of her life, making it unable to process her suffering.66

Just how traumatic the postwar period was reveals how she links her weight problem to her activism, as she made her body a part of her argument: because she was ‘an exceptionally fat child,’ she reflected later on, ‘my life has been spent mostly with black writing, black thought, [and] black people.’67 Such a comparison and identification might seem inappropriate and insensitive to contemporary readers. Is it possible to compare obesity to skin color? However, being overweight was not really a choice to Pool and despite her many diets she never got rid of it. Still, obesity was frowned upon and was generally seen as a failure of will.68 One acquaintance even bluntly remarked that Pool’s appearance made her look less intelligent.69 Although this still does not compare to the racism African

Americans faced, it is true that throughout her life Pool had to face moral judgements and prejudices.

In her ‘conversion narrative’ on how she became so passionate about African American literature, the Holocaust was surprisingly absent - another result of the postwar period. Holocaust survivors faced a ‘conspiracy of silence.’ People from ‘outside’ were reluctant or unable to listen to what victims had experienced, so survivors were forced to keep their traumatic stories to themselves.

So Pool decided to tell something else. Like with other genocide survivors, she used another one’s dramatic story to replace the sorrow and pain she could or did not want to talk about, as a metanarrative of her own life.70 She repeated the story so often that it came to function as a CV: her personal correspondence with Countee Cullen and Langston Hughes became more important than the PhD she claimed to have earned on this topic.

The serendipitous story of her encounter with Countee Cullen’s poetry also became the perfect explanation why a white, European woman was so deeply involved in the African American struggle. Additionally, the conversion narrative71 gave her the possibility to take back control over her own life. Pool was finally in charge again over her life plot. It was she and not others who decided 123

what or who she was. She even did that rewriting quite literally. She largely made up that she corresponded with African American authors back in the 1920s. She would even go as far as to quote from letters that other people wrote to Countee Cullen, willingly plagiarizing in order to create historical evidence upon which she built her new life.72 She would make sure that the past would not haunt the present or future.

The thin line between passion and obsession

The year 1945 marked the beginning of a new life for Rosey Pool. The past was dead to her, and she tried hard to ignore every part of it. This period marked a distancing from her focus on the labor class, towards the Black cause, a choice that she defended in largely non-political terms although we cannot see it as being divorced from the Cold War. In this process she occasionally displayed dissociative traits, for instance when in a radio show she said that she and ‘her husband’ worried about ‘their children.’73 This was perhaps meant metaphorically,74 but still as far off from the truth as one could be. Perhaps the most bizarre moment was when she and Ursel ‘Isa’ Isenburg - her future life partner

- went on a holiday through the Netherlands in the summer of 1947. Pool wrote below a picture of the Magere Brug in Amsterdam: ‘the thin bridge giving entrance to the former Jewish centre.’75 Just across that bridge was the Nieuwe Prinsengracht, the street where she and her parents had lived a few years before. The Jewish Quarter now became a distant memory of which she collected postcards as souvenir. The year 1945 became a ‘year zero’ for Pool and it felt as if she had returned from the dead.

If any good could come out of the war, it was that she could start anew. No longer did she have to drag the burden of her past behind her (a failed marriage, unfinished PhD, to name a few). Like many other socialists and humanitarians, Pool turned to ‘other’ oppressed peoples.76

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Rosey Pool’s resilience after the war went hand in hand with an unprecedented work ethic.

Friends were amazed that she only needed four hours of sleep daily,77 and that she seemed to work the other twenty hours. All this extraordinary activity and bustling ambition was generated both by her new found passion that gave an unbound energy, but also by the restless feeling that she had to accomplish something important. As many Holocaust survivors suffered from insomnia or nightmares,78 Pool’s four-hour night rest was perhaps also caused by invasive thoughts caused by her trauma. Occasionally Pool would write about her flashbacks: frightening memories intruded her brain and brought her back to the war.79 She also had dark thoughts, ‘a scorching hot hatred’ when her mind drifted away about what possibly had happened to her mother.80 There thus was a thin line between a bustling ambition and an unhealthy compulsion. Anyhow, work became a way to banish her thoughts. She could become obsessive about Black poetry, doing the work that would otherwise require multiple employees. ‘[She] actually was two, three different people at once,’ her friend, the

Dutch television presenter, Albert Mol remarked.81 Black poetry became the perfect vehicle to work through her own troubling experience, and distract herself from her invasive thoughts in the process.

As long as she would be busy, she did not have to think. The upcoming years, after she had turned forty, became the busiest of her life. ⌇⌇⌇

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Figure 5.1 Nigerian sculptor Justus D. Akeredolu with his family, and Rosey Pool in the background. Balcony 23a Highpoint, London, undated [ca. 1960s]. Source: Private archive Rudi Wesselius.

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CHAPTER 5: LONDON ‘23A PARADISE,’ A BLACK ATLANTIC SALON

STIMULATING AFRICAN AMERICAN POETRY FROM LONDON

Pool left Amsterdam behind in the late 1940s and relocated to London. Soon her small home at 23a

Highpoint became an open house of the Black Atlantic, with famous visitors like Langston Hughes,

W.E.B. Du Bois, Earle Hyman, Alvin Ailey, Margaret Burroughs, and NAACP president Arthur

Spingarn. These visits were linked to the poetry collections Pool edited, rare and valuable publications at a time when there was little interest in African American poetry. With these publications and through her network, Pool did everything in her power to stimulate African

American poetry from afar. ‘[F]rom her beautiful apartment in Highgate to the rural corners of

Alabama,’ one poet eloquently wrote, Pool was ‘aiding, teaching, [and] encouraging young black students to write.’1 Yet, through her selection of poetry and by supervising these poets, her anthologies are also a reflection of Pool’s own limited vision of African American poetry.

The reason Pool ended up in London was because she had begun to feel like a stranger in Amsterdam after the war. Luckily, she found another city nearby where she could start over and where she felt at home almost instantly: ‘London has gained warmth through the presence of decolonized immigrants,’ she wrote.2 After a couple of short visits, Pool migrated to England in 1949, where she moved in with

Ursel (‘Isa’) Isenburg (1901-1987), a friend from her Berlin days. Isenburg was a German Jewish radiologist, who had left Berlin in 1933 and ended up in London via Paris in 1936, together with her mother and sister. ‘She was a gaunt, Prussian lady, brusque and angular,’ one friend recalled, ‘tailored suits, short hair, and, in all matters, skeptical.’3

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Isenburg owned a small one-bedroom apartment in the north of London that used to be a servant’s home. It was only 45 square meters, and soon every spare inch was filled with books and memorabilia. It was not quite the ‘penthouse’ that Pool later liked to brag about. The apartment, on top of a seven-floor modernist building,4 nevertheless offered a breathtaking view both to the east and to the west of the burgeoning metropolis. The friendship between Pool and Isenburg gradually developed into a love affair, albeit an ambiguous one: Pool described Isenburg as her ‘best friend and house-mate,’5 and only occasionally as her vriendin6 [female friend or girlfriend]. Apparently, they always kept their separate rooms, with Pool sleeping in the bed room, and Isenburg on the living room couch.7

Figure 5.2 Ursel ‘Isa’ Isenburg (left) and Rosey Pool on the balcony of their home at Highpoint, London, late 1960s. Source: JHM.

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Figure 5.3 The 2017 floorplan of 23a Highpoint, London. What is now the walk-in wardrobe used to be the small entrance hall. The apartment is currently merged with the apartment below, and listed as 23 Highpoint. Source: Website Glentree Estates.

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They also kept their professional lives separate. Isenburg had a career at London’s Royal Free

Hospital, while Pool set out to become an ‘expert of Negro literature.’8 As soon as Pool had settled in

London she vigorously went about achieving this goal, going to places like the West African Arts

Club and the International Language Club in Croydon; hotspots with mixed metropolitan crowds from all over the globe, with people from Burma, Demerary, and the Gold Coast.9 London became a creative and postcolonial magnet, attracting people from Britain’s former and still existing colonies.

Yet many of those who visited the place were shocked by what Britons euphemistically called the

‘colour bar.’ It was actually a stripped-down version of American segregation.10 Many had problems finding accommodation or venues that welcomed non-whites. This unwelcoming atmosphere rapidly united people of color, turning London into a center of a global Black awareness.11

Pool was nevertheless determined to be a part of it. Simply by going to theater shows with all-Black casts and hanging around afterwards, Pool became acquainted with the Caribbean singer/actor Edric Connor, the American but London-based singer Elisabeth Welch, the British actress Cleo Laine, the African American and soon-to-be London-based singer Muriel Smith and the African American actress/playwright Vinnette Carroll. With her vast knowledge of Black culture,

Pool bridged the divide with Black artists and writers, whether they came from the US, the Caribbean, or Africa. Many recalled her talent to memorize poems, plays, and even entire operas.12 Gordon Heath remembered the time he met Pool backstage at Wyndham’s Theatre in 1947, after a performance of the ‘race play’ Deep Are the Roots. He was astonished by her in-depth knowledge. ‘How did this roly- poly Dutch lady,’ condescendingly referring to her size, ‘who had never set foot in America come by her firmly-held opinions, her acute perceptions, her formidable intuitions, her informed passions?’13

They talked for hours about Black theater, poetry, and art, continuing their conversation that night at Pool’s house afterwards.

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From the early fifties onwards, Pool and Isenburg organized dinner parties at their house.

They even had a tiny spare room on the ground floor, a former servant’s room that Pool now offered to friends and travelers alike. Both transformed their place into a ‘salon’ with guests dropping in at every hour of the day. Most of her guests came from the London area, but Americans were a close second. The first thing most visitors would do was to ogle Pool’s small library, and her collection never failed to impress. With classics books from Sojourner Truth and Booker T. Washington,

Harlem Renaissance writers like Melvin Tolson and Claude McKay, and more contemporary writers such as Gwendolyn Brooks and James Baldwin, her bookshelves took away any doubts that her white skin might have raised. To visiting African Americans 23a Highpoint felt like a homecoming, many of whom described it as ‘a second home’ or even ‘23a Paradise.’14 Langston Hughes described Pool lovingly but also in obsolete terms - as ‘a Dutch bonbon,’15 meaning: white on the outside, but Black on the inside. With her open house, contacts, and reputation, Pool thus soon became an intermediary for Black Londoners and Black visitors alike.

131 Figures 5.4 to 5.11 Some visitors to London: 5.4 Arthur Spingarn (USA), Andrew Salkey (Jamaica), and Barry Reckord (Jamaica), May 1962; 5.5 W.E.B. Du Bois (USA), 1959 or 1961; 5.6 Arthur Spingarn (USA) with Erroll John (Trinidad), undated; 5.7 Beryl McBurnie (Trinidad), undated; 5.8 Rosey Pool, Erica Kops with child, Bernard Kops (UK), June 1958; 5.9 Katie & Karine Oruwari (Ibadan, Nigeria), together with Isa Isenburg, ca. August 1968; 5.10 Owen Dodson (USA), undated; 5.11 Rosey Pool and Madeline Bell at Paul Breman’s home at Wedderburn Road, August 1962. Sources: Private archive Rudi Wesselius and Sussex. 132

While Pool had been a (radical) socialist in the years before the war and her resistance group against the Nazis consisted of many (party) communists, she was quiet about this Old Left past, especially when the Cold War appeared. She even seemed a bit conservative in her public appearances.

Yet the genuine radical could easily reappear, depending on who dared to scratch the surface or to knock on her door. Pool and Isenburg’s ‘salon’ attracted many leftwing activists, writers and actors, some white, some Jewish, some Black. There was an uncanny resemblance between the famous Paris salon of art collectors Gertrude Stein and Alice B. Toklas of the 1920s and 1930s. Pool and Isenburg were also Jewish, they were also partners, and they also lived in a self-chosen exile. Some guests even literally compared them to this illustrious lesbian couple: ‘She [Isenburg] was the vertical one against

Rosey’s spherical spontaneity - the Toklas to Pool’s literary Stein persona,’ Gordon Heath argued.16

And like the Stein salon, the personal was political at 23a Highpoint, and it was no coincidence that many ‘closet gays’ came by, including the already mentioned Langston Hughes, Earle

Hyman, and Gordon Heath, but also the poet and playwright Owen Dodson - all African Americans

- as well as the writer Jef Last and actor Albert Mol, both Dutch. Many visitors faced a double burden of disadvantaged sexual and racial identities, much like Pool and Isenburg themselves, and this shared intersectional bond seemed instrumental in creating mutual understanding and solidarity, especially as the Cold War raged on outside. Communists, homosexuals, and Blacks were equally targeted during the 1950s, and it is not a coincidence that this salon became a sanctuary that attracted so many individuals from those marginalized groups. In short, 23a Highpoint was open to people that were

‘different,’ and here they were united by their ‘otherness.’ And, as it turned out, meeting likeminded people could turn personal dismay into activism or desire for change.

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Black and Unknown Bards

Initially Pool acted as an intermediary, acting merely behind the scenes. She briefly worked as a talent scout for a Dutch copyright company called SEBA (later renamed Buma Stemra).17 Yet she had bigger plans. The idea of publishing a Black poetry anthology had lingered in her mind as early as

1945. Back then she had offered a collection of African American poetry to the Dutch publisher

Querido, which rejected it because it included too many ‘simple verses’ that were ‘soaked in a feeling of social injustice.’18 But this was exactly what Pool had in mind: she carefully selected poetry that explained injustices in an accessible and compelling way, and she chose poems with easy rhymes that would make them easy to memorize.

It is apparent that her literary taste was deeply influenced by interwar idealism of Dutch socialists who celebrated ‘labor poetry.’ This form of poetry was able to express grand ideas into concise verses, and could bring theory-laden ideology to the masses. Her interest in the African

American cause likewise stemmed from that period, a cause that was often used by communists to exemplify the wrongs and hypocrisy of American capitalism.19 Pool never lost this approach and that interest in the African American cause, even during the 1950s when interest in African American poetry hit an ultimate low, both in Europe and the US alike.20 Pool got through this period by juggling various jobs. She translated radio dramas for Dutch radio, wrote biographies for young adults about

Frédéric Chopin and George Gershwin, and taught Dutch evening classes at London’s Holborn

College of Languages. By 1953, however, most of her time was consumed by ‘Allways Travel Service,’ a travel agency that she ran together with Isenburg, where Pool made travel arrangements and occasionally acted as a tour guide. Yet even then she never stopped writing about African American literature, poetry, and social issues, and frequently about African and Caribbean literature as well.

Black art and literature clearly remained her one and true passion. By the end of the decade the tide

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finally seemed to turn in her favor. The Montgomery Bus Boycott (1955-56) and the desegregation crisis in Little Rock, Arkansas (1957), generated a worldwide interest for the African American Civil

Rights struggle. So, she revived the idea of an all-Black poetry collection.

After several rejections from Dutch publishers, Pool started looking for possibilities in her adopted home country. Pool found an ally in Erica Marx, a Jewish woman who fled Germany in the

1930s. From her new English home town in Aldington, Kent, Marx founded the Hand and Flower

Press with one single goal: to produce well-printed books with fine poetry.21 Marx’s first encounter with Black poetry was rather coincidental, when she met Eric Walrond. This Afro-Caribbean writer had had his share of fame in the 1920s during the Harlem Renaissance, but things went downhill after that. By the time he moved to England in the 1930s, he wound up being a jack of all trades but rarely did anything that was related to literary writing. It was through the activist and heiress Nancy

Cunard that he was introduced to Erica Marx, and that a comeback loomed. Together they came up with the idea to bring ‘Negro poetry’ to British audiences with a theater evening and Walrond got a free hand to make a selection. Unfortunately, through financial problems and his deteriorating health,

Walrond was unable to complete the task. So, Marx brought in Rosey Pool as an additional coordinator for the event.22

Pool had treasured Walrond’s classic novel Tropic Death (1926) for a long time23 and she was thrilled to work together with this Harlem Renaissance cult hero. She embraced the project wholeheartedly, but also made some swift and fundamental changes, and, perhaps anticipating a larger public, narrowing the focus to American poetry, using much of the material of her original 1945 collection, and also dropping all the Caribbean and African works that Walrond had gathered. The result, a performance of Black and Unknown Bards at the small but charming Royal Court Theatre in

London in October 1958, was so well received that the selection was printed with Marx’s Hand and

Flower Press. Black and Unknown Bards (1958) was the beginning of several other anthologies edited

135 by Pool, published in England and finally in the Netherlands as well: Ik zag hoe zwart ik was [I Saw

How Black I Was] (1958), Beyond the Blues (1962), and Ik ben de Nieuwe Neger [I am the New Negro]

(1965). In hindsight these were early examples of the renewed interest in African American poetry, and a precursor of the Black Arts Movement of the 1970s.

Many of these anthologies featured up-and-coming poets, for instance Audre Lorde, Amiri

Baraka [formerly known as LeRoi Jones], Margaret Danner, and Dudley Randall, whom people had barely heard of on both sides of the Atlantic. For many poets it was the first time their work appeared in a book, which was somehow valued much higher and was deemed as more esteemed than magazine and journal publication. Moreover, this inclusion occurred often years before they were finally able to publish in the United States itself. Some poets were suggested to Pool by Langston

Hughes, others were ‘discovered’ by Pool herself during her travels. The styles and topics varied, but all poets had in common that they were Americans of African descent. The choice for all-Black anthologies was part of a mission, Pool explained in the late 1960s:

I’ve been asked so often: why do you publish segregated anthologies [...]. My answer: I’ll quit as

soon as Negro poets who are Americans will find fair representation in anthologies of American

verse and fair publication opportunities if their talent deserves it. No matter what they write

about.24

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Figure 5.12 Eric Walrond and Rosey E. Pool (eds.), Black and Unknown Bards: A Collection of Negro Poetry (Aldington, Kent: Hand and Flower Press 1958); Figure 5.13 Rosey E. Pool and Paul Breman (eds.), Ik zag hoe zwart ik was. Poëzie van Noordamerikaanse negers. Een tweetalige bloemlezing van Rosey E. Pool en Paul Breman (Den Haag, Bert Bakker / Daamen N.V. 1958); Figure 5.14 Rosey Pool, Beyond the Blues. New Poems by American Negroes (Lympne, Kent: The Hand and Flower Press 1962); Figure 5.15 Rosey Pool, with an introduction by Jan Willem Schulte Nordholt, Ik ben de Nieuwe Neger (The Hague: Bert Bakker / Daamen 1965).

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However, it did matter what these poets wrote about. Her selection actually reveals as much about Pool herself as they do about the contemporary Black poets she included. In a 1966 interview

Pool explained that the titles of her anthologies that appeared between 1958 and 1965 reflected the emancipation of African American poets in this period, but reflected changes in her own perception of Black writers as well.25 At first, they were Black and Unknown Bards (1958), ready to be admired, she explained. This celebration of Blackness was often cloaked in primitivism. One poem from the young poet Leslie M. Collins for example said:

When you cry,

Do you think of Africa —

Blue nights and casual canzonets,

Creole girl?26

The general idea that this poem espoused seemed to be that African Americans were to be pitied, but also that they supposedly had a more direct, primal contact with nature than whites did. After Black and Unknown Bards, Pool edited Ik zag hoe zwart ik was (1958). The ‘I’ perspective in the Dutch title signals a shift towards a Black perspective, and also that Blacks had become aware of themselves as well as of the hatred and pity that lay hidden in white gazes. The young writer Calvin Hernton addresses this exactly in his poem ‘The Distant Drum’:

I am not a metaphor or symbol.

This you hear is not the wind in the trees,

nor a cat being maimed in the street.

It is I being maimed in the street.27

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Poems like these were early beginnings of Black consciousness as well as the reclaiming of power.

Four years later Pool concluded that African American writers were Beyond the Blues (1962) - meaning that they were past melancholy and self-pity. This collection showcased a selection of poets that asserted a newly found self-esteem and frivolous confidence without too much despair. The activist

Julian Bond unmistakably showed a humorous approach in a poem that echoed a recent Ray Charles hit:

Look at that gal shake that thing...

We cannot all be Martin Luther King.28

Pool’s publication was undeniably inspired by her recent visits to the US, where she had scouted for new talents, both in her classes as well as in pamphlets and movement publications. Another poem by Julian Bond, for instance, was previously published in the SNCC journal Student Voice.29 But the real shift only came in the mid-1960s with Pool’s anthology Ik ben de Nieuwe Neger (1965), in which more militant voices dominated, again emphasizing personal, autobiographical experiences captured in verse. This was partly because Pool came to see African American poetry as ‘protest poetry.’ Her previous Black/Jewish comparisons came into fruition with this publication and on the cover she literally spelled out that the book focused on verzetspoëzie, ‘resistance poetry.’ Her use of the word verzet was an unambiguous reference to resistance against the Nazis during the Second World War.30

This was partly a conscious strategy to give more gravitas to the African American freedom struggle, and also to present these barely known authors as significant and authoritative actors of opposition to brutal regimes. Some poems were outspokenly confrontational, like one poem by Naomi Long

Madgett which she had written after Pool’s visit to Alabama:

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They said, ‘Wait,’ and I waited.

For a hundred years I waited ...

And some said, ‘Later.’

And some said, ‘Never.’31

The willingness of these authors to start a revolution is self-evident, and Pool had framed it in such a way that, like Dutch resistance fighters, they were fighting for a just cause. With this 1965 anthology,

Pool wanted to show that now Black writers themselves were defining who they were and that they were in control. As good as that may sound, there were still power relations that Pool seemed to forget. Pool failed to see that it was actually she, a white Jewish woman, who remained in power over the selection and framing of those books and occasionally even over these poets.

She had the tendency to nudge poets in the right direction, something especially young poets were prone to. Sometimes she let on that their poems needed some ‘working on here and there,’32 while at other times she suggested words that should be deleted or, when there was an urgent deadline, even adjusted poems herself. Remarkably, she encountered little opposition from these authors. On the contrary, most admired her fortitude and force: ‘[A]n elevation of spirit overcame me as a result of your kind words of encouragement, and, far more important, appreciation,’ the aspiring poet Sarah

Webster Fabio wrote to her after her poems were selected for publication.33

Yet, these praises do not mean that these poets simply agreed with everything she said. It simply reveals the highly unequal relationship Pool had with these poets, who were largely dependent on her as most American presses never published anything from Black writers.34 Pool did not really seem to notice this, or did not want to know. She even actively reinforced this dependency by calling these writers ‘her’ poets and, a bit eeriely, describing herself more than once as a ‘grandmother.’35 She thereby vicariously claimed ownership over these individuals, paradoxically by claiming to give them

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agency. This inequality was emphasized by the fact that it was not their names that appeared on the cover of these anthologies, but most often that of hers.

This brought her uncomfortably close to the controversial white patrons of the Harlem

Renaissance, who also stimulated and financed the work of Black artists, often in a mentor-and- apprentice relationship.36 Pool is even described as a ‘patron’ in the finding aid of one of her archives.37

Back in the interwar period it was quite common, both in the US and in the Netherlands, for whites to have an essentialist vision of Blacks and Black culture, which could be divided in two types. There was an orientalist and ethnocentric vision, which depicted Blacks as ‘wilds,’ ‘childish,’ or - quite contradictorily - as hypersexual and a danger for (white) women.38 On the other hand, there was this supposed primitivism in which white Europeans saw Black people as ‘exotic’ and as if ‘closer to nature.’39 Despite Pool’s nuanced theories about race and ‘anti-otherisms,’ in practice she maintained many primitivist and racist tropes. Although these ideas were increasingly criticized as the fifties and sixties progressed, Pool’s exoticism was so tenacious that it remained visible in her anthologies from the mid-1960s. These never failed to mention palm trees, jungles, and other tropes that sound uncomfortably racist to contemporary ears. Take for example one poem from the Detroit-based poet

Margaret Danner which appeared in Ik ben de Nieuwe Neger (1965):

Over the warts on the bumpy

half-plastered wall

just recently slapped with peach -

colored calcimine,

Carter the artist curved tan

mahony chalk African women, tall

and arched with a swaying grace.

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He then conjured nine

green palm trees and three Egyptian

perfume urns,

so that those whom some might call

after tippling their cheap, heady

drinks, could discern

the palms, waving cool, green, shady,

over the (dancing now) African ladies.40

The repetition of old stereotypes and racialized tropes was not only the result of the market which demanded such stark and recognizable imagery, it was most often initiated by Pool herself. Her collaborator Paul Breman, with whom Pool edited Ik zag hoe zwart ik was (1958) before Breman started his own publishing house, said he absolutely ‘hated’ the first half of their book. He was furious about some of the ‘lousy poetry’ Pool wanted to include and which he accepted as a compromise, ‘all of them weeping about the poor oppressed gay little barge-loading shoeshine boys (and girls).’41

Perhaps there was some truth in that, but, as we saw, over time Pool did adjust her ideas and attributed more power to Black writers themselves. However, she still made the final decision on what was included and what not, blurring the line between helping and patronizing.

‘Everyone knows Rosey’

With these anthologies Pool entered a whole new realm of influence: that of world literature. By mid- century the written word had still remained the dominant manner to spread ideas, and publications created a common background that glued intellectual communities together. And Black Atlantic intellectuals from the US, Africa, and Europe were no exception, constituting a distinct transnational

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community that communicated through Black literature.42 Pool tried hard to curate her own corner within that community. Her selections brought people together, to the outside world as a ‘school,’ but sometimes even literally in personal encounters.

Occasionally these publications led to the formation of actual groups, like with the Boone

House Poets in Detroit: ‘It was Rosey Pool’s Beyond the Blues that first brought us together,’ one member of that group recalled.43 Pool’s impact was by far the most tangible in the greater Detroit area, the place where she had worked at Wayne State University. A breakthrough was when Beyond the Blues was turned into a TV series by Vinnette Carroll in February 1964, leading even to an Emmy award.44 Naomi Long Madgett, a Detroit poet who became a member of the Boone House group, named Pool as ‘the catalyst for a significant period of literary activity.’45 Even years later Madgett acknowledged Pool’s role in bringing Detroit poets together, in a poem that she dedicated to her:

We were like particles of metal dust floating on stagnant air,

visible only in our separateness, until you rose among us

with a solar clarity that magnetized us

with your sharing of our pain.

Then we looked around

and saw that we were not alone.

We were one. And we were strong.46

Almost echoing Pool’s own poem from 1926 which she wrote for the socialist youth group AJC (see chapter 1), Madgett’s poem likewise portrayed an exciting synergy and togetherness of a collective, rather than individuals. Pool’s anthology Beyond the Blues led to several other meaningful encounters.

When the Detroit poet Margaret Danner walked around the campus of Wayne State University in late 1962, she saw Pulitzer Prize-winning poet William Snodgrass reading Beyond the Blues. She 143 slowed down and asked him where he got the book, and they got to talk.47 The synergy that came out of such meetings was so powerful that the poet Oliver LaGrone somewhat pompously called Pool’s

Beyond the Blues ‘one of the first guns in the cultural revolution’ that swept America in the 1960s.48

This is perhaps a bit of an exaggeration, yet Pool’s anthologies did not just become passive objects on library shelves. They were often passed around among students and activists, and made an impact.

Pool’s anthologies also drew many writers to Pool’s house at 23a Highpoint. One extraordinary visit was that of the Alabama-poet Julia Fields whose career was about to take off. Pool had first met Fields in early 1960 at Knoxville College, a small Black college in Tennessee, during her lecture tour through the South, as discussed in chapter 7. Pool was immediately impressed by the poetry of this 22-year-old student. Fields’s work likely brought Pool back to when she was that age herself, when she discovered the work of Countee Cullen, Langston Hughes, and Waring Cuney, all poets from Harlem who understood the power of concise verse. Pool never lost her taste for short poetry: ‘The mere fact that poets have to economize means that they are more honest,’ Pool believed.49

And Fields shared this tendency to ‘economize.’ Fields wrote to Pool: ‘I really want to write THREE good poems. No more. No less. [...] Do you think that I could do this in less than a lifetime?’50 Pool immediately included Fields’s poems in her upcoming anthology Beyond the Blues (1962), and soon

Fields’s work was included in major African American journals and other anthologies, including

Langston Hughes’s significant overview work New Negro Poets: USA (1964). It was a meeting at Pool’s house that decisively changed Fields’s career.

In the spring and summer of 1963, Fields stayed for a couple of weeks at 23a before setting out to a summer school in Edinburgh. At the same time, the South African writer Richard Rive was also passing through the city and was able to meet Langston Hughes, one of his idols, who also happened to be in London. Rive described how he had dinner with Hughes before he was dragged to

23a Highpoint: ‘Did I know Rosey? Everyone knew Rosey. I must meet Rosey. So we took a taxi 144

afterwards to the apartment of Dr Rosey Poole [sic].’51 There he met Pool and also her American guest, Julia Fields. Rive immediately fell in love with this ‘strikingly beautiful, statuesque Black girl.’

But she was so thrilled to meet the great Langston Hughes that she barely noticed Rive, who was a bit shy, and was introduced by Hughes somewhat confusingly as ‘Dick.’ Nevertheless, there was plenty to talk about. Pool soon found out that Rive spoke Afrikaans, a language derived from seventeenth- century Dutch. They even had a small conversation in Afrikaans/Dutch. Hughes watched the whole scene with his mouth open and said: ‘My God, now I’ve heard it all. A goddamn nigger speaking

Dutch.’52

Later on, Rive continued his attempts to woo the beautiful Julia Fields, but was unable to

‘break through the cold barrier.’ That was until she asked: ‘Do you know a writer from your country called Richard Rive?’ He responded: ‘I am Richard Rive.’53 The ice was finally broken, and that also led to the sharing of more personal experiences. Fields went on and told him somewhat excitedly, somewhat in disgust, about the time when she worked as a teacher in the American South. One time

‘[w]hite racists were cruising in cars around her segregated school shooting into the classrooms,’ he remembered her telling him. While they were hiding under the tables, Fields tried to calm her pupils, by reading them stories - and most often she read Rive’s ‘The Bench,’ a short story about a Black

South African who decided to sit down on a bench reserved for ‘Europeans Only’ in Cape Town. It was an eye-opener to these young Black children in Alabama to discuss the generally hated Apartheid regime and revealing its parallels with the Jim Crow system.

Sharing of this story must have chilled all the attendees in Pool’s home that night. Meetings like these were among the highlights of Pool’s dinner evenings: there was room to joke around and to relax, but also for heartbreak and the sharing of ideas and experiences. It contributed to the transnational identification of a global Black consciousness which were crucial in this period of Black

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freedom struggles in Africa and of struggles against racism in the US. Most attendees kept in touch afterwards, although there was no sign that Rive and Fields ever became romantically involved.

Figure 5.16 From left to right: Bloke Modisane, Frank Parkes [Francis Kobina Parkes] and Arthur Spingarn at 23a Highpoint, London, May 1962. In the background an artwork that is possibly from the Nigerian sculptor Justus D. Akeredolu. Source: Private archive Rudi Wesselius.

Another notable visitor was NAACP president Arthur Spingarn. It was once again Langston

Hughes who coaxed him to visit Pool, and when he was in London in May 1958, he decided to take a look. Pool intended to win him over and carefully arranged an evening with various friends. The meeting was a tremendous success: ‘I loved him from the moment I saw him,’ Pool wrote to Hughes afterwards.54 What undoubtedly helped was that Spingarn and Pool were both secular Jews who shared an interest in Black emancipation. Whenever Spingarn came to London in the years to come

- which was usually every year, for business - he visited 23a Highpoint. 146

Perhaps his most memorable visit, however, took place in May 1962, when Pool invited him to meet the Ghanaian journalist Frank Parkes, and the South African writer Bloke Modisane at her house. Parkes read ‘very pompously, very long subject poems,’55 perhaps relating to decolonization struggles in Ghana. It is likely they also discussed each other’s experiences, work, and tactics, including

Pool’s recent lecture tour in the American South with the United Negro College Fund (UNCF) (see chapter 7). There she had repeatedly compared Southern racial segregation with Nazi occupied

Europe. Bloke Modisane, from South Africa, listened carefully, and when he went on an almost identical tour in the South that next year, also sponsored by the UNCF, he called Jim Crow and

Apartheid similar systems of ‘pigmentocracy’ (a system based on skin color or pigment).56

By sharing experiences, Modisane might have learned about the parameters of public anti- racist statements, and it seems to be no coincidence that both he and Pool referred to their own homelands, instead of directly attacking the system. Moreover, Modisane’s experiences also gave Pool new insights, who afterwards occasionally described the Jim Crow system as ‘American Apartheid,’57 probably realizing that the western public opinion was turning against the Apartheid regime by that time. Pool’s house at 23a Highpoint was in the 1960s a place where visitors could grapple with new perspectives on world politics and activist repertoires. The discussions that were held in this cramped apartment resonated far beyond that small living room, both on and off paper.

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Figure 5.17 Network of Rosey Pool based on correspondence (n=497), focusing on her contact with Langston Hughes and his influence on her network (signified in red). See also chapter 10. Created by author by using Microsoft Access and Gephi.

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Spider in a Black Atlantic web

Pool’s apartment was always open to traveling minds of the Black diaspora. It is where they could meet in an informal setting. It thereby became a hotspot of the Black Atlantic: both a meeting place of Black cosmopolitan intellectuals, writers, and artists, as well as a place where, as Paul Gilroy described it more generally, ‘the structures of the nation state and the constraints of ethnicity and national particularity’58 were discussed, challenged, and transcended. Her anthologies were a crucial part in that process, as they enabled her to lay contacts and gave her authority at the same time.

Yet she was far from perfect. Whether it was her self-proclaimed role as ‘grandmother’ or her meddling with materials that poets provided, it seems that her well-meant intentions were also manifestations of something more deeper: a need to be in control of people and to have power. Despite these authoritarian tendencies, her contribution to the promotion of African American poetry is profound. Especially her encouragement was of great importance. The poet Robert Hayden, for example, meticulously remembered when Pool was in Nashville, where she read his poem ‘Runagate

Runagate.’ ‘Now I hadn’t dared look at this poem for years,’ he wrote, ‘and as Rosey read it I was amazed and gratified to discover that most of it was much better than I’d thought.’ It was only then that he ‘realized the poem was worth saving.’59 Some scholars have rightly claimed that Pool’s greatest asset was that she showed greater respect for Black artists than the US cultural establishment did at the time.60

The international contacts she initiated in 1945 (see chapter 4), had by the 1950s and especially 1960s grown into an extensive network (Figure 5.17). Her contacts included strong ties like

Langston Hughes and Arthur Spingarn, people who would provide her with additional contacts and would open doors to her that would remain closed otherwise. Yet there were also weaker ties with aspiring authors and occasional letters from celebrities like Ira Gershwin, Leopold Senghor, and Aimé

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Césaire. All these types of contacts provided her with social capital61 which was needed in order to get such publications off the ground. She was a powerful spider in the Black Atlantic web, with its existing ties, friendships, and alliances that were already there before she arrived on the scene. A white spider in that web, her position was also incredibly precarious, and which could not be sustained forever, as we will see.

Pool was nevertheless a pioneer. Whether it was with her publications, or with her ideas that never came into fruition. Immediately after Beyond the Blues had been sent off to her publisher, she already had a new idea: an anthology of Black female poets. Again, she admitted to Shirley Graham

Du Bois, this came from her Old Left sympathies as well as ‘old-fashioned’ feminism. ‘So far I call it:

“Against Three Odds,”’ she wrote, ‘namely the odds of being Negroes, Women, and Workers.’62 This idea predated the second feminist wave of the late 1960s, but also Black women’s poetry anthologies which generally appeared much later, in the 1970s and 1980s.63 It shows once again that Pool was ahead of her time and had a fine nose for the spirit of the times. It was the same intuition that brought about her involvement in a new medium that appeared in the 1950s: television. ⌇⌇⌇

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Figure 6.1 Television set during recording of Advocaat pro deo, 10 September 1958, Studio Vitus, Bussum. Above, we see Hermie Huiswoud and Otto Sterman (as the parents) and their son, Marius Monkau (with bandage). The accused white teenager, played by Erik Plooyer, sits on the right with his chin resting on his arms placed on the banister. In front of him, his lawyer is seated, played by Gordon Heath. Rosey Pool sits towards the left, with a white cap on. Source: Netherlands Institute for Sound and Vision.

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CHAPTER 6: HILVERSUM THE ‘RACE QUESTION’ ON DUTCH TELEVISION

OR: HOW TO LEARN DUTCH IN FIVE STEPS

It was the summer of 1958 and Gordon Heath practiced his Dutch pronunciation in his Paris apartment. The African American actor had just accepted a one-time role for Dutch television in a

TV play named Advocaat pro deo. His friend Rosey Pool had daringly convinced him to take the part, and as the play’s translator, agent, and one of the actors, she played a catalytic role in this production.

Yet what was Pool hoping to achieve with this show? It was strikingly uncommon to see African

American actors speak Dutch on television - yet it was not entirely unique either. This chapter places

Advocaat pro deo in its historical context of race in the Netherlands.

The 1950s often tend to be overlooked, and the Dutch fifties are no exception. With its housing shortage, pillarization, and black-and-white television, it is generally seen as one of the dullest and unremarkable periods in contemporary history. Yet, looking beyond its tenacious gray image, the

1950s already showed some massive changes that are often attributed to the ‘swinging sixties,’ including democratization and social rebellion.1 These early changes were especially visible on Dutch television, a brand-new medium that was introduced to the Dutch in 1949 by a bold vanguard from

Dutch theater and radio.

Throughout the fifties, there was only one TV channel available, which broadcasted only about twelve hours per week. The media landscape was, like Dutch society, clustered in different

‘pillars’ or segments. Each group - Protestant, Catholic, Liberal, and Socialist - had its own political parties, schools, trade unions, and of course broadcasting organizations. As a student in the 1920s,

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Rosey Pool had been a pioneer with the VARA, the socialist radio station. Later she occasionally worked for the neutral AVRO, sometimes for the cosmopolitan Wereldomroep, and from time to time with the Catholic KRO.2 Pool adopted a pragmatic approach and simply went to whatever broadcaster was willing to give her an outlet for her message.

Pool moved to London in 1949, and through occasional appearances, she tried to make a breakthrough to mainstream media, far away from the radical socialist media she published in before the war. In England she set up poetry readings for BBC radio, such as ‘Calling West Africa’ (1951) and ‘Negro Poetry’ (1952, with a rerun in 1953). However, the BBC was a bit too proper to Pool’s taste. It especially horrified her that program makers had to ‘take their place in the queue’ and wait, in true Briton-style.3 It had taken three long years of pitching, lobbying, and revisions to produce these two programs at the BBC, which both barely lasted half an hour. The bustling Pool did not have the patience for this, and she also believed that her topic, the ‘race question,’ was far too urgent for this kind of bureaucracy. So she shifted her attention to other projects with more concrete, short- term-results. She wrote reviews about theater plays, taught Dutch at a London evening school, wrote books for young adults, and translated poetry and radio plays. She also started working for the BBC

Dutch Service. A continuation of the London based exile radio station Radio Oranje (1940-1945), the BBC Dutch Service (1945-1957) also broadcasted in Dutch, both in the UK and in the

Netherlands.4 In 1955, Pool started with a series of radio programs for the Dutch Service, covering a wild variety of topics within theater and daily life in Britain.5

However, the real turning point in Pool’s television career came in 1953 when she met the

35-year-old Jack Dixon, a Dutch actor-turned-director with Scottish roots who came to London for a crash course in television production. Like Pool, Dixon had a love for theater as well as her newly found Anglophilia. They also shared a pragmatic, commercial approach to the new medium, and a taste for the rebellious. In the years that followed, Dixon gained notoriety in the Netherlands for

154 handling controversial topics, bringing Dutch versions of international plays and novels on adultery

(Brief Encounter, 1956), the moral implications of war (All My Sons, 1958), and the hypocrisy of contemporary Christianity (Christ Recrucified, 1959).6 With only one TV channel, his reach was enormous. Although this did not yet lead to a formal collaboration, it was also probably not a coincidence that in 1954 Dixon directed a broadcast about the Jewish community of Amsterdam in which he paid special attention to Anne Frank. To a journalist Dixon explained that his interest in this topic had come out of his personal experiences when his parents had helped hiding Jews during the war.7 But only after the war had ended, it dawned on him just how outrageous the war actually had been, and he had grown ‘ashamed’ of the ‘attitude of the Dutch during the war.’8 With this political engagement as well as his desire to make an impact, Pool had finally found her match.

Figure 6.2 Director Jack Dixon, Gordon Heath, and Rosey Pool, September 1958. Source: Vrije Geluiden.

155 The transition from theater to television was not so seamless as it now may appear. Dixon’s work for TV soon made him an outcast to his old friends. ‘Some intellectual friends still say: television?

Oh right - my maid has one of those things,’ he told a reporter.9 Yet, such hateful remarks only seemed to fuel his inventiveness, which was further encouraged by a playful yet masculine rivalry with other TV directors. His colleagues were without exception all men - women who worked there were either TV announcer, script girl, or secretary.10 This made it even more surprising that the almost fifty-year-old Pool thrived so well in this bastion of masculinity. Part of her strength was that she easily won people over with her enthusiasm. Pool also had a ‘strong personality,’ VPRO producer

Joes Odufré recalled,11 and on some rare film footage12 she indeed appears as a charismatic and talkative host who held audiences spellbound, a quality that worked in classrooms, stages, and now also on television.

Her charm was either simply irresistible or utterly obnoxious - there was no middle way. One

Dutch reviewer described her somewhat condescendingly as ‘the voluminous, likeable, in London teaching Dutchwoman,’13 while another one compared her voice to a ‘circular saw.’14 Although most women in the public sphere of the 1950s were supposed to abide and be decent, Pool just seemed to ignore that with a bravado that usually seemed to be reserved for men only. She was witty, likeable, and big-mouthed, and it was exactly that personality that made her fit in so well with the VPRO, whose directors continuously tried to push the limits of television.

Her collaboration with Dixon lasted for over a decade and led her to the liberal protestant

VPRO. At first sight it was a strange brew: a former (radical) socialist who worked for a protestant

Christian broadcaster. However, the VPRO was actually far more progressive than its background suggested, and its non-conformism had made it increasingly a haven for freethinkers as the 1960s loomed. Pool, more than a bit unconventional herself, felt immediately at ease. The VPRO also had a humanitarian agenda, producing progressive programs on ‘Third World’ issues and, occasionally,

156 on provocative topics that no other broadcaster dared to touch, such as American racial discrimination. In 1957, for example, they aired a radio series called ‘White on black’ about race relations in the US.15 Pool tried to carry on this tradition with a travel show on the upcoming Civil

Rights Movement, but unfortunately there was not enough money for that. ‘She knew so many people over there,’ one producer later recalled: ‘the historical importance of such footage would have been enormous.’16

Pool then opted for the next best thing: to invite international guests to Holland. In 1957

Pool and Dixon brought the Nigerian musician Ambrose Campbell to the VPRO studios and one year later they invited the British-Chinese dancer Chin Yu together with a Surinamese women’s orchestra.17 Pool was prominently featured in those broadcasts as a host. Although she lived in

London, she once again became a part of the Dutch cultural vanguard. She frequently appeared on

VPRO television, often together with paragons of Dutch literature. She appeared for example at a

TV fundraiser against South African Apartheid alongside Simon Carmiggelt, Jan Wolkers, and Harry

Mulisch.18 This put her in the position to initiate projects herself as well. So when in 1958 she suggested the TV play Advocaat pro deo to Jack Dixon, she had his full attention.

‘We were both out of our minds’

Written by the Jewish Canadian, but London-based playwright Stanley Mann, Advocaat pro deo

(originally titled For the Defence) told the story of a fictional court case in which a white teenager is prosecuted for attacking a Black teammate. After his arrest, the white teenager is randomly assigned a pro bono lawyer, who happens to be Black. Although the original 1956 broadcast on BBC television was only mildly successful, the script was reworked into a radio play in early 1958.19 It was probably then that Pool realized its potential. ‘Advocaat pro deo is the only play I know,’ she wrote, ‘that fully

157 explains the attitudes and moral dilemmas of both parties, white and brown.’20

She became determined to take it to Dutch television as well. When Pool pitched the play to Dixon, she came up with another wild idea: to hire the original American actor for the leading role in Dutch as well. And by sheer coincidence - of course - she happened to know that actor: Gordon

Heath (1918-1991). Dixon gave her two thumbs up, probably foreseeing yet another television sensation. Pool immediately called the actor in question. Gordon Heath later remembered the phone call:

Rosey got on the phone calling me in Paris from London: ‘Would you play it for us? I’ll teach

you the Dutch. You’ll have to play it ‘“live” of course. I’ll make a tape of the dialogue tonight’! It

was a very expensive phone call. I laughed for five minutes to begin with. Then I said, ‘Yes. OK.’

We were both out of our minds.21

Pool had met Gordon Heath some years before in London, when the young African American actor performed in the protest play Deep Are the Roots (Arnaud d’Usseau and James Gow, 1945 and 1947).

‘She was a sparkling conversationalist and a great listener,’ Heath remembered. ‘She indicated that we ought to be friends and, after ten minutes, I agreed.’22 He also immediately understood Pool’s thesis about ‘anti-otherisms’ that brought together anti-Black racism and antisemitism. Heath was already convinced that ‘the Negro and the Jew in America had more in common than the history books dealt with.’23

An affectionate friendship followed, with Pool regularly visiting him in Paris, where Heath owned a café together with his life companion and musical partner Lee Payant. Pool visited Paris frequently anyway, largely because her partner ‘Isa’ Isenburg had lived there from 1933 to 1937 and had fallen in love with the French. (‘I don’t understand she left there,’ Pool wrote to a friend.24) This

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was another thing that brought Heath and Pool closer to each other: both were in a same-sex relationship, when both lesbianism and especially homosexuality were a criminal offence in most western countries. Facing similar intersections of oppressed identities25 they found solace and solidarity with each other. And, perhaps even more importantly, they just clicked. ‘She and Isa [...] loved my partner, Lee,’ Heath remembered.26 At this time, Heath was hoping to make it as an actor.

He had played in British theaters as Othello (1950), performed in TV plays like The Emperor Jones

(1953) and For the Defence (1956), and he narrated the voice-over of the 1954 animated film Animal

Farm. Still, his acting career did not take off quite as planned, and the café and his music remained his main sources of income.

Perhaps Pool saw it as a cry for help when Heath wrote to her around 1953: ‘I seem to have sung my way through these last four years,’ sadly concluding that acting remained peripheral and

‘non-existent as a source of livelihood.’27 Pool refused to see such talent go to waste. As an actor, poet, musician, and reciter with a voice ‘well near perfection,’ 28 she believed Heath was the real deal. She appointed herself as his (unwaged) ‘impresario,’29 set out to find jobs for him, and involved him in opportunities she had created for herself. She secured him a place in the BBC radio poetry reading

‘Negro Poets’ in 1953, together with Aubrey Pankey and Muriel Smith. In 1958, Pool organized a live poetry reading in a London theater called ‘Black and Unknown Bards,’ again with Gordon Heath, and also Pearl Connor, Cleo Laine, and Earle Hyman. She included Heath’s poetry in her 1962 anthology Beyond the Blues and also on the accompanying twelve-inch LP, where he appeared together with Brock Peters, Vinnette Carroll, and again Cleo Laine. Heath even made a brief appearance on

Dutch television in July 1956. A replica of his café in Paris was built as a décor, with the help of Jack

Dixon. And just as in Paris, Heath sang songs together with his partner, Lee Payant, on guitar.30 As always Pool made sure there was a formal role for herself in such events as well, whether it was as translator, writer, or presenter - basically anything that would pay the bills. 159

Figure 6.3 Rosey Pool (on the left) watches as Gordon Heath and Lee Payant perform in ‘At the Abbaye, Paris,’ for VPRO television. Bussum, 1 September 1956. Source: Sussex.

Still, Pool was on the lookout for something with more gravitas. Theater had been one of

Pool’s first and biggest loves, especially political theater, and her interest dated back to the 1920s.

Back then she had come to believe in the ‘enormous educational power and propagandist worth’ of theater, a medium that in an attractive way brought theory-laden socialist ideology to the masses (see chapter 2). Although her love for Lenin had waned, her confidence in theatrical persuasion had not.

She believed it was simply easier to catch flies with honey than with vinegar. And now that the struggle against racial prejudice had become her mission, she saw great promise in ‘race plays’ - social protest plays about the ‘race issue.’ By immersing themselves in the lives of someone of the Black race,

European audiences - predominantly white - could walk a mile in someone else’s shoes. Pool believed that plays like these were crucial in dissolving ‘the fog of prejudice’ that hovered over the western

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world.31 And with television, this impact suddenly became enormous. Now thousands or even millions of people could be reached, all at once. Pool believed Heath brought a perfect mix of artistic talents and political convictions, and she praised him as ‘a fighter for his race.’32

But similar to the world of theater, the possibilities for Black actors within television were extremely limited. In general, most Black actors in the Netherlands were only asked for highly stereotypical roles: a servant, a musician, a chauffeur, a pimp, a drug dealer, a slave, or the bad guy.33

Yet, the late fifties showed slight progress and a turning point seemed to be within reach for non- white actors. Just one year before Advocaat pro deo, in 1957, the TV series Pension Hommeles (‘Pension

Trouble’) started airing, with the African American actor Donald Jones in a non-stereotypical Black role, speaking Dutch. The show made him overnight a star in the Netherlands, partly because of his thick American accent. Although Pool probably did not see Pension Hommeles herself (it was only broadcasted in the Netherlands), she will have been aware of the show. She was friends with the producer, Wim Ibo, and Pool also collaborated with the famous writer of this show, Annie M.G.

Schmidt.34 She probably saw in Donald Jones’s rapid rise to fame an opportunity to introduce more

Black actors. After all, each contribution to clear the ‘fog of prejudice’ was helpful.

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Figure 6.4 ‘[Learning] Dutch in 5 Lessons,’ from an unknown magazine, ca. September 1958. Source: Sussex.

Audrey Hepburn

After Heath was officially cast, it became a challenge to find suitable actors for the other Black roles in the play. There were simply not that many professional Black actors in the Netherlands. So Pool looked around her own network, casting friends with zero acting experience, including Hermie

Dumont-Huiswoud, William Spaarndam Johnson, Paula van Wijk, and Django Sterman. ‘When back in the day they needed a negro actor,’ Donald Jones remembered, ‘there were three professional negroes. Otto Sterman, Marius Monkau, and me.’35 Pool thought Sterman was unfit for the leading

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role because of his West Indian accent, which she found ‘almost incomprehensible.’36 And Marius

Monkau was too young to play the lawyer, so he was asked to play the Black teenager.

For some reason Donald Jones was not cast. Maybe this was because he was known as a comical actor, and this was a serious play. But more likely, it was probably because Pool was such good friends with Gordon Heath that she turned to him. And after Heath signed the contract it would perhaps be a bit odd to have two African American actors, both speaking Dutch, together in one play. So Donald Jones was snubbed, and in press releases Gordon Heath was erroneously presented as a unique case of a Dutch-speaking-American. This message was so convincing that even

Heath himself remembered years later that he was asked because there was ‘no one’ in the Netherlands

‘to play the lawyer.’37 Yet TV audiences certainly compared Heath to his fellow countryman. One journalist even described him as a ‘Donald Jones with a moustache.’38 The true reason why an

American actor was hired and not a Dutch actor, was because an American one would simply attract far more viewers and generate much more interest in the ‘race question’ than a Dutch Black actor would at the time. The reason was simple: at that time the Dutch found American culture simply irresistible.39

In the weeks before the broadcast both local and national newspapers wrote about Advocaat pro deo, turning the event into ‘almost a happening’ throughout the country.40 Journalists were eager to report on the strange case of the American who was learning Dutch for one single occasion. Most found it highly entertaining that all his foreign language lessons and personal coaching had resulted in an inexplicable German accent. Heath told a reporter that he practiced his lines with the Dutch actress Hetty Blok and that he now not only had a German accent, but also a French one.41 He decided to make an extra effort, and started studying Dutch grammar.

More headlines appeared when the rumor spread that Heath had practiced his pronunciation with the Belgian-British, multilingual actress Audrey Hepburn, when they were both on the set of

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the movie The Nun-Story in the Belgian Congo. Yet Heath said that although they had certainly met, the whole thing was grossly exaggerated: ‘That’s nonsense, she was far too busy. She saw me walking with a Dutch grammar [book] under my arm and called: “What are you doing with that?!” She didn’t give me lessons, but she wished me all success.’42 With only six weeks to rehearse his part, Heath memorized his lines largely phonetically with an audio recording that Dixon made, and a tailor-made,

American-proof translation from Pool.43 Heath fondly remembered Pool’s private pronunciation lessons and, even more importantly, her confidence: ‘She never doubted for a minute that it would work,’ he said.44

An intimate dinner with W.E.B. Du Bois

In the meantime, Jack Dixon looked around to fill the rest of the TV evening, which was gradually turning into a theme evening that focused on ‘race.’ He landed an interview with John Thivy, Indian ambassador to the Netherlands, who came to speak about Malayan minorities in his home country.

And at the last minute another interview was added, with the famous African American scholar

W.E.B. Du Bois,45 another suggestion from Pool, after she found out one week before the broadcast that Du Bois was visiting Holland for a public speech.

This visit was purely coincidental, but the timing was great. It was Pool’s protégé Paul

Breman (1931-2008) who had invited the old scholar. Du Bois who had led an isolated life for many years. He had appeared in front of a McCarthy committee in 1951 and although he was not convicted, his passport was confiscated until further notice. Now, eight years later, he had finally regained his passport and was able to travel again, and almost immediately he was on his way to Moscow to be honored with the Lenin Peace Prize. This showed that the old radical had not been tamed by eight years of house arrest. To Breman’s own surprise the Du Boises accepted the offer. Breman explicitly

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did not inform Pool. They had had ‘terrible trouble’ in their collaboration for the poetry anthology Ik zag hoe zwart ik was (1958). Somehow either one of them chose poems that the other one did not like.46 But their disagreement went deeper than that as Breman especially despised Pool’s

Black/Jewish comparisons. Eventually it was what he called Pool’s ‘”I was Anne Frank’s teacher’ number’ that brought a ‘lasting estrangement’ between the two.47 Trying to break free from Pool’s influence, he was now destined to make a name for himself and largely organized the Du Boises’ six- day program all by himself.

It was only when a large meeting in The Hague was canceled at the very last minute that he called in help from others. And even then he did not want to call his former meddlesome tutor, but contacted Otto Huiswoud instead, president of Ons Suriname, and his wife Hermie Dumont-

Huiswoud. ‘Fearing a total fiasco, Paul called in our help,’ Dumont-Huiswoud recalled, ‘the day before the DuBoises arrived.’48 But as Dumont-Huiswoud had a guest role in Advocaat pro deo, Pool soon found out anyway and swiftly took over. She arranged an intimate dinner with Du Bois and his wife Shirley Graham, together with Advocaat actors Gordon Heath and Otto Sterman, who were deeply honored to meet the 90-year-old sociologist, Niagara Movement leader, and NAACP founder.

The choice for an Indonesian restaurant in the center of Utrecht was obviously meant to spur conversations about colonialism among this crowd, and was likely a conscious choice by Pool to place the TV evening in a wider perspective of anti-racist and anti-colonial activism.

One day after the cozy dinner, Du Bois gave a speech in The Hague where he shocked friends and foes alike when he called President Roosevelt a ‘socialist.’ Moreover, he claimed that ‘[t]he new science of psychology [which was] so effectively and fatally used by Adolf Hitler to make

Germany attribute all its woes to Jews,’ was now also used by ‘big business in America to make

America prepare for total war against the Soviet Union.’49 It was music to Rosey Pool’s ears, who sat spellbound in the audience that night. But Du Bois estranged almost everybody else with his talk, 165

even social democrats. It appears that only the communist newspaper De Waarheid supported him.

One conservative journalist was wildly outraged by this ‘open propaganda for Moscow,’ demanding to know whose fault it was that this evening had ran ‘completely out of hand.’ 50 This anti-communist reaction to Du Bois’s explicit sympathy for the Soviet Union was a sign that the Cold War was heating up. America’s racial segregation had been a target of communists since the 1920s, often referred to in order to reveal the hypocrisy of American capitalism.51 So anyone who wanted to address the

American ‘race question’ publicly ran the risk of being called a communist, causing their message to be dismissed immediately.

The creators of Advocaat pro deo obviously wanted to avoid such accusations no matter what: excessive criticism of the US would estrange various viewer groups and undermine their message of equal rights. Perhaps this was the reason why the preceding programs focused on former British colonialism in India, and not on Dutch colonialism. The clips also focused on ‘acceptable’ types of

Civil Rights protest. In recent years a new type of activism was challenging segregation. Peaceful protests like the Montgomery Bus Boycott with Rosa Parks (1955), the integration of Little Rock

Central High School (1957), and non-violent protests headed by Martin Luther King, Jr. had shown that the violence only came from one side: white racists. These protests made the ‘race issue’ mainstream: suddenly the subordinated position of African Americans was seen as an injustice by both the Dutch left, middle, and the right alike.

Coverage of the Civil Rights Movement in the Dutch media was so extensive that one journalist spoke of a ‘hype’ and a ‘fad.’52 Dutch newspapers from the weeks preceding the broadcast reveal just how timely Advocaat pro deo was. Media from all denominations extensively covered the escalation at Little Rock Central High School in Arkansas, a white school that was desegregated. The

Black students that tried to enter the school were viciously attacked and spat on, creating a public outcry across the western world. Another hot case that spurred outrage was Jimmy Wilson’s, a

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farmworker from Alabama who had stolen two dollars and was now sentenced to death by an all- white jury. Dutch journalists from all backgrounds were appalled by those stories, finding it ‘startling’ and ‘absurd.’ Perhaps that is why an extremely brief excerpt of an interview with Du Bois was broadcasted that contained no references to Hitler or Roosevelt, but where he merely condemned the situation in Little Rock. Many Dutch viewers approved of the eloquent and elder statesman-like scholar, and with these general remarks on the situation of African Americans, the subsequent TV play now suddenly became an example of ‘a personal tragedy of the negro.’53 Like American Civil

Rights activism, Advocaat pro deo showed a mainstream an sanitized plea for equal rights that was almost impossible to disagree with.

High expectations

After weeks of preparations and rehearsals, the moment was finally there on Wednesday 10

September 1958: live from Studio Vitus in Bussum, Advocaat pro deo appeared on television screens all over the country. It told the fictional story of a North American white teenager who has a disagreement with one of his team members after a game of basketball, which then quickly escalates into a fight. They roll over the ground, fighting, when the white teenager screams: ‘Nigger, dirty nigger [...]. Nigger, dirty nigger!’54 Embarrassed by their behavior, both teenagers want to forget the whole thing and move on. Yet the father of the assaulted Black boy is convinced there was a racist motive and pursues his son to push charges, which he does. The white teenager is arrested, and since he comes from a poor working class background, he is assigned a pro bono lawyer called Frank

Wilson, a Black man. ‘The drama,’ Gordon Heath surmised, was ‘in the lawyer’s tactics to convince the parents and the [white] boy that he is on their side.’55

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His character sets out to do his job, but meets opposition from all sides: from people who think he has a moral obligation to his race, and from people who question his objectivity because of his skin color. In one key scene the lawyer is visited by the Black father (played by Otto Sterman), who is clearly desperate:

[The father:] You are a Negro, Wilson, and you have suffered for that just as much as we all did.

You can’t stand up and prosecute someone of your own race because of a race-obsessed white

man. […] What do you want, Wilson? Do you want to show the white people that you are willing

to attack your own race? Prove that you are superior to the race problem?

[The lawyer:] I am a lawyer, just like all other lawyers. I have a lawsuit that I need to fulfil. That’s

all that matters.

[The father:] Of course. You are a lawyer. A wonderful lawyer you are. Selling [out] his own

people as long as they say he’s a fine lawyer. You only want to impress white people. You are the

meanest type of Negro there is. A traitor...56

Figure 6.5 The lawyer (Gordon Heath, Figure 6.6 Photograph from TV screen when the left) and the accused white teenager (Erik lawyer (Gordon Heath, left) was confronted by the Plooyer), on TV set Advocaat pro deo, 10 father (Otto Sterman), 10 September 1958. September 1958. Source: Netherlands Source: Het Parool. Institute for Sound and Vision.

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Notwithstanding these threats, the lawyer continues his work, determined to succeed. But things do not run smoothly. Even his own client, the white teenager, starts to question his objectivity: ‘Who can assure me that you won’t feel sympathy for Edison [the Black teenager], when he stands in front of you,’ the boy asked. ‘I don’t know how you feel towards whites. Maybe you hate them. I don’t know.’57 The lawyer starts to lose his self-confidence and sureness about the case, and he doubts whether he is truly doing the right thing.

But then he goes to Janet Morrison of the Association of Legal Advisors, a character vividly portrayed by Rosey Pool. Advocaat pro deo was her debut as an actress, although she was no stranger to performing different roles, both off and on stage. Pool wrote in an op-ed piece that her own character represented the essence and ‘the principle of the piece,’ 58 and this evidently shows just how closely this TV play represented her own personal beliefs. It also seemed to be no coincidence that this role reflected her own character as well, or at least, how she wanted to be seen by others: ‘A sophisticated, idealistic woman,’ Pool described the character in her translation, ‘who has had and still has a lot on her mind.’ 59 The lawyer comes to her and asks her if he could drop the case because he finds it simply impossible to ‘defend a client who hates him.’ But she thinks that is not his actual problem: ‘That boy is scared Frank,’ she tells him, ‘and fear and hatred are often very similar.’ She pushes him to continue with the case.

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Figure 6.7 Gordon Heath (portraying the lawyer, Frank Wilson) and Rosey Pool (portraying a legal advisor, Janet Morrison) on TV set Advocaat pro deo, 10 September 1958. Source: JHM.

Still indecisive, the lawyer decides to give the case a final chance and returns to his client, albeit somewhat reluctantly. But when they again discuss the upcoming defense, the case suddenly becomes more clear to him. The white teenager explains that he does not understand his own violent behavior either: ‘I swear […] that I wasn’t myself. That wasn’t me, who said that. Those words just came out of my mouth and when I heard them I became even more furious.’ The boy argues that he did not really do it, but that it happened - ‘it happened to ME, of all people.’60 It is a revelation to the lawyer, and he is released off his inner doubts: he is not representing a racist after all, or so he thinks.

Now fully convinced about the boy’s innocence, they go to court. In front of a judge and a small audience, both sides start their defense. But then, near the end of the trial, an unexpected plot twist appears: without a decision made by the judge, the play suddenly ends. The television screen turned black. ‘I have never looked so flabbergasted at my television set,’ one journalist wrote.61 Numerous viewers called the VPRO to report a technical error. However, it was not an accident. The sudden ending was intentional, Dixon told one reporter bemused:

170 [I]t would have been easy to write three additional sentences and explicitly show that the [white]

boy was found innocent. But that was not the issue at all. Then the people would have said: well,

that ended well. They would have turned off their TV set and would have gone to bed. I know

now that many people long discussed about the ending of the play, but also about the race

problem.62

Pool concurred explaining in an interview that the open ending would extend the ‘discussion about the true problem […] in the living room.’63 But was that enough to dissolve the ‘fog of prejudice’ that she described before? According to TV reviewers, the play indeed gave ‘food for thought.’ The confrontation between the Black father and the Black lawyer especially made a great impression.

‘Suddenly the performance was made of flesh and blood,’ one journalist wrote.64 Unsurprisingly, most were in favor of the handsome and fair lawyer, who fitted in well with the moderate, ‘decent’ struggle for equal rights. Some reviewers found Pool’s acting ‘acceptable,’ but the majority of the reviewers praised her, saying she had ‘the best role of the evening.’ One even claimed that her acting was ‘the only acceptable thing of the entire performance.’65 The Black father was seen as the complete opposite, and was described as an opportunistic villain who exploited the situation for his own (financial) benefit. One newspaper even described him as the blankenhatende vader (‘whites-hating father’),66 which hardly could have been the goal of the play. Most reviewers, in other words, took on the perspective that the play intended, without critically reflecting on larger issues from a meta perspective. The appearance of a Black lawyer might have been groundbreaking on Dutch television

- but the Black father actually fitted in suspiciously well with dominant stereotypes of Blacks playing the bad guy.

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With the same insouciance the violent white teenager was excused as a harmless rascal.

Dutch reviewers squarely projected the country’s prejudices about whiteness and innocence on this character. No matter his deeds, the white boy received the benefit of the doubt. Even when he screamed the N-word he remained innocent. He was rather a victim of the system than a true racist.

Some journalists compared him to James Dean or Marlon Brando, who were known for their brazen but also misunderstood and innocent characters. The same conclusions appeared in review articles that connected the play to real-life events, usually to Little Rock and the case of Jimmy Wilson

(perhaps because the name of the Black lawyer was coincidentally also ‘Wilson’). One journalist wrote:

On the same Wednesday evening on which a negro - who had committed a two-dollar robbery

- was sentenced to death by the Court of Alabama, the American negro Gordon Heath offered

the Dutch TV public a compelling piece of culture.67

This reference revealed as much about the play as it does about the self-image of the Dutch, who liked to see themselves as a tolerant and color blind nation.68 This image was dominant for several decades and remained the only acceptable narrative for non-white actors to discuss their position. The actor Donald Jones confirmed this Dutch complacency saying in interviews that he had escaped

American discrimination and had come to the Netherlands because he felt free here.69 Tellingly,

Gordon Heath received a fan letter from a young woman who wrote: ‘I cannot understand that there are people that have something against someone else just because their skin has another color,’ adding in relief: ‘Luckily this is not the case here.’70 This comment also suggests that the broadcast mainly confirmed the self-image of the Dutch: Gordon Heath’s presence in Advocaat pro deo itself proved that African Americans had more freedom in the Netherlands than in the United States. The same

172 applied to Donald Jones’s role in Pension Hommeles. Their presence seemed to prove that the

Netherlands was a progressive and tolerant country.

Sadly, this was not what Pool wanted to argue. On the one hand she wanted to show that the ‘race madness’ that the Nazis had spread, still had its remnants in Dutch society, both in negative as well as in benign prejudices. If the Dutch were so innocent, how was it then possible that her entire

(Jewish) family had been deported and murdered in gas chambers? Moreover, Pool also hoped that the presence of African American actors on Dutch television would create a sense of involvement and, hopefully, a deeper understanding of the Civil Rights struggle. She hoped Dutch people would come to see Blacks more as humans, that white viewers would go beyond the simple, one-dimensional view that many Dutch had of Blacks. ‘”Advocaat pro deo” pleas for all,’ she wrote, and she expressed the hope that this play would encourage that individuals would be judged by their actions, not by their skin color.71 In private letters and other egodocuments she was consistent in this. In her scrapbook she systematically cut off all headlines that mentioned the word ‘Negro’ in the title, she merely included clippings that called Heath ‘American.’ The message was self-evident. These were the news clippings that showed that her mission had succeeded: Blacks were seen as people.

Black emancipation and white innocence

With a Black lawyer as the protagonist in a traditionally a ‘white’ role, Stanley Mann’s Advocaat pro deo seemed to be ahead of its time. It predated more well-known international plays and movies like

A Raisin in the Sun (Lorraine Hansberry, 1959) and To Sir, With Love (James Clavell, 1967, both featuring Sidney Poitier), but also the later, much more well-known To Kill a Mockingbird (Robert

Mulligan, 1962), another courtroom drama that dealt with racial prejudice. This seemed to be a sign

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that white people too finally caught to Pool’s vanguard ideas in the 1960s and it was also largely her own accomplishment that this progressive play appeared on Dutch television.

However, some cautioning and critical remarks ought to be made. The impact of Advocaat pro deo is difficult to assess. On the one hand the reach was enormous: there was only one network and probably millions of people saw the broadcast. The effect on Dutch thinking about race, however, is impossible to determine, as the play both reflected on popular conceptions of Blacks, while it also challenged prejudices. All in all, the innocent self-image of the Dutch remained firmly in place. The simple fact that this play was accepted and broadcasted seems to be a proof of that. Nevertheless,

Gordon Heath described the broadcast as ‘a triumph.’72 And to him it certainly was. He received

1,250 guilders for one single broadcast (about € 4,000 in today’s money). And later that year he again performed the play on Belgian television, this time in French.73

Yet, it can not be argued that Advocaat pro deo structurally changed the job perspectives for

Black actors in the Netherlands. After this broadcast Black actors continued to struggle with stereotypical and one-dimensional roles. On a more positive note, Advocaat pro deo did contribute to the visibility of non-whites on television, both in a non-stereotypical role and in multiple support roles as well. It thereby normalized the presence of non-white actors and actresses on Dutch television, albeit with modest success. To many Dutch viewers the broadcast certainly brought some Black perspectives straight into their living rooms, bringing the African American struggle for equality - literally - closer to home. To Rosey Pool, however, it was something she did between jobs.

Immediately after the broadcast she went back to editing anthologies, and finally going to the destination where the action was: the Deep South. ⌇⌇⌇

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Figure 7.1 Rosey Pool being interviewed for television by an unidentified man, possibly near the Hampton Institute (Hampton, Virginia), ca. February 1960. Source: Sussex.

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CHAPTER 7: THE DEEP SOUTH ‘ANNE FRANK’S TEACHER’ IN THE USA

1959-1960 LECTURE TOUR (EXTENDED)

Rosey Pool was received like a rock star when she traveled across the United States in 1959 and 1960.

In eight months’ time she passed through twelve states, held over eighty lectures, was interviewed on radio and television, posed for photographs, and handed out signatures. It was not her Fulbright scholarship or her research on African American poetry that sold out venues. It were her experiences with Anne Frank. Almost twenty years after teaching at the Amsterdam Jewish Lyceum, Anne Frank had suddenly become a posthumous celebrity after her diary was turned into a Broadway play and

Hollywood movie. It caused Pool to become the right person in the right time. The story of this innocent young girl also seemed perfect to reveal similarities between Nazism and Jim Crow, and so

Pool lectured as ‘Anne Frank’s Teacher.’ Pool envisioned that her talks especially in the South could prevent African Americans from a similar fate as European Jews had suffered. Yet everywhere she spoke the story of Anne Frank was interpreted very differently, and used according to everyone’s needs, both for better and for worse.

Rosey Pool’s trip to the United States was a dream come true for her. For a freelancer like she, the transatlantic passage was simply too expensive, so when the Fulbright Foundation started to offer scholarships for Humanities scholars in 1959, Pool immediately applied.1 Although the Dutch

Fulbright committee thought the 54-year-old Pool was ‘a gifted and dynamic woman,’ she was a bit of an oddball in the applicant pool. With her vague and incoherent resumé she was quite different from most of the esteemed professors that applied. Moreover, she was about to get disqualified

177 because she no longer lived in the Netherlands, but in London, despite her Dutch nationality. Luckily for her, some other applicants withdrew, and Pool received the fellowship anyway.2

Around the same time, in early 1959, a movie came out about one of Pool’s former pupils,

Anne Frank, in cinemas across the US and Europe. The Diary of Anne Frank was based on the theater play bearing the same name, which had been a Broadway hit four years earlier. In both versions, Anne

Frank’s experiences in the ‘secret annex’ were transformed into a coming-of-age story with Anne

Frank as an almost all-American teenage girl who fell in love with a boy also in hiding called Peter.

This universalized version of the story captivated American and other western audiences, and Anne

Frank became an international symbol of the Holocaust but also of injustices at large.3

Initially Pool was unpleasantly surprised by the publicity surrounding Anne Frank. As discussed in chapter 3 and 4, she had known the Frank family from before the war, and the young girl had even been in her English classes at the Jewish Lyceum. Pool had also been one of the first to read the diary, back in 1945. Although Pool was only mildly impressed by it, she made an English translation at the request of Anne’s father Otto Frank. Pool had left the failed project behind her, and tried not to think about it too much. Yet three years later, in 1952, another English translation of the diary appeared, and it deeply moved audiences worldwide. This was painful for Pool, to say the least.

Yet perhaps even more embarrassing was that the girl that she had barely noticed back then was now becoming a symbol against oppression of all kinds.4 And well, that was kind of what Pool was aiming at for herself.

It seems that by the late 1950s, Pool had pulled herself together and realized that she could also benefit from the momentum surrounding the success of the Diary of Anne Frank. This sounds a bit opportunistic. Yet it is simply impossible to separate Pool’s personal life, her career, and her activism, as they often blended together in most of her projects, as we also saw with Advocaat pro deo. Altruism becomes a gray area here, as Pool wanted to fight discrimination, but also needed to pay 178 her bills and wanted to feel important. In her fight for justice she always used one of her main strengths: the power of storytelling, which she believed ‘moved more people and opened more eyes than big learned books.’5 The story of Anne Frank was perfect in this sense because, Pool said to one reporter, the diary ‘made the tragedy of war more of a reality than most more mature writers have been able to do.’6 It would become one of Pool’s main strengths throughout her career: to take personal stories to explain moral dilemmas and social issues in bite-sized chunks to the masses. It was also apparent to her that she had to act as soon as possible, because it was likely that the Anne

Frank hype would soon be over. So although her Fulbright tour formally was meant to research

African American poetry, it gradually became a tour as ‘Anne Frank’s Teacher,’ both for ideological and commercial reasons. ‘She knew her own worth,’ Gordon Heath said about Pool, ‘and she was not unaware that her experience would have enormous value on the open market.’7

Figure 7.2 Locations in Michigan and Illinois where Rosey Pool spoke during her Fulbright fellowship, October to December 1959.

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Up North

Pool’s market value soon manifested itself when she arrived in Detroit in October 1959. She would stay there to December, before heading to Atlanta for another two months.8 There was little time to relax. The Fulbright grant might have sounded glamorous, but in reality it only covered travel to the

United States and back.9 Pool needed to work to pay her living expenses and accommodation.

Through her contact person, Professor Marion Edman of Wayne State University,10 the first bookings started to roll in, creating a snowball effect throughout the Detroit area. Pool spoke about a great variety of topics, including African poetry, education in Europe and, occasionally even marriage guidance,11 which was quite an ambitious challenge for a divorced, lesbian woman. But especially in rural and suburban Michigan, most Americans were eager to hear more about Anne Frank.

Through these lectures she easily reached thousands of youngsters. When she spoke at elementary schools, children from neighboring schools also often came in, multiplying audiences to many hundreds. She liked these schools, as she had noticed that young teenagers often identified themselves with Anne,12 which made it possible to dig deeper. The charismatic and talkative Pool usually told what Anne Frank had been like and how she had gotten to know her, before relating the situation to American children. ‘Please don’t let […] her down a second time,’ she said at different occasions to various audiences of school children.13

After her lectures pupils were asked to write about what they had just heard in a short report or in a letter to Pool. Some of these reports were painfully direct and honest. The name ‘Anne Frank’ might have rung a bell, but the majority of these children admitted that they had never read the diary itself.14 One pupil from Detroit wrote in a report that ‘Ann [sic] Frank was a famous person. After

Ann Frank mother had died Ann Frank locked herself in her room.’15 Not quite true, obviously, but it does demonstrate how imaginatively and differently Pool’s talks were interpreted by individuals in

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different ways. This was also because these children had little prior knowledge on the subject. On the plus side, their lack of knowledge made these children soak up Pool’s words like sponges. One of the most eloquent listeners was a pupil from Detroit, who solemnly wrote that ‘the terrors of Nazi imperialism was left firmly embedded’ in his mind after Pool’s talk.16 Another pupil, from Highland

Park, Michigan, wrote:

The story of Anne and her family; the horror of Nazi terror; the work of the Dutch underground;

and the wave of anti-Semitism all made me actually feel how the Jewish populace felt and their

atrocious treatment by the Nazis.17

These reports often literally echoed Pool’s opinions and terminology, demonstrating the parrot-like quality that Pool thought many ‘bright children’ possessed.18 This is significant, because in this day and age the Holocaust was barely remembered as it is today. Pool’s talks predated the notorious

Eichmann trial (1961) and Raul Hilberg’s seminal book The Destruction of the European Jews (also

1961), both of which drew massive attention to this genocide.19 Although millions of Americans saw the movie about the Diary that year, knowledge of the Holocaust remained diffuse, largely taken in via representations (whether it be written or visual), and rarely from direct witnesses - like Pool.20

Pool’s talks thus not only affected the perception of the Holocaust, but also provided the vocabulary that for these American children to process the calamitous events two decades earlier.

Pool’s visit was extremely timely. Many schools were either preparing or performing the

Broadway adaption as a school play, and Pool received invitations to give these teenage cast members a firsthand account of what war in Europe had actually been like.21 Many asked her how accurately

Anne Frank was portrayed in the adaptions. Yet to a reporter from Ypsilanti High School, Pool explained that she had actually seen neither of them. ‘I am completely unable to go and look at a

181 portrayal of things still so much a painful reality to me.’ Maybe she would watch it, ‘[s]omeday, perhaps, but I am not yet ready.’22 Still, she came quite close to seeing it a couple of times:

The nearest I’ve ever got to the play was at a college near Detroit where the set for the play was

set up on the stage on which I spoke to [the] reassembly and among them to the people who

were going to act the play.23

Many did not seem to realize that Pool did not want to see the play for an obvious reason: because it would bring up traumatic memories about the war. This often led to awkward and insensitive situations. In Wyandotte, for instance, a suburb of Detroit, where a local theater group was just rehearsing the play. The organization thought it would be entertaining to ‘stir memories in the heart of Dr. Rosey E. Pool’ by confronting her with an Anne Frank look-a-like with the words: ‘Dr. Pool, may I present Anne Frank.’24 Both the reporter and the audience of two hundred seemed a bit disappointed that Pool did not burst out in tears. And this was not the only time such surprises came her way. Pool met two other ‘Anne Franks’: one in Detroit and, incongruously, a blonde one in

Kalamazoo, although ‘neither of them’ looked ‘anyway like her,’ Pool remarked in shocked relief.25

The actress from Kalamazoo remembered that Pool was very ‘reserved’ when they briefly met. ‘We didn’t have much in common other than Anne.’26 By now Pool had come to understand that the Anne

Frank story was convenient to get her foot between the door. But in order to show to American society what she thought was relevant to them remained a challenge.

182 Figure 7.3 Rosey Pool (middle) together with unidentified Figure 7.4 Rosey Pool together with man and Priscilla Koestner-Swiat (freshman of Nazareth Anna Renna who played Anne Frank. College in Kalamazoo, Michigan), who played Anne Frank in Photograph probably taken at Jackson a local production of the Civic Players, March 1959. The High School (Detroit, Michigan), 15 book they are holding is possibly The Diary of a Young Girl. December 1959. Source: Sussex. Photograph probably taken at Kalamazoo College (Kalamazoo, Michigan), 16 October 1959. Source: Sussex.

Part of the problem was that Pool’s name did not bring in audiences, but the name ‘Anne

Frank’ did. ‘Dear Doctor,’ one pupil from Ypsilanti bluntly wrote: ‘I can not say that I am a long time admirer of yours, nor can I claim to be an ardent fan. I have not even read any of your books. The truth is that I hadn’t heard of you before today.’27 The ambitious Pool became frustrated that people only came to see ‘Anne Frank’s teacher,’ and not her. ‘You came not to hear me speak,’ Pool said in

Kalamazoo, Michigan, in October 1959, ‘but to hear a person who knew a child who means very much to you. It is still a miracle to me.’28

Clearly such comments of painful ignorance and neglect did not bring out the best in Pool.

One might expect that she would say that Anne Frank was brilliant and that her own classes had been crucial in the girl’s development. But instead Pool shocked her audiences by saying that she actually barely remembered that ‘unremarkable child.’29 And from there on her recollections became even more unflattering and unkind. ‘I don’t think the diary is an artistic work,’ she was often quoted,30 while she also remarked that the girl had been of ‘average intelligence’ and that she ‘wasn’t charming,’ 183

‘not pretty,’ and also ‘catty.’31 Some remarks were unnecessarily cruel, like that Anne Frank was ‘a little imp’ or that her ‘head was large for her body.’32 On numerous occasions Pool also stressed how jealous Anne Frank had been of her sister, Margot, who was ‘everybody’s darling’33 while Anne was the ‘ugly duckling.’ Such memories may be partly accurate, but they say something about Pool herself too. As remembering takes place in the present, versions of the past change with every recall and are rephrased to suit the changed present.34 And if these comments proved anything, it was probably that it was actually Pool herself who envied Anne Frank most.

Yet, then again, Pool easily switched to defending the girl, making her appear as a sort of

Jekyll and Hyde. Apart from the nasty remarks, most of Pool’s memories seemed to have been derived from the diary itself. Or rather, from American readings of the diary. Pool said that ‘[s]unshine, not poison comes from the pages’ and that Anne Frank ‘never uttered a word of hatred,’ contradicting her earlier insults about Anne Frank35 As the first translator she must have known that the diary was actually full of sneers towards almost everybody in the secret annex. Yet as her tour progressed, Pool’s choice of words became suspiciously consistent with the forgiveness that the young girl had come to represent in the US. Perhaps she received too much criticism about her approach, or perhaps it was the positivity of most Americans, but after one month in Detroit she suddenly remembered one incident from Amsterdam during the early 1940s:

We were to have a particularly difficult lesson one day, and I thought it best to separate the little

classroom gangs. I remember saying to my assistant: ‘Now when the Frank children come in, you

put Margot in front so everyone can see her - and I’ll put Anne in [the] back where she can see

everyone.’36

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Pool’s own recollections thus gradually mixed with the movie-version of Anne Frank: observing, quirky, and innocent. And yet also such memories, whether true or not, shifted the attention towards herself. ‘[I]f she had one obsession,’ Paul Breman, a disgruntled collaborator of Pool (see also chapter

5), scoffed, ‘it was to always be centre-stage in a spotlight.’37 However spiteful Breman may have been, there was some truth in that. Pool liked to be the center of all the attention, but, to give her a bit more credit, Pool was fighting for a good cause, although not in ways that might seem inappropriate to contemporary standards.

Anne Frank’s story continued to mutate, mostly by Hollywood, and Pool simply felt the need to give a more down-to-earth opinion on the subject. Her mean comments thus also had a purpose: she wanted to give a more realistic and accurate account of Anne Frank, in an attempt to make her more human. Pool said that she refused ‘to interpret something into now immortal Anne that isn’t there,’38 including saint-like qualities that she was attributed because of her suffering. She was not a saint, she was an ordinary girl, Pool kept repeating. There had been many who lived just like her and died the way she did. And if there was one message in her diary, it was that ‘[s]uffering is not a virtue,’

Pool said. ‘It is no one’s privilege to suffer.’39

Pool’s message was mostly targeted at white audiences. Probably in an attempt to make her own story more ‘universal,’ Pool did not position herself as Jewish. In fact, she often, puzzlingly, outright denied being Jewish. Perhaps she did not want to be categorized as a Jewish speaker, but more broadly she also believed that ‘race’ was an artificial construct that she refused to comply to. One of the few times Pool specifically addressed a Jewish-only audience was at a Chicago chapter of

Hadassah, a women’s Zionist organization, where she spoke in early December 1959. There, her talk became part of a fundraising event for shelters for young children in Israel. Coincidentally it was also the only event that was endorsed by Anne’s father, Otto Frank, who wrote that the cause would have had Anne’s ‘wholehearted championship, I am certain.’40 Whether Pool liked it or not, these Jewish 185

organizations were perhaps her most welcoming audiences. At another occasion in Temple Beth

Emeth at Wilmington, Delaware, a tape recording of her talk was made, which was afterwards used

‘almost daily’ in meetings.41 But she was preaching to the choir here while she rather focused on issues that stung. The real problem of the US could not be found in the North, she believed, and she had to go to the Deep South in order to do her work.

Going South

Short after New Year’s Eve 1960, Pool continued her US journey in the South, the cradle of African

American culture. With the money she made with her northern talks - she made $1220, a little over

$10,000 by today’s standards42 - she was now at liberty to not only mobilize public opinion on her own terms, but also to scout aspiring Black poets for a new poetry anthology. This is how the idea was born of a tour across historically Black colleges and universities (HBCUs). This was easier said than done, however, as most of these colleges had extremely limited budgets.43 So when Pool started to contact colleges from her London home, she offered them guest lectures against an optional fee, as long as they could provide accommodation and arrange for her travels.44 Her friend and secondary

Fulbright contact person, Professor Mozell Hill from Atlanta University,45 advised her to contact the

United Negro College Fund (UNCF). This fund oversaw dozens of private HBCUs in the South and could reach thus far more colleges and perhaps even cover some of her travel costs.46 The answer she received exceeded her expectations: a three-month trip along 22 colleges in ten different states, fully sponsored by the UNCF.

The scope and length of this college tour was unprecedented and unparalleled in the history of the UNCF.47 From January to March 1960 Pool zigzagged through the South (see Figure 7.5).

The order seems illogical ‒ she flew from Tennessee to North Carolina, then to Mississippi before

186 again returning to Tennessee. Yet it does make sense through the lens of American traditions of philanthropy, altruism, and fundraising.48 Both this Fund and their associated HBCUs were largely dependent on gifts from governmental institutions, charities, and individual donations. Every year the

UNCF organized nation-wide appeals for financial support, which provided financial stability to all their colleges.49 Pool’s southern tour must be seen as part of such UNCF appeals. Her tour included no less than fifteen domestic flights, which must have cost a fortune. Yet the Fund probably saw it as an investment for the future which would outweigh the costs in the long run. The UNCF not only tried to reach African American, but also white and Jewish audiences.50 After each talk UNCF folders and return subscription envelopes were distributed, all in the hope to raise money from organizations and individuals alike.51

Figure 7.5 Map of Rosey Pool’s UNCF tour in the US South, from January to March 1960.

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The UNCF’s choice for visiting scholars was ideologically motivated. Their fellows preferably broadened the worldviews of their students, but also supported the Fund’s ideals of racial equality and emancipation. Bearing this in mind, Pool was an ideal speaker with her double specialty of African American poetry as well as Anne Frank. The Fund probably hoped that ‘Anne Frank’s teacher’ who criticized segregation would be an instant success, and the many headlines she made are proof of this. The visits of Pool were also used to create more lasting PR materials. The colleges were asked for photographs that ‘show Dr. Pool chatting with students in an informal setting,’ often with meticulous instructions: ‘Please (…) not more than five or six students with Dr. Pool.’52 Such visual material kept its missionary value, long after Pool had left.

Figure 7.6 Rosey Pool with unidentified Figure 7.7 Rosey Pool with unidentified students at Talladega College (Talladega, students at Talladega College (Talladega, Alabama), late March 1960. Source: Sussex. Alabama), late March 1960. Source: Sussex.

Pool received a warm welcome in the South, both through her talks about Black poetry and those about Anne Frank. Yet the context of racial segregation obviously gave an entirely different meaning to her message. Although Pool was well prepared as she had extensively read and heard about the South and figured, she knew what to expect, the ominous state of segregation nevertheless deeply shocked her. ‘It’s in everyone’s minds, on everyone’s lips. One just can’t get away from it,’ she

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wrote.53 The ‘whites’ and ‘colored’ signs instantly reminded her of the ‘race madness’ she had experienced herself in Nazi occupied Europe. In hindsight those signs had only been a precursor to something much worse: the systematic destruction of European Jewry. Pool thought it was not unlikely that the US South would follow that same trajectory, and if it did, it was already in a shockingly advanced phase. ‘Prejudice doesn’t only hurt,’ Pool said, ‘it can kill.’54 And, referring to the

Holocaust she exclaimed: ‘It can happen here!’55

In the North she called upon individual responsibilities. Yet the situation down South was far more desperate, so she tried to convince people to act immediately. Both her own life story and that of Anne Frank were meant as wake-up calls to resist any kind of ‘anti-otherism,’ whether here or abroad.56 Pool was not the only one who suffered from a kind of ‘resistance fighters syndrome’: a compulsion to fight for the discriminated and the oppressed.57 But Pool’s urge to defend ‘others’ actually disclosed itself much earlier. Whether it was the way she tried to push the career of the Dutch blind poet Frits Tingen when she was just 22 years old, her help to German Jews when she was in her thirties, her resistance work during WWII, or her teaching of children who returned from hiding - the tendency to stand up for the marginalized and oppressed was a recurring theme in Pool’s life.

Much of her commitment to help others can be dated back to the time she was bullied as a child herself, when her peers made her feel diminished and vulnerable, and she perhaps came to see the world as a dangerous place.58 This experience fueled her activism ever since: she wanted to be the helping hand she had so desperately wanted when she was young.

This motivation did not prevent Pool from falling into some of the pitfalls related to altruism, including (over)identification with the victim or working out one’s problems of the past in the present.

Another danger for ‘do-gooders’ is that their work might require a fair amount of masochism or even narcissism to keep going, which is often marked by an often unconscious desire to stay in the ‘helper’

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position and to keep victims dependent on her.59 Pool’s action to help African Americans were perhaps sincere to her - but it was also a role that she desperately desired.

Little did she know that soon she would have entirely different discussions which greatly disempowered her or made herself a ‘victim’: discussions about the trustworthiness of Anne Frank’s diary. Despite her ever-growing popularity, the story of Anne Frank was surrounded by doubts and misunderstandings by the late 1950s. An important factor had been the lawsuit against Anne’s father by the American playwright Meyer Levin. This court case was settled in 1958 during which Otto

Frank was ordered to pay a financial compensation of $50,000.60 Although the lawsuit merely dealt with the intellectual property of the play, it created confusion. Among rightwing extremists this case was seized to show that the Holocaust was a ‘hoax,’ and supposedly part of a Zionist conspiracy to control the world’s finances. During the 1950s, American Holocaust deniers started to openly question the existence of extermination camps, and claimed that the number of six million murdered was a gross exaggeration. Although these bogus narratives were initially only found among fringe groups, they slowly worked their way into the mainstream.61 The Diary of a Young Girl became one of the deniers’ most popular targets.

Pool never directly encountered Holocaust deniers face-to-face. Yet, she certainly met people who were influenced by it. This happened for example after her talk at Xavier University, a predominantly Black college in New Orleans. This talk also attracted some reporters from white newspapers who wanted to confirm rumors that the diary was actually written by someone else. ‘I can vouch for every word of it,’ she answered. ‘I made the first English translation of Anne’s notes.’62 One argument of Holocaust deniers, that the writing was far too advanced for a teenage girl, had also found its way to these reporters, who confronted Pool with this supposed fact. Again, Pool forthrightly defended the work by saying that ‘Americans fail to realize that children in Western

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Europe are far ahead of American children in education.’63 Pool further explained that ‘[w]ar was to

Anne very much like a hot-house is to a plant. […] She matured very rapidly.’64

Such attacks on the veracity of the diary were not an exception. Pool said that ‘too often’ she bumped into people who doubted Anne wrote the diary. In Mississippi she rebutted the idea that

Otto Frank ‘was pushing Anne’s book for the money,’ a rumor that emanated from anti-Semitic prejudices about ‘greedy Jews.’ ‘[T]his is far from true,’ Pool said, claiming that all the revenues went to charities and Israel, which was indeed partly true.65 She was forced to defend the diary far more often in the South than in the North. Perhaps this was because in the South antisemitism always lured just below the surface.66 Sometimes this sentiment was mixed with southern resentment against northern establishments, but often it was simply a lack of knowledge, among whites and Blacks alike.

Unless one was particularly interested in European history, people did not get to grasp all the nuances of the story. Most of the people Pool encountered had only vaguely heard about a lawsuit against

Anne Frank’s father. Some had only heard that there was a play and a movie, and even sort of assumed that Anne Frank was a fictional character.

And although such misconceptions could be found all over the US, somehow they appeared most often in the South, on both sides of the color line. One Black journalist from Atlanta described

Pool as the ‘world famed author’ whose ‘best known book is diary by “Anne Frank” (…).’ [sic]67 As a result, Pool was constantly debunking myths and fighting misinformation. This seriously jeopardized her underlying goals of this tour: to convince African Americans to resist the ‘race madness,’ so that they would not make the same mistakes as Europeans Jews had done.

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Figure 7.8 Pool bowing during a lecture at Figure 7.9 Pool at Fisk University, January 1960. In Fisk University (Nashville, Tennessee), the background an artwork from Aaron Douglas is possibly together with ‘Miss Fisk.’ January visible. Source: Sussex. 1960. Source: Sussex.

Yet there were also triumphs in her attempts to fight prejudice, most notably at Fisk

University, a Black university in Nashville, Tennessee. There her talk ‘Anne Frank and Her Friends’ inspired Professor Robert Hayden to write a poem called ‘Belsen, Day of Liberation (for Rosey Pool).’

In a somewhat sentimental manner, Hayden described a young girl who witnessed the liberation of

Bergen-Belsen by African American soldiers: ‘They were so beautiful, and they were not afraid,’

Hayden imagined the girl as saying.68 Pool’s talk also inspired students and staff to perform the Anne

Frank play at Fisk as well, ‘because we wished to capitalize [on] the inspiration and enthusiasm your visit brought,’ one professor wrote to her.69

All this was taking place in the first months of 1960, when sit-ins were slowly spreading across the South. Pool suggested that she influenced Civil Rights activists as well. For example in

Greensboro, North Carolina, where a sit-in was going on at a local Woolworth store just when she arrived. Pool said she ‘vividly’ remembered discussions on the campus ‘whether or not direct action could indeed help the cause of the black man.’70 As Pool’s life story demonstrated that ‘direct action’

192 indeed did work, she happily and conveniently concluded that she had had a ‘small share in acting as an alarm clock to the great awakening,’71 with which she meant the Civil Rights Movement.

Of all the things this ‘alarm clock’ had to say, it were her comparisons of Nazism and the Jim

Crow system that stood out most. On numerous occasions Pool said that the Nazis introduced

‘segregation, persecution and racial discrimination’ in Europe72 - the choice of words was no coincidence. Someone who was partcularly inspired by Pool’s analogies was William Fowlkes, an

African American journalist working in Atlanta, Georgia. As managing editor for the Atlanta

Daily World, Fowlkes extensively covered Civil Rights activism, but also Pool’s seven-day stay in Atlanta in February 1960. In an article entitled ‘Author Pool Notes Similarity Of Nazi

Oppression, [and] Segregation’ he quoted Pool that she was frankly ‘surprised to find so many people in their right mind, living under oppression.’73 In another piece he quoted her again, saying that the

‘Southern ways’ were long overdue now that Hitler was crushed.74 Fowlkes recognized in Pool an ally and moral authority whose provocative comparisons exposed the hypocrisy and injustice of racial segregation. They allowed readers to comprehend racial oppression at home more thoroughly, he believed.

However, the Anne Frank story itself seemed insufficient to manifest such parallels with

African American audiences. Black newspapers rarely wrote about the girl, in great contrast to white newspapers, nor does it seem that the play was often performed at Black campuses, the one at Fisk was a notable exception. Although Anne Frank wrote in her diary that the transports of Jews reminded her of the ‘slave hunts of olden times,’ this single reference was insufficient to create a meaningful

Black/Jewish identification.75 Perhaps the story was despite it supposed universality too far removed from the perceptions of Black Southerners Pool encountered, especially after Anne Frank was ‘white- washed’ and de-Judaized in Hollywood as some would have it.76 The biggest stumble block, however, was that the story was not one of triumph. Yes, the girl had kept the moral high ground, but how

193 could that be of use to African Americans in a time when ‘direct action’ activism spread rapidly, one might argue. If any lesson was to be learned from the Diary, it was that passive resistance did actually not work. Especially revealing in this context is the way Pool was meticulously remembered by a Fisk student called Julius Lester, who also saw that there was basis for solidarity, but not for equivalence:

As I listen to her talk of a child hiding in an attic, […] I understand [Pool’s] accented words, but

they do not make sense. I do not know how to live with the knowledge of such evils and such

suffering. [...] I think about gas chambers and furnaces into which human beings were shoveled

like waste paper. [...] Being forced to ride at the back of a bus is not in the same realm of human

experience.77

Seen from this perspective Anne Frank was thus hardly inspiring to some African Americans. Julius

Lester remarked that the story turned him actually more inwards: ‘Why do I rage over and mourn for murdered European Jews as I never have for my own people?’ he asked himself.78 Likewise problematic in this American context was that Anne Frank’s diary generated attention for discriminated Jews, who were also considered white people in the 1960s. Her story and that of other

European Jews could thus also belittle and mitigate the daily oppression of African Americans.

Whatever discrimination they may have faced, they had never faced gas chambers. A Black/Jewish comparison could easily lead to discussions about which was ‘worse,’ and could thus counter Black emancipation. The Holocaust might have offered possibilities to make historical connections with colonialism, both metaphorically and literally, as theoreticians like W.E.B. Du Bois and Aimé Césaire proved during this period. These were authors that Pool was well acquainted with.79 The specific case of Anne Frank, however, often did not provide enough concrete material to make meaningful comparisons.

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Media circus

This chapter was largely based on two scrapbooks that Pool left behind in her archives. Resembling

‘the junk drawer found in kitchens and desks,’ as one historian put it,80 scrapbooks are simultaneously

‘magnetic and impossible’ to historians, both extremely personal as well as painfully biased.81 With newspaper clippings, letters, business cards, and photographs, these scrapbooks not only reveal one of the highlights of Pool’s life and career, but also detail her own vision of these events and how she wished to be seen and remembered. The general impression of these two scrapbooks is that people all across the US must have adored her lectures as well as her benevolent presence. Browswing through these scrapbooks, leads us to suspect that she had made a lasting impression.

Figure 7.10 Page from scrapbook, focused on New Orleans, February 1960. Source: Sussex.

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Some might have been overwhelmed by the media circus around Anne Frank, but not Pool: she was flattered by the momentarily attention, and she presented herself as a loveable educator who was never too tired for a photograph. Although she found it highly emotional to talk about Anne

Frank as well as to see Jim Crow signs, she believed that her own personal ‘heartbreak’ had ‘a good purpose,’82 and ought to be an inspiration to African Americans. This might have been true on an individual level, but generally speaking a more problematic issue arose.

Pool had actually made quite a profit with this tour, especially in the North, and barely had to pay for anything herself in the South. None of that money was going to charities, for instance the

Anne Frank Foundation. Although Pool liked to claim she was still in touch with Otto Frank (which there is no sign of in their archives), he never uttered a word about this tour, and it is likely he was not amused that a former teacher of his daughter acted as an unauthorized spokesperson. Pool was the only former teacher of Anne Frank who did such a thing, while her bond with the young girl had not even been that good. However, because Pool downplayed and even ignored her own Jewish background, the accusation of cultural appropriation also pops up. At least on one occassion she was accused of making money over the back of a dead girl. ‘You trade a lot on Anne Frank’s name,’ one poet wrote to her in a furious letter. ‘I hope you have something of her soul and [that] all my suspicions are invalid.’83

Pool’s intentions were good, however. She went to the South to emphasize that Anne Frank had been an actual person, and not only to tell about the suffering of European Jews, but of that of fellow citizens of the world. However, by the 1960s Anne Frank had become a heroine, almost a saint-like figure, beyond human and there was little Pool could do to alter this image. Pool would rarely speak ever again about her former pupil in public. Later in life she even described Anne Frank’s fame as the result of ‘a morbid interest’ and ‘sensationalism’ that had little to do with sincere human interest.84 This went against her deep-rooted conviction that mutual understanding was the key to 196

change. On her next visits to the Deep South she decided to do things differently, starting in

Mississippi. ⌇⌇⌇

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Figure 8.1 Rosey Pool with students at Tougaloo College (near Jackson, Mississippi), February 1963. Twelve students participated in this class (not all pictured): Johnny Earl Chattman, Rubastine M. Clark, Lela Garner, Joyce Gatlin, Naomi Golf, Mary Ann Hall, Etta M. Jackson, Oteria Kincaid, Memphis Norman, Jutha Pinkston, Audrey Prentiss, William Francis Route, Evelyn Sadberry, Annie Belle Williams, Dianella Williams, and Melinda Lois Willis. Source: Sussex.

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CHAPTER 8: MISSISSIPPI SHADOWS OF THE HOLOCAUST OVER MISSISSIPPI

A TRAUMATIZED ‘OUTSIDE AGITATOR’ AT TOUGALOO COLLEGE

After her grand tour of 1959/1960, Pool was thrilled to go back to the Deep South. After a short stay in North Carolina, she returned to Tougaloo College near Jackson, Mississippi, in 1963. She had visited this college before for one week in early 1960. It was through her contact person, the German

Jewish refugee scholar Ernst Borinski, that she returned for an entire month in February 1963. Soon word got around that a Dutch scholar had arrived on campus, also among conservative pro- segregationists. Almost daily Pool received letters with ‘abusive and filthy words’ and angry phone calls.1 More than once white people spat at her feet when she went out for a stroll outside the campus.

Her first time in the South had been a ‘nightmare only comparable to about the same time I spent in nazi prisons and concentration camps;’2 the second time around was not much better. Nevertheless, she still thought of Tougaloo as her ‘favourite Southern College,’3 and apparently loved to go back.

Why did Pool return, as Mississippi was a dangerous place back then and re-activated her war trauma? And what was it exactly that she wanted to achieve ‘down South’ with her memories of the

Holocaust and her making comparisons with Nazi occupied Europe?

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Figure 8.2 The city of Jackson, Mississippi, with Tougaloo in the north, 1962. Source: Old Maps Online.

During the sixties a cultural revolution swept the United States: protests against the Vietnam war, marches for women’s rights, and psychedelic music heralded a new era. Yet Mississippi was as far removed from the swinging sixties as you can get. This state had historically been a rich cotton producing area that relied on enslaved Black laborers, and throughout the twentieth century the majority of the population remained African American. In the Jim Crow era every aspect of society was rigidly segregated. This segregation seriously affected the Civil Rights of Blacks, who were systematically subordinated and also terrorized by the Ku Klux Klan, the White Citizens’ Council, and the Mississippi State Sovereignty Commission. Perhaps the worst place was the Mississippi

Delta, which was widely known as the ‘most Southern place on earth.’ This is probably also why this area became the center of Civil Rights activism in the 1960s.

In late January 1963 Pool again found herself just outside the Mississippi Delta, in what she called ‘one of the many ghettos of the South.’4 This time Pool was not sponsored, but going there under her ‘own steam.’ 5 All she asked were travel fares, daily expenses, and Tougaloo’s hospitality.

Since Tougaloo was in dire need of qualified personnel, the college was happy to oblige to this request. 200 Situated in a rural and quiet area, Pool romantically described the Tougaloo campus with ‘sad spanish moss’ dangling from the trees and red cardinal birds flying all around.6 Tougaloo College was also an enclave and not as stereotypically southern as its surroundings. Pool called the private college ‘that remarkable bit of free world in Mississippi.’7 With its liberal outlook and integrated faculty (and a handful of white students8) this Black college became a refuge for human rights activists from all over the US. Pool called it the ‘only “terra franca” in Mississippi,’ where black and white were able to ‘eat, drink, study, discuss, walk and sing together.’9

To liberals, Tougaloo College was an ‘oasis of freedom,’10 but pro-segregationists thought it was ‘alien and unwanted,’ a ‘cancer college’ that they wanted to get rid of.11 By the mid-1960s

Tougaloo College had become so (in)famous that a state official called it a ‘hangout for Communists and fellow travelers’ and - with much sense for drama and exaggeration - a ‘haven for queers, quacks and quirks.’12 The white college president Adam Daniel Beittel (in office 1960-1964) did little to counter this image; on the contrary. Although he surely was ‘no wild-eyed radical’ as one historian put it,13 he allowed and occasionally encouraged student activism. After a group of Tougaloo students were arrested in 1961 after a sit-in at the local library - the ‘Tougaloo Nine’ as they became known - he visited them in prison. Beittel even joined the famous 1963 sit-in at another local Woolworth’s

(more on that later). Tougaloo students could even earn college credits for their work in the movement.14 So this was clearly not your everyday Black southern college.

Ernst Borinski’s ‘stigma management’

Wherever Pool arrived in the South, she first familiarized herself with the local rules, regulations, and

‘maze of local by-laws’ which were meant to keep Blacks ‘in their place.’15 Here in Mississippi she quickly found someone who could explain the local laws of ‘race madness,’16 Ernst Borinski. He was

201 born in 1901 in Katowice, Silesia, then still part of the German Empire. Raised in a secular Jewish family, he had been active in Social Democrat groups and labor unions. Borinski obtained his PhD in Law in Berlin - around the same time Pool’s ex-husband studied Law there, although they probably never met. He fled to the United States in 1938, serving in the US army before finally ending up in

Tougaloo in 1947, where he specialized in Sociology of Law. The signs saying ‘whites only’ looked uncomfortably familiar to him, although he now found himself on the other side. ‘I had no difficulties understanding oppression,’ he remarked in an interview,17 and saw great likeness between the White

Citizens’ Council with the Nazis. ‘[W]hen I see the kinds of laws you have here,’ Borinski told his students, ‘I assure you it cannot last very long.’18 Borinski was convinced that in Nazi Germany the problem had been that ‘good people’ were ‘not getting involved.’19 He made it his life goal to awaken the (white) ‘neutrals’ in the Deep South by exposing the injustices of Jim Crow, but also by showing the students that societies could easily exist without segregation. Since it was impossible to take all of his students outside of Mississippi, Borinski vicariously brought a freer world to his students with his

Social Science Laboratory - ‘The Lab,’ or, as he pronounced it with his thick German accent: Ze

Lab.20

202 Figure 8.3 Ernst Borinski (third from the right) with unidentified students and possibly staff members, early 1963. Source: Sussex.

This way, a wide variety of cutting-edge speakers came to Tougaloo, some famous, some not so much, but all with an unorthodox perspective to current affairs. Famous speakers included diplomat and Nobel Peace Prize winner Ralph Bunche, writer James Baldwin, SNCC activist Kwame Ture

[a.k.a. Stokely Carmichael], and folk singer Joan Baez. ‘Meeting people at Tougaloo College who are now historical figures was commonplace,’ one student nostalgically recalled.21 Pool herself held three talks here, two in 1960: one called ‘Anne Frank, One of My Children,’ the other one ‘My Five Years of Underground Work in Nazi-Occupied Holland.’ During her second visit, in 1963, Pool was finally able to talk about what she loved most: ‘The Poetry of American Negroes.’22 Unlike the rest of

Mississippi, these meetings were interracial. Borinski would ask his (Black) Tougaloo students to come in early and occupy every other chair around the table. As a result white guests, who came in on

203 time, had no other option than to sit among Blacks at one table. For many whites this was the first time interacted with a Black person who was not their maid or cleaner.23

When Pool and Borinski met for the first time in 1960, they immediately hit it off. Both had lived in Berlin in the 1930s, both had been Social Democrats, and both opposed segregation.

According to Borinski, however, it was also their shared ‘Jewishness’ that brought them together: he admired Pool’s ‘subtle humor’ which he found profoundly Jewish.24 In return Pool was inspired by how Borinski made practical use of his own background, which he himself called ‘positive marginality’ or ‘stigma management.’25 We might now interpret this as using intersectionality to achieve social change. Local newspapers denounced Borinski as a ‘foreigner’ and a ‘communist,’ and his thick

German accent was simply unable to get rid of, no matter how hard he tried. He thus decided to turn the tables and utilize this foreignness to ‘momentarily disarm […] Mississippi’s system of racial apartheid,’ as he called it.26 ‘I played their game very carefully,’ he said, to ‘sort of blunder through’ etiquettes of segregation.27 With his disarming approach, he could ask thought-provoking questions which liberal Americans would not even dare to ask. ‘We went in a downtown drugstore and sat down,’ Borinski remembered, ‘and I said, “I want ice cream.” They looked at the black students and said, “I cannot serve them.” I said, “why do you not serve them?” and they said, “You know.” I said,

“I don’t know anything.”’28 By playing the naïve outsider he critically questioned segregation, one diner at a time.

Pool, perhaps inspired by him, also decided to use humor to fight segregation and prejudice.

She remembered how she one time passed by a launderette in North Carolina, probably near

Greensboro, where she saw a sign on the window: MONDAY: WHITE ONLY. ‘It was ludicrous,’ she said. ‘Idiotic. Maddening. Filthy. The South hit me good and hard.’ So she decided to enter. She asked the employee a question, ‘faking’ a heavy Dutch accent (that she had worked on so hard to conceal), and then naïvely asked: ‘Please, I am from Europe, from Holland. There are many things I

204 cannot understand in America.’ She continued: ‘We have washing machines too at home and we always hear that American machinery is better than ours,’ followed by the punchline: ‘Then why can you not wash coloured things on Mondays?’ The woman behind the counter was unaware that she was being mocked, and Pool quoted her in ‘vernacular’ as if she was a rare species: ‘O, honey - child, you don’t understand... This don’t mean that you cain’t wash coloureds, it means that coloured cain’t wash.’ In an attempt to further explain local customs, the clerk remarked that some white families simply could not afford a maid and had to do their washing themselves. ‘So... naturally they don’t want to [do] that when there’s coloured around,’ she said. ‘Naturally?’ Pool asked. ‘Why should that be so natural?’ The woman responded: ‘Look honey, that is our way of life... perhaps it isn’t quite right. I’ve never thought about these things before...’29

Pool wrote short stories about such experiences, which she perhaps hoped to publish as a book of essays afterwards. These stories were peppered with anecdotes like these: funny, short tales about random encounters with ordinary people that revealed the daily, yet tenacious practices of discrimination. During such personal encounters, Pool tried to fight segregation by using jokes as eye-openers or, at the very least, the small lifting of an eyelid. This humoristic approach, which Pool shared with Borinski, ‘didn’t solve anything’ according to one skeptical eyewitness.30 Yet perhaps they did contribute somewhat to laying the groundwork to desegregate people’s minds. Although it is impossible to say whether this particular encounter truly happened or had any effect at all, it is certainly in line with Pool’s character: witty, big-mouthed, fighting against prejudices against all the odds. The most important thing was that these encounters (fake or not) did make for great stories which she would repeat tirelessly wherever she went, one friend remembered, often with a

‘mischievous twinkle in her eye.’31

205 Creative writing as ‘group therapy’

But Pool came to Mississippi to teach Creative Writing. Although she was formally merely trained as an elementary school teacher, she had seriously spiced up her CV by the late 1950s, claiming to have both a PhD, which was very unlikely as we have seen, and the even higher D.Litt., even more unlikely, from the University of Berlin. To circumvent discrepancies she turned her CV into a non- chronological hodgepodge of all kinds of things, including friendships with famous Black intellectuals, her escape from a Nazi transit camp, and her personal contacts with Anne Frank. All this could not fully hide that formally she had zero experience teaching Creative Writing, except for

‘teaching literature (American, Negro) by radio and […] public readings.’32 This might have given away that teaching was secondary to her actual goal: to fight injustices. This goal did not, however, materialize into a well-defined plan. Perhaps this was why she kept the curriculum for her Creative

Writing class as broad as possible. ‘I must make a confession,’ she wrote, ‘when I arrived at Tougaloo my ideas about the course were as vague as everybody else’s.’33

The class covered four weeks, with six meetings of two hours per week, in which students were encouraged to do one thing: write. What Pool liked best was that these youngsters ‘still allow us free insight into their vulnerable souls, their anxieties, their dreams.’34 She fondly remembered her student William Route, an African American teenager from a poor family of cotton laborers. He inquired whether male students were also allowed to take this course. They were - and he enrolled.

‘[William] Route appeared for the first discussion with an armful of copybooks full of stammered stories and page-long poems,’ Pool remembered. ‘He didn’t say a word all afternoon [and] left all his copybooks on my table.’35 His dialect ‘sounded like a foreign language’ to Pool, and his writing skills were likewise unpolished. Pool had great trouble simply understanding his writings, which she had to read out loud to herself. Sentences like ‘granpop was not a polittion nor could he read or rite but time had

206 eddicate him in wisdom,’i were written largely phonetically in a southern dialect. Pool called it ‘negro language’ or ‘Black American.’36 But by the end of the course the student was allegedly able to write a full paper in perfect English - not because of her, but, she said, as a ‘result of the workshop’s “group therapy.”’37

The term ‘group therapy’ is remarkable, and it was no coincidence that she used this term.

One of the underlying goals of this course was to ‘observe young people who want to express and perhaps [even] liberate themselves while writing.’38 Although these students did not literally liberate themselves from segregation through writing, they were certainly able to (temporarily) step outside the framework of Jim Crow, a system that not only decided over their bodies but, as the Supreme

Court had concluded some years before, also invaded people’s minds and created a deep sense of inferiority and self-hatred.39 Pool therefore envisioned her classes as deeply therapeutic: ‘writing is difficult and [a] wonderfully rewarding job, a healing job too.’40 Students were challenged to define themselves through writing and to share their reflections with the group. ‘After a while a situation develops which can best be compared to psychiatric group therapy,’ Pool wrote.41

In the 21st century, the idea of writing one’s life narrative is firmly embedded in a wide range of therapeutic practices, but in the early 1960s this approach was unorthodox. It was somewhat related to ‘bibliotherapy,’ in which the reading of (specific) books was used, albeit never with students.42

Perhaps Pool had been in therapy herself or had learned about such methods through her partner, radiologist Isa Isenburg who worked at a London hospital. Or perhaps Pool based her methods on participatory European education models that were practiced in socialist youth groups, like the collective Links Richten (‘Aim Left’) in which her friend Jef Last had played a central role. They declared in the early 1930s that art should be ‘used as a weapon in the class struggle,’ serving the i According to Pool the original sentence was this: ‘grandpop was not a politician nor could he read or write but time had educated him in wisdom.’ 207 proletariat, and that self-expression of laborers was essential to create awareness.43 Or perhaps she learned such methods during her time at the Karl Marx Schule in Berlin. It can be assumed that her teaching methods were influenced by the Old Left and were utterly subversive and radical, meant to activate the oppressed and to agitate.

It would take some time before her students were convinced of the value of self-discovery.

Most of them were initially utterly shy but after a few sessions ‘the creativity’ could ‘hardly be dammed,’ Pool proudly remarked.44 ‘Traumatic experiences just poured out of them.’45 That was ironic since she did not deal with her own trauma nor was she trained as a psychotherapist. Yet she envisioned her own job was to simply listen. This was less innocent than it appeared on first sight, for to many of these African American students she might have been one of the few whites that actually listened to what they had to say. By the late 1960s Pool had come to believe that it was not just being

Black under Jim Crow, but being Black in America that could create severe psychological damage.46

She therefore saw herself more as a therapist than a teacher: ‘My creative writing class […] was something like an analyst’s couch to the Kids.’47

The exercises she gave lacked a clear focus, although it seems that the students were encouraged to write about their experiences with discrimination. Most of the writings of Pool’s students were outings of frustrations with segregation and racism. Dianella Williams, a 19-year-old sociology student, was ‘well acquainted with the vocabulary of discrimination,’ Pool wrote, and with all kinds of abusive terms for different types of minorities associated with it. Pool was amazed how her poem ‘Racist’ challenged the ‘melting pot’ ideal of American society:48

What is he?

How does he look?

Is he a cracker,

208 A dago, a spook?

What is his I.Q.?

What shade is his hue?

And could a Paddyii

be a racist too?

I really don’t know;

and it’s strictly taboo

to say that a racist

could even be you.49

Pool reprinted the poem in her 1968 book Lachen om niet te huilen. This was a remarkable acknowledgement of the student’s eloquent experiences with racism, and as she shared their work in her many publications she seriously boosted the self-esteem of these students. In her archives countless thank-you notes can be found, like one written by a student called Rhoda M. Voth: ‘Thank you for all you’ve done here on campus,’ she wrote, ‘not only for widening our horizons and stimulating our imaginations, but especially for bolstering our morales.’50

ii A ‘cracker’ means white; a ‘dago’ is slang for South European immigrants; a ‘Paddy’ (derived from

Saint Patrick) stands for Irish; and ‘spook’ is a derogative term for African Americans. 209

Figure 8.4 Rosey Pool together with Doris A. Peace, then a Tougaloo sophomore, late January or early February 1960. Source: Atlanta University Center.

Mississippi or Nazi-occupied Europe?

Then again, the situation was not so unique as Pool liked us to believe. Pool’s struggle against what she called American ‘apartheid,’51 together with her socialist-inspired methods, could perhaps only be practiced in Tougaloo and nowhere else in Mississippi. This was a private and elitist UNCF college which enjoyed relative autonomy, and the college administration was in favor of movement activism.

Students were far more eager to speak out and were more accustomed to interacting with whites on campus.52 Pool herself also admitted that this college was somewhat atypical and was ‘more militant in respect of the Civil Rights struggle.’53

Despite these students’ relative privileged position, the Black population of Mississippi was far from liberated. Blacks experienced intimidation, and Black activists who opposed this system were harassed or even disappeared. Pool felt that she took ‘a giant step back’ to the years 1940-1945, and again began to think ahead about the implications of every single step in a paranoid manner.54 This paranoia was not completely unfounded. After all, this was still Mississippi. African Americans faced

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serious dangers, including police brutality. Whites who went to the Tougaloo campus were often tapped, followed, or threatened. In 1964, for example, a burning cross was placed on the lawn of Ed

King, Tougaloo’s young white campus minister.55 By the mid-1960s the campus entrance was flocked with cars from the pro-segregationist Sovereignty Commission who meticulously wrote down license plate numbers, meant to intimate or terrorize whoever entered the campus.56 Rosey Pool was especially susceptible to this menacing atmosphere, and it immediately reminded her of Nazi Berlin and occupied Amsterdam.

While at Tougaloo, Pool found ‘a daily ration’ of letters in her mailbox, ‘typed, hand-written, or composed of cut-outs from newspapers,’ filled with ‘abusive and filthy words.’ And ‘[w]hen my telephone rang, I could hardly identify myself to the caller before being interrupted by a wave of similar idiomax [sic] as expressed in the notes.’ Occasionally the intimidations turned into actual violence. ‘Once or twice a few pebbles happened to fly through my window; one time even a small bullet’ reached her room, ‘which most fortunately got stuck high up in the wall.’57 It is not hard to image why the Mississippian atmosphere brought her mentally back to WWII, and she experienced upsurges of her trauma:

[A] car stopped outside my ‘dorm,’ just when I had dozed off into much-needed sleep. The sound

of those brakes must have touched exactly that spot of my sleep-conscious mind which has stored

memories of fear caused by cars stopping outside our house in Holland during the years 1940-

45. I half-awoke. I was at home in my room on [the Nieuwe] Prinsengracht in Amsterdam. I

thought: ‘Here they are,’ sat up in bed and listened for approaching jack-boots.58

Pool and her parents were arrested on the Nieuwe Prinsengracht during a razzia in May 1943, the last place where she and her family had lived more or less peacefully. Shortly afterwards both her

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parents, brother and sister-in-law were deported to Sobibór and murdered. Bearing in mind that

Pool’s first visit to Tougaloo already brought back war memories (‘1940-45 haunts me,’ she then wrote upon arrival59), Pool might have used her return visit to Mississippi as a form of therapy for herself as well, a kind of regression therapy, in which she relived old experiences of persecution in the hope to give them a new meaning and to actively bring about a different less horrific outcome. Her story about the car on her doorstep shows how intrusive traumatic thoughts could invade her brain at all times, even twenty years later. The war was over and many people she had known had simply vanished. This also left her unable to recover the past, or to conclude unfinished narratives.60 Her self-imposed regression therapy was perhaps a result of a (conscious or unconscious) compulsion to repeat past patterns.61 Mississippi became the place where she could access or expose herself to a situation that bore resemblances to her past.

‘She cannot stop now’

It is impossible to say how open Pool was to others about her own trauma and the Holocaust in general. Had traumatic experiences ‘poured out’ of her as they did with her students in their writings?

In general, the handful of German Jewish refugee scholars who worked at HBCUs actually hardly talked about their pasts, with Borinski being a notable exception.62 There are also no known cases of

Dutch refugees at HBCUs. Pool’s outspokenness to journalists certainly set her apart, although her public appearances might have been utterly different from how she acted in a classroom. We can only retrace her steps as a therapist-teacher through her own words, the memories of students, and some contemporary accounts that she kept in her scrapbooks. One of the most intimate recollections comes from a student named Audrey Prentiss, who carefully observed Pool:

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When I first met her she was in a classroom trying to arrange a schedule for a class in which I

had enrolled. During this time I really observed [her], noticing her little movements and the

dignified air that seemed to hover around her. [...] Her eyes to me was the most impressive thing

about her. No, not because of their shape, size or color but because of what I could see in their

depths and because of what they seemed to tell me. I don’t really know what started me to notice

her eyes but after I started it became a regular habit for me. Nor did I know the experiences and

trying things through which those eyes had traveled and the sights they had seen.63

Prentiss wrote that she was deeply impressed by Pool’s story of her work in the Dutch underground movement ‘that transfered Jews to other parts of the country and particularly Holland […] during the annihilation of the Jews in the twentieth century.’ But what impressed her the most was Pool’s embodiment of resilience: ‘As she told the story to the class, a little sadness would slip into her voice but her eyes would twinkle and convey their message to her mouth which would eventually smile.’64

With Pool’s presence it seems that the shadow of the past, especially that of the Holocaust, was cast over Tougaloo. The plain horror of that past was perhaps a burden to some students. Yet more often it seems that recent memories of the Holocaust were strategically evoked as a historical precedent of social exclusion to further the cause of Civil Rights.65 Pool certainly envisioned this as well, albeit on a local level. By telling her story here, the oppression of African Americans was placed in a wider historical context of race in the western world.

As previously mentioned, by the mid-1960s Pool had formulated her theory about ‘anti- otherisms’ - the thesis that weaved together systematic exclusion, whether this was anti-Black racism or anti-Semitism. In her 1968 book Lachen om niet te huilen, Pool described racism as ‘one of the most fatal diseases of mankind.’ She believed racism was ‘not caused by the existence of various races and cultures,’ but ‘by our failure to accept their realities.’66 From her background in the socialist movement she believed that races - like classes or nations - were artificially constructed divisions to keep the 213

working class divided. It were these divisions that kept a revolution at a distance. Yet through her interest in the ‘Black issue,’ she tried to connect this with essentialist views about race and different experiences. Her personal library shows that her beliefs were influenced by different streams of thought. Works from Leopold Senghor and Aimé Césaire taught her about Négritude, a global Black consciousness. From there it was a small step towards W.E.B. Du Bois’s ‘double consciousness,’ which argued both a double-edged identity as well as a heightened sensitivity. All these different ideas led her to believe that people were essentially not born different, but that they were made different through their own experiences as individuals or as a group. And from this framework she saw remarkable similarities between Jews and Blacks, as they were ‘both groups that had to endure many hardships over the centuries.’67

On a more personal level, Pool’s attempt to consciously use her own trauma to inspire others was certainly a sign of posttraumatic growth68 that she might have been unable to do a few years before. What certainly helped was that here she received recognition about her experiences, far more than in Europe. Yes, the South was a ‘nightmare,’ but her students were everything she wished for.

Here she encountered compassion and respect, and the students found her resilience inspiring. In that respect her ‘therapy sessions’ were not only ‘healing’ to others, but to herself as well. ‘The students began to sympathize with [Pool],’ her former student Audrey Prentiss recalled, as Pool ‘told of her experiences in the concentration camps, prisons and as a leader in the underground movement.’69 She also remembered how Pool created a continuity of anti-Nazi resistance and the ongoing Civil Rights

Movement, and how she imagined her own role in this narrative: ‘[Pool] has hope, faith and a will that says she must carry on,’ because, Prentiss wrote, ‘she cannot stop now.’70

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Participating in CORE passive resistance classes

The goodwill Pool encountered perhaps encouraged her to ‘continue’ her former resistance work against fascism. When she arrived in Tougaloo for the second time in January 1963, a boycott was held against white shop owners who welcomed Black customers, but refused to hire Blacks. Pool soon became involved with the boycott, albeit behind the scenes, and by helping with the distribution of boycott leaflets in the Jackson area (see Figure 8.5).71 She also spent many of her ‘evenings in Core

[Congress of Racial Equality (CORE)] Classes for passive Resistance or in NAACP meetings.’72 It is possible that her personal friendship with NAACP president Arthur Spingarn, whom we already encountered in chapter 5, was an advantage. Only a few days after she returned, president

Beittel invited her to a private meeting at his home with students and a NAACP representative.

Pool found such meetings deeply inspiring: ‘Black and White together... we shall overcome one day my students used to sing on those evenings,’ Pool wrote,73 echoing the famous spiritual gospel song that became an anthem of the Civil Rights Movement.

Figure 8.5 Leaflet boycott Jackson, Mississippi, ca. January 1963. Source: Pool, Lachen om niet te huilen 56.

215 The most famous direct protest action in the Jackson area, however, took place after Pool had left.

The sit-in at Woolworth’s in May 1963 received nationwide attention because of the shameless brutality and violence against the protesters. A group of viciously jeering white men smeared peaceful protesters with mustard and ketchup before burning them with cigarettes. These protesters were students and professors from Tougaloo College, including one of Pool’s former students: Memphis

Norman. Norman came from a poor family of rural sharecroppers but the promising student soon became Ernst Borinski’s assistant. Borinski ‘had a very profound influence on my life in terms of race relations,’ Norman later recalled.74 Borinski’s impact and the developing Civil Rights Movement drove the initial reluctant Norman into the movement, and eventually this particular sit-in as well.

Unfortunately he was also the one who was most severely beaten (Figure 8.7). Pool defiantly reprinted the report of this former student of hers in her 1965 anthology Ik ben de Nieuwe Neger:

[S]omeone struck me from my back with a blow that caused me to fall from my stool. I fell to

the floor half-conscious. And then as to never have an end, I was kicked and stomped again in

the face, on my head, in my stomach and on my back. [...] The kicking and stomping and beating

continued until blood streamed from my mouth, from my nose, and from my ears...75

Pool had already left Mississippi when all of this took place, and it is unlikely that she was the prime agitator for this action (recent events in Birmingham, Alabama, were far more decisive76). Yet she did have some influence in an indirect way. In her classes and lectures she offered - just like Borinski - a wider philosophical framework in which students could historically place Civil Rights activism. For example, when Pool discussed Black protest poetry, she consciously linked this to anti-Nazi resistance poetry. It is important to realize that at this point in time the Civil Rights Movement was not sure to succeed: the segregationist throwback was significant, and many activists felt they were skating on

216 thin ice. The confidence that Pool had in that fight and the steadfastness with which she demonstrated will have been an inspiration, if one of many.

Figure 8.6 The now iconic photograph of the Figure 8.7 Memphis Norman on the Woolworth’s sit-in in Jackson, Mississippi, May 1963. floor, kicked by Benny Oliver, former Source: Jackson Free Press. police officer. May 1963. Source: Blog The ‘60s at 50.

Moreover, when Norman decided to write about his experience, he had undoubtedly benefited from his training in Pool’s Creative Writing class. The ability to write compellingly became a crucial skill to communicate the movement’s actions to a wider audience. Pool’s class certainly gave him and others opportunity to develop such skills. Most of the participants of that sit-in also participated in the passive resistance classes that the CORE organized - evenings that Pool also attended, although it is undecided if she took an active role in any of these.

Also on other occasions Pool’s influence was noticeable. At Tougaloo Pool closely collaborated77 with Lois Chaffee, a white teacher from Idaho who had taught remedial writing and

217 reading at Tougaloo before she became a fulltime activist with CORE.78 As curriculum coordinator of the Freedom Schools of 1964 she included a study on Nazi Germany and a discussion of ‘parallel conditions of persecution.’79 Although the case study focused on Denmark, echoes of Borinski’s but also Pool’s main arguments were abundantly visible. Some of Pool’s publications were even included in later CORE education programs in Mississippi.80 Although Pool’s influence might have been one of many, the Holocaust was slowly becoming a moral benchmark throughout the western world that was used to dismantle racial segregation, by ‘outside agitators’ like Pool and local activists alike.

Confronting her own past

Pool had felt a deep connection with the Black cause, but after this time in the Deep South she identified even more deeply with the ongoing African American struggle. Curiously, she felt like she belonged there. Such feelings became ever more apparent, ironically, when she was back home in

London. When in 1964 peaceful marchers in Mississippi were beaten, arrested and tear gassed, while other activists were kidnapped and never to be heard of, Pool became outright desperate. She read about all this in British news outlets, and she wrote that the ‘madness’ severely ‘depressed’ her for weeks: ‘It wakes me up in the night, gives me nightmares of frustration and helplessness.’81 Being on the ground in Mississippi might have been painful, but it gave her agency and the idea that she was at least doing something.

It was evident that Pool wanted to fight segregation, but her ideas on how she wanted to achieve this were as vague as her plans for her Creative Writing class. Hinting at Pool’s unrealistic expectations, one friend wrote: ‘Now don’t go on any Freedom Rides or try to integrate the entire

South by yourself.’82 Still, she succeeded in some of her ambitious goals, how ever small these might have been: she practiced integration by attending Borinski’s interracial meetings; the low-key

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meetings in launderettes were meant to make white people conscious of their own prejudices; while the ‘group therapy’ Creative Writing sessions urged Blacks to break the silence on discrimination. To achieve her goals she fully exploited her outsider status, which became her badge of honor: ‘The excellent relationship between myself and the students,’ she said, could be explained ‘to a certain degree from the fact that, although I am not black, I am not an American either.’83 However, this did not mean that she automatically stood outside of American race relations, or at least not as much as she would have hoped for. Her work did help students with their sense of empowerment and self- discovery, but did not and could not oppose white power structures at this school: she was still a white person in front of a (predominantly) Black class, and there is not any evidence that Pool collaborated with Black faculty members in her classes.

The students in Pool’s class found her inspiring, however, and also noticed the continuity she tried to create from her WWII activism to current American affairs. And in Pool’s eyes these connections were all too obvious. Many of the peaceful sit-ins and boycotts reminded her of the interwar socialist movement, but also her own WWII resistance group, which had also been confrontational and yet nonviolent. Such insights came as a bit of a surprise to herself as well. After

Tougaloo, Pool retrospectively used the movement’s phrase of ‘passive resistance’ to describe the inner resistance that she believed many Jews had practiced during the Holocaust.84 She also learned to be less denunciatory about her former self, who she still blamed for having been too passive in times of war. Here she saw that being passive was an ambivalent state of being and less accommodating than one might think. Her time in Mississippi significantly changed how Pool perceived her own past, and these were the first steps towards forgiving herself.

⌇⌇⌇

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Figure 9.1 Pool (seen from the back) surrounded by unidentified students. Alabama A&M College, 1967. Source: Sussex.

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CHAPTER 9: ALABAMA MULTIDIRECTIONAL SILENCES IN ROCKET CITY, USA

TEACHING AT ALABAMA A&M COLLEGE

Rosey Pool returned to the Deep South for extended periods of time in 1965 and 1966 when she was hired as a lecturer-in-residence at Alabama A&M College in Huntsville, Alabama. Again this was an atypical Southern town. Huntsville had grown to prominence through its NASA space center.

This center had greatly benefited from a group of German rocket scientists that had secretly entered the country in 1945, a group that included the well-known Wernher von Braun. With that transfer a Third Reich legacy was brought to American soil: von Braun, but also other members of the group, had worked in Nazi Germany’s rocket development program during WWII, and despite that some of them were ‘ardent Nazis’ according to US government standards, their expertise was now in high demand in the postwar space race.1 Their controversial pasts were eagerly swept under the carpet by various parties.2 It was to be expected that Pool would break that silence, as the German rocket scientists confirmed her argument about Jim Crow and Nazism as twin ideologies. And yet she remained silent.

Rosey Pool arrived at Alabama A&M College in May 1965 , a predominantly Black institution on the outskirts of Huntsville, Alabama. It was her third visit to the USA, and she anticipated she would end up in the deepest corner of the Deep South. A&M College was situated in the small town of

Normal, part of the agglomeration of Huntsville. This town near the Tennessean border had until a century ago been Alabama’s highest cotton-producing county thanks to a large population of enslaved

Africans.3 It was this dubious historical background that attracted Pool to this city, as it was located in what she called one of the ‘most conservative apartheid areas.’4 Symbolically situated between

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Scottsboro, where the infamous Scottsboro Case of 1931 started, and Pulaski, Tennessee, where the

KKK was founded a century before, Pool’s deep sense of justice led her to this ‘hamlet’5 in the middle of nowhere which was not so ‘normal’ as its name suggested.

After NASA opened a center there in 1960, the neighboring Huntsville rapidly transformed itself into ‘Rocket City, U.S.A.’ Now a key player in the American-Soviet space race, Huntsville became unlike any other city in the South. The NASA space center attracted engineers from all over the world, making the city rather cosmopolitan. And in order not to embarrass NASA, local administrators were eager to meet African American demands for Civil Rights. As a result, Huntsville was quietly desegregated.6 This did not mean, however, that Jim Crow was abolished altogether. The

‘Rocket City’ consisted of two separate societies: one white, one ‘colored.’ Racial segregation was enforced in every aspect of society. Throughout Alabama, signs with ‘white only,’ and ‘colored’ hovered over water fountains, restrooms, restaurants, hotels, and bus stations. Jim Crow laws affected people’s private and public lives - but mostly those of African Americans. Huntsville’s Black neighborhoods were poverty stricken, overcrowded, and often even lacking clean water.7 Segregation was anything but ‘separate but equal,’ as was often argued by notable pro-segregationist administrators, such as governor George Wallace or Birmingham commissioner Eugene ‘Bull’

Connor. Together with Mississippi, Alabama was the most racist state in the South and the country.

In the mid-1960s the Civil Rights Movement was at its peak, and during Pool’s stay peaceful protests were violently repressed by state troopers, and assassinations of activists created a climate of fear. Being in Alabama, Pool witnessed from up close the random violence that Blacks faced on a daily basis:

In 1966 I was a guest lecturer in Alabama. Some few miles outside Huntsville, the space-research

centre which is in some ways a federal enclave in southern territory, Alabama’s toughest

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segregation area can be found. It still lives in anti-bellum [sic] days. Between the villages of Arab

and Boas [Boaz] e.g. negroes cannot even buy petrol. Negroes who have to cross those forty-odd

miles of hot road pray very hard that they will not have to stop before they’re past the worst,

especially if they carry white passengers like myself!8

Rural Alabama was a dangerous place for African Americans. Pool recalled the story of a youngster called Charles Dorsey, ‘one of my students in those days,’ who drove back home through the Boaz area when his old car broke down. Knowing he was in a dangerous situation, he risked his life to walk to a nearby petrol station’s office, where he called his parents. ‘His father advised him to go back to his car, sit inside and wait for him,’ Pool remembered, because it would take him 30 minutes to get there. ‘When he [the father] arrived he found his son crumpled up on the road, bleeding heavily from three bullet wounds in his head.’ He had become the victim of a random ‘nigger shooting,’ which some white racists found a form of entertainment during the weekend. Although the teenager survived the incident, he lost his eyesight. His shooter was never convicted. ‘It may sound unbelievable,’ Pool wrote, ‘but such things happen more frequently than one dares to think, down there.’ 9

‘Bootsie’

Pool’s affiliation at Alabama A&M College came about rather coincidentally. When she gave a guest lecture at Tuskegee College, Alabama, in 1960, A&M librarian Binford Conley happened to be in the audience and invited her to also give a talk at A&M’s Library Week. A few years later she finally made it to Huntsville, but by then it had grown into a four-month position as lecturer-in-residence.

One of the main reasons was that A&M was a small college and was in desperate need of staff members. They offered Pool a salary that was far above that of her future colleagues, yet still a major step back, even for a freelancer like Pool.10 Now that she was in high demand, she negotiated that she

223 only had to be on campus on Tuesdays, Wednesdays, and Thursdays, leaving the rest of the week off for ‘outside lectures, visits etc.’11 Every other weekend she taught courses at Tuskegee on ‘Protest

Literature.’12 A&M was just the kind of challenge she was looking for, though. The HBCUs were perfect as they offered her the possibility to achieve long-term, structural positive changes in the lives of African Americans, and thereby perfectly suited her mission.

Schools and universities remained largely segregated.13 Even a decade after the Supreme

Court declared segregation in schools unconstitutional, more than 75 percent of all schools in the

South were still segregated.14 The integration of Blacks on white schools was usually met with great protest, most notably by governor George Wallace himself, who opposed integration at the University of Alabama in Tuscaloosa in 1963 by simply standing in the schoolhouse door. Pool regarded her own affiliation as ‘inverted integration,’15 and as A&M was a public, state-run ‘land-lease’ college, it thus fell under the jurisdiction of the State Board of Education, which made Pool ‘virtually gov.

Wallace’s employee!,’ she exclaimed mockingly.16 The mere presence of whites at Black colleges could arouse fierce resistance among local white citizens. When Pool arrived at A&M, president Morrison told her: ‘I hope you don’t mind that we don’t give much publicity to your presence here. [...] We are not so fond of journalists on our campus.’17

Upon arrival Pool found that A&M students were practically almost cutoff from society.

There was almost no need to leave the campus as there were shops, medical services, and a hairdresser on site. Yet it was also difficult to leave the campus at night, because students were restricted by curfew hours, and there was no public transport to the city center.18 A ‘ghetto in the desert,’ was Pool’s aptly impression of A&M.19 Poverty in the local Black community worsened this isolation. One former A&M student, for example, recalled she rarely went to downtown Huntsville, and she was actually unaware that Blacks were unable to eat at lunch counters. ‘My ruralness gave me no exposure to all these things,’ she said. ‘If [my mother] couldn’t buy me a doll, you know she couldn’t buy me a 224 hamburger downtown.’20 In a strictly segregated society, contacts across the color line were thus ‘rare and freighted with significance,’ as one historian put it.21

But interracial contacts was one of the primary reasons Pool wanted to come here. Unlike the students, she frequently went outside the borders of the campus, occasionally together with

Black colleagues. One colleague of Pool remembered that they went to a diner. The owner of the restaurant told them they were allowed to eat together, while immediately adding that legislature could not force him to smile while doing so. Another time Pool went to a coffee bar together with two Black colleagues. Pool remembered how the 200-pound owner came to their table, steaming with rage. ‘There is a law that forces me to serve your kind,’ he snapped at the two Black men, ‘but I don’t think there’s a law that tells me to feed her,’ nodding his head at Pool.22 Although her initial intentions might have been to live Black, it was immediately evident that her white skin did not allow that. Yet such incidents did teach her to think Black, and see everyday life through a black perspective.23 As an outsider who learned about race consciousness she occasionally liked to believe she was more conscious about race relations than African Americans themselves.

Another notable occasion was when Pool and her colleague Audrey Vinson together visited a segregated burger joint downtown. The interracial duo received cold stares. Pool, clearly irritated, wanted to leave the ‘filthy’ establishment, but her Black colleague laughed at Pool for her stubbornness. ‘I’m supposed to do that,’ Vinson called out at Pool. ‘You’re worse than Bootsie.’

Bootsie was a well-known cartoon character from the Pittsburgh Courier (1930s to 1970s), who blamed everything that happened to him on being Black. ‘Once a bear ran him up a tree, and he called down to the bear, “You’re just doing this because I’m colored,”’ Vinson recalled. ‘From that day I always called Rosey “Bootsie.”’24 Sometimes in her classroom, Pool would look around, only to meet the eyes of Vinson, who sometimes caused her to burst out laughing in the middle of lectures by forming the word ‘Bootsie’ with her lips. Such teasing remarks were a sign of acceptance, but also hinted at Pool’s

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white privilege: she was able to choose whether she ‘acted’ Black or not. Southern Blacks, obviously, did not have that choice.

Rembrandt and Claude McKay

Throughout her time at A&M, Pool was aware of that privilege but also her own whiteness. She entered the campus in January 1965 in order to teach three classes: one on ‘African writing,’ one on

‘Negro Poetry,’ and a ‘Creative writing’ workshop. It became immediately apparent how different this school was from the other 22 HBCUs she had visited a few years before during her tour as a Fulbright and United Negro College Fund (UNCF) scholar, as described earlier on in chapter 7. A&M College was state-run and had far smaller funds than the prestigious, private UNCF colleges. Many talked about the school as a ‘bricklayers college.’25 Just how financially underdeveloped the school was proved when nor the school nor the students were able to afford text books. Luckily, Pool had designed her own course manuals for previous appointments at Livingstone College (North Carolina, 1962-63) and Tougaloo College (Mississippi, 1963), which now came to serve as textbooks.

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Figure 9.2 Rosey Pool in front of a class at Alabama A&M College, 1967. Source: Sussex.

According to Pool, even A&M college president Richard D. Morrison condescendingly spoke about his students as ‘boys and girls’ who came from ‘the rimboe [jungle].’ 26 Such remarks infuriated Pool as they could not help it either, she thought. African Americans had for centuries gone through a ‘thorough process of brainwashing,’ she believed.27 ‘In several centuries of unrelenting efforts,’ she wrote, ‘[the] white man succeeded in implanting a fateful sense of inferiority in black man.’28 In a well-intended but nevertheless paternalizing manner, Pool saw the students as ‘a fine bunch of young ones’29 who were above all victims of their education and of American society at large.

So at A&M, she became determined to show this college president and others the potential of these students.

To Pool, Black literature and Black history were a gateway to re-humanize African

Americans living under Jim Crow. One of her course manuals that covered both African and Black 227

American literature and history started off with a classic Eurocentric view of history: ‘Our modern world began in Athens,’ it said30 - before adding that ancient Egypt and China had been ‘two powerful streams of literary influence’ on western culture as well.31 She presented a surprisingly global perspective to western history, especially for that day and age. In her handouts she also juxtaposed poets from ancient Greece with those from the Harlem Renaissance. Grand names of western thought were set side by side with those of Black writers, intellectuals, and historical figures. She not only discussed Rembrandt, for example, but also Claude McKay; she mentioned Karl Marx, but also

Frederick Douglass; and spoke about Michelangelo and Harriet Tubman. During her exams students were asked to answer questions like: ‘Who painted the Mona Lisa?’ next to: ‘Mention the title of ONE poem by the following authors: Countee Cullen, Langston Hughes, James Weldon

Johnson.’32 By countering dominant racism and whitewashed western history, her classes were essentially subversive acts of education. Pool showed that Black writers surely matched European classics, presenting to these students a Black past they could be proud of. This was revolutionary in a time when Black history was rarely seen as a legitimate topic.33

After four months, she flew back to London, only to return to A&M College one year later, in September 1966, this time for two entire semesters. Her approach remained largely the same, but now she opted for even looser, liberal-arts-type classes, guiding the students with basically everything, from ‘simple reading ability to music, visual arts, poetry and whatnot,’ she said, while she also organized a ‘workshop’ with no fixed teaching hours where students simply had access to books and records.34 She practiced a student-centered approach, a method that was unquestionably based on a tradition of European reform education. This came to rely heavily on the input from students themselves, and seemed to serve one thing: to allow students to find their ‘OWN voice.’35 An underlying goal was also to find authors who spoke with their own voice, possibly for a new poetry anthology.

228 One A&M student who made a particular impression was the twenty-year-old Catherine

Leslie. Raised in a family of cotton laborers, she had picked cotton herself to make money for her family. The expectations were high when she went to college as a first-generation student. Although she did not participate in Pool’s classes, her material was passed on to Pool just before her final departure. Pool immediately recognized an ‘unusual writing talent’ and called her ‘one of the most talented, finest specimen’ of her generation.36 She especially admired her honesty. ‘We’ve had plenty of “mocking bird poets” in the past,’ Pool wrote to her: ‘I rather hear an honest seagull screech or the tweet tweet of a sparrow than the best bird imitator in vaudevill do a nightingale! But you, you are a nightingale all by yourself. Listen to your own voice and perfect it as you hear it.’37 She reprinted one of Leslie’s poems called ‘Soliloqui’ in her 1968 book Lachen om niet te huilen:

Who are you? I am a black boy Mister, are you colorblind? I MEAN WHAT’S YOUR NAME? Why do you want to know my name, Mister? You look white to me.38

Pool later wrote that she could ‘fully identify’ with the boy in Leslie’s poem:

If one of the guards of the camp where I was a prisoner in 1943 had asked me ‘What is your

name?’ I would not have asked him: ‘Are you colour blind?’ but rather ‘Don’t you see I am wearing

a star?’39

Leslie especially appreciated Pool’s encouragement and called her an inspiration. Pool introduced

Leslie's work to Langston Hughes, and wrote letters of recommendation when she applied for graduate school. Although a pregnancy limited her career, she was especially touched by Pool’s 229

personal interest. ‘Dr. Pool was also concerned about me as an individual.’40 With tense race relations and in the midst of the Civil Rights Movement, such contacts were invaluable and meaningful to many students.

Figure 9.3 Students eating an unidentified Dutch snack. Original caption: ‘Buchanan Hall Singers’ Dutch treat.’ Alabama A&M College, ca. January 1967. Source: Sussex. Figure 9.4 Second Writer’s Conference, Alabama A&M College, December 1966. From left to right, standing: A&M president Richard D. Morrison, Samuel Allen [a.k.a. Paul Vesey], Mari Evans, and Dudley Randall. Seated: Margaret Burroughs, Rosey Pool, and Margaret Danner. Source: JHM.

Segregation and isolation

Interacting with African American students was Pool’s top priority. In an attempt to be as close to

Black America as possible she likely also took a room in the women’s dorm on campus, which was quite unusual for staff members to do so, but nevertheless a great success. Her colleague Audrey L.

Vinson remembered that her spontaneity and gregariousness made her ‘known campus-wide in a very short time.’41 Proudly Pool wrote to a friend that both her private room and her office became

‘clubrooms’ where students would meet.42 One of her fondest memories was when she served Dutch snacks to some female students, as if she wanted to emphasize her otherness. The fact that these students let this foreign woman enter their private lives, symbolized by the curlers in their hair (Figure 230

9.3), shows how far she succeeded in what Pool called ‘inverted integration.’43 ‘[The] students […] accept me,’ she proudly concluded.44

Other staff members might have found such interactions with students inappropriate, but not Pool. Through those contacts she penetrated into the student population and was able to reach discussions that were usually unavailable to most staff members. At first this seemed to be caused by being the Deep South, which made the students and staff members discouraged and frightened. To the outside world, A&M College was a conservative college that had to take orders from governor

Wallace. Dissident voices were marked as ‘troublemakers’ and more than once they were silenced by simply firing them, often under political pressures.45 It was also generally believed that racial segregation and poor education had made many students at southern Black colleges apathetic and passive.46 The history of Huntsville’s Civil Rights Movement is only barely uncovered, and the few sources barely mention A&M College.47 Yet Pool received pamphlets from student activists, in which they demanded improvement of education and accommodation. Remarkably, these were never meant to be given to teachers: ‘Do not show this to anyone,’ the pamphlet said. ‘Do not talk to anyone about it except students.’48 As an intermediary on campus, Pool’s social status was neither Black nor white, but also hovered somewhere between being a teacher and a student herself.

A major achievement of Pool were the two Black writer’s conferences she organized at A&M, which she both documented well in her scrapbooks. The April 1965 conference, called

‘The Negro Writer in Our Time,’ included writers as Mari Evans, Hoyt Fuller, Owen Dodson,

John O. Killens, and Robert Hayden. At the second conference, which was held in December

1966, Samuel Allen [a.k.a. Paul Vesey], Mari Evans, Dudley Randall, Margaret Burroughs came to speak, with a guest appearance from Margaret Danner. It was rare that so many distinguished artists gathered in the South, let alone at A&M College. As a sign of her involvement with the college, Rosey Pool’s depiction was included in a 1967 mural at the school.

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Figure 9.5 to 9.8 Four photos of a (now destroyed) mural created by Alando X. Jones [alias Willie Cook] in the Faculty Dining room, Alabama A&M College, Normal, Alabama, 1967. On first picture, second from the left: Rosey Pool. Photographs probably taken by Rosey Pool. Source: Sussex.

‘Nazi scientists’ in Alabama

Such idealism and militancy on campus was in sharp contrast with the outside world. Although segregation remained in place in the Huntsville area, some places were symbolically desegregated to satisfy the Black community and outside journalists alike. Pool was surprised to find that most warehouses, dime stores, and hotels had quietly been desegregated in the years before. ‘White and brown can eat together at one table. Nowhere else in Alabama,’ she wrote. ‘Only here in Huntsville, because... you can never know, those negroes could perhaps be connected to the space program.’49

The village of Normal, in the north of Huntsville, was a Black enclave. It ‘belongs to the geography of Huntsville, the rocket city,’ Pool wrote,50 yet it remained a separate municipality. Pool believed this separation was caused by ‘the many federal officers who populate Huntsville’s space research centre’ consciously wanted to keep ‘black folk off the electoral roll’ in Huntsville.51

NASA had created a miraculous growth of this city on the wane, and this growth was largely attributed to Wernher von Braun. This scientist became a national celebrity in the mid-1950s when he made three educational films about space engineering with Disney. However, his past was not undisputed. In the minds of the white citizens the rebirth of the city was because of the German rocket scientists, they lovingly and ironically called them the ‘saviors’ of Huntsville.52 Von Braun and

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his team were welcomed with open arms, and most whites were eager to forgive von Braun his Nazi past - and his SS membership - by claiming he was a ‘good German’ and, more importantly, ‘our

German.’53 When in 1970 von Braun left to work at NASA’s headquarters in another city, Huntsville honored him by celebrating ‘Wernher von Braun Day.’

Across the color line von Braun and his team were perceived quite differently, or not at all.

Some African Americans even did not know about the German scientists because of the separate lives that segregation created: the local Black community was simply not invited to celebrations surrounding the German scientists.54 Some students at A&M College were vocally critical of how von Braun had been instrumental in the founding of the (white) University of Alabama in Huntsville in 1961, rather than exploring the options of opening an aerospace engineering department at the already existing (Black) A&M College. ‘[I]t was nothing out of the ordinary for him [von Braun] to

[…] advocate the opening of a Jim Crow school,’ one former A&M student remarked.55 Still, such remarks were mostly made in hindsight. Segregated society created thoroughly different experiences and with it, different views on the past.56

We might expect similar remarks from Pool, who prided herself on ‘acting Black’ and was never afraid to criticize segregation. She easily expressed her disgust of ‘whites only’ signs, calling them a form of ‘insanity’ in front of American journalists.57 Yet there is not a single trace that Pool said anything about von Braun, neither in her public writings nor in her private letters. Perhaps this was because while Pool was there, in the Spring of 1965, von Braun quite unexpectedly declared that segregation was a threat to Alabama’s economic and industrial growth. 58 This peace offering might have given her an opportunity to write about him, but she did not. Perhaps he did not fit in her perfect black-and-white stories, of good against evil. Yet in a context of the Cold War, her silence also might have been a way to avoid any difficult questions about her own past.

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Figure 9.9 Werner von Braun (Marshall Space Flight Center, left) and Richard D. Morrison (Alabama A&M College) sign cooperative agreement, November 1968. Source: Website NASA.

In spite of these silences, Pool did heavily criticize people within the African American community. Whether this was because she merely operated within that milieu or because she needed an outlet for possible frustrations is unclear, but her anger towards, for instance, A&M president

Richard D. Morrison seemed to be disproportionate. She described his administration as the ‘very image of Black Bourgeoisie and the worst conformists on earth.’59 His willful cooperation with the pro-segregationist governor George Wallace - who ironically greatly financially stimulated Black colleges in order to keep the races separate60 - but also his friendly contacts with Wernher von Braun were signs that he was one of A&M’s notorious ‘self-hating black teachers.’61 Pool was sad to see how many activists were ‘forced to restrain their militancy under the pressure of school administrators who are the employees of racist state governors,’ obviously referring to public HBCU presidents like

Morrison.62 Later she even called him a ‘dictator’ after some male staff members were forced to shave off their beards because it would represent Black Power.63 Pool’s battle against ‘apartheid’ and aim to

‘uplift’ Black students thus shifted from an initial focus on the wrongs by whites towards the wrongs of what she regarded as collaborating Blacks. As the south often reminded her of Nazi Germany, it

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is likely that she perceived a collaborative role in Morrison, much like she had done herself during the late war when she worked for the Jewish Council in Amsterdam. Collaboration and accommodation would not change the minds of racists, she believed, only opposition would.

Silences and gaps

So what did Pool actually think about the problematic scientists with a Nazi past in Huntsville? And why did she not comment on them? It is unequivocally true that the way these ‘Nazi scientists’ were embraced in Alabama was not only a sign of how painfully little Americans knew or wanted to know about the recent genocide in Europe. It also showed how suspiciously close southern pro- segregationists were to anti-Semites in Nazi Germany. In his seminal book Multidirectional Memory,

Michael Rothberg argues that debates on the Holocaust enabled the articulation of other histories of victimization, often at unexpected moments in history.64 But how can and should historians deal with multidirectional silences? Individuals may keep silent about things because they are painful, embarrassing or, of course, because they are self-evident or simply irrelevant to them. Moreover, silence can also be an example of trauma.65 Recently scholars have suggested that silence can also be a form of resistance or a sign of subjugation.66 Moreover, things that remain unsaid can be things that define us most because they are unbearable or unsayable.67 Silence can be a coping mechanism. There are, in other words, many explanations for Pool’s silence that we will probably never find out.

It is easier to identify the gaps in Pool’s narratives than to find satisfying explanations for why she chose not to address certain subjects. Perhaps it was simply too painful for her to address this issue, as Pool’s parents, brother, and sister-in-law had been murdered in Nazi extermination camps.

Perhaps she consciously wanted to focus her attention on marginalized people, as a positive retaliation for her past. Pool’s impact on Alabama A&M College is clearly traceable, in the memories of people

235 she met and in material objects, such as that peculiar memorial mural. Many found her stubbornness inspirational. Pool ‘could smell discrimination miles away,’ her colleague Vinson recalled, who said that she ‘intended to brook nothing that resembled racism.’68 Pool’s visit to A&M College occurred at the height of her career and influence, and at the height of the Civil Rights Movement. Yet she chose to go to a college that was not particularly noteworthy or prestigious. Consistently she supported the underdog and went to whatever place where her help was needed most. At A&M she organized conferences and actively stimulated youngsters to make the most of their lives. But things were also about to change. The mural with her depiction was demolished only a few years later, as a sort of precursor to the demise of Pool’s own career. ⌇⌇⌇

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237

Figure 10.1 Langston Hughes, ca. 1942. Source: Library of Congress.

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CHAPTER 10: LAGOS & DAKAR BEING FRIENDS WITH LANGSTON

A ‘VERY WHITE’ WOMAN AND THE END OF THE SIXTIES

The ‘gentlest, kindest, most considerate, thoughtful friend I ever had.’1 This is how Rosey Pool described Langston Hughes shortly after his death in 1967. Shortly after the war she had befriended this famous Harlem Renaissance poet who was one of the most influential African American writers of his time. Ostensibly, this appears to be the kind of instrumental friendship which Pool often initiated to accomplish her own goals. Yet on closer inspection there appears to have been a genuine and intimate friendship. They had many interests in common, in terms of African American literature, but also their Old Left backgrounds, and ambiguous sexualities. This chapter zooms in at their unusual transnational friendship and the times they met at Pan-African festivals in Lagos and

Dakar. Some major changes of the 1960s were mirrored in their friendship, most notably racial polarization, estrangement, and anti-white sentiments that dramatically affected how Pool was seen by others. Hughes’s unexpected and sad death in 1967 was a precursor of the cataclysmic year 1968, which many see as the end of the sixties, and the end of a dream. It was also the end of Pool’s dream of classless, postracial society.

Pool had many famous and powerful acquaintances, including the scholar W.E.B. Du Bois, the singer

Nina Simone, the opera singer Paul Robeson, and the poet and playwright Owen Dodson. And then there were many celebrities that she occasionally saw, such as the Dutch writer Annie M.G. Schmidt, lyricist Ira Gershwin, and the composer Benjamin Britten. There were simply too many famous friends in her network to be mere coincidence, especially since she was not that famous herself. Some

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of these contacts were ‘instrumental friendships’2 - contacts that she used in order to achieve her own goals. After all, strategic alliances, especially with powerful men, were crucial for women to access the public sphere,3 and Pool understood this. These friendships may seem opportunistic, especially it transpired that she often liked to brag to others about her famous ‘friends’ and even included their names in her resumé.

But there was more than met the eye with these remarkable connections. Interracial friendships were also a way for her to put her humanistic ideals into practice, and it is not unthinkable that Pool also made ‘friendships out of conviction,’ a genuine attempt attempt to make the world a better place.4 On a more personal level, Pool also looked for new friends, a new family, simply because many of her old friends and family members had been killed off during the war. As we saw in chapter

4, the Black freedom struggle enabled her to start all over. The connections she made were often very personal, and as time passed by she even came to see many of these new friends as surrogate family members.5

This family bond was particularly strong with Langston Hughes, who emotionally substituted her brother Jopie (1915-1943), who had been murdered in Sobibór. This feeling was solidified by the fact that Langston and Jopie shared the same birthday: February first. Pool never felt a deep connection with her brother, who did not share her intellectual capacity nor her political zest.

Hughes filled a void of Pool’s longing for sibling love. When they got to know each other, he not only acknowledged her suffering, but each year he sent a message to Pool to commemorate her brother.6

Such deep, personal connections allow a different reading of this seemingly unequal friendship.

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Figure 10.2 Excerpt from a letter from Langston Hughes to Rosey Pool, ca. June 1960. Source: Sussex.

Langston Hughes (1902-1967) was an African American poet, playwright, novelist, and activist. Perhaps best known for poems like ‘The Negro Speaks of Rivers’ (1921) and ‘I, Too, Sing

America’ (1926), the handsome and likeable Hughes became a spokesman for Black America. Early in his life he was a ‘fellow traveler,’ intrigued by the promise and idealism of communism as an alternative to American segregation. He explored the world as a sailor, doing all types of jobs, including working in a Paris night club and traveling the Soviet Union with a group of African

American film makers.7 In 1937 he set off to war-torn Spain, where he worked as a correspondent for several newspapers, including the Baltimore Afro-American. He immediately understood the problem with fascism. ‘Negroes do not have to be told what fascism is in action,’ he said at a writer’s conference in Paris. ‘We know. Its theories of Nordic supremacy and economic suppression have long been realities to us.’8

After these travels his work now also appeared in Europe. In the Netherlands his work was translated by the Jewish socialist writer Manuel van Loggem, whom he had met in Paris, and also by the socialist writer Jef Last, who was a volunteer in the International Brigades during the Spanish

Civil War.9 The latter was also a friend of Pool’s, and likely she was familiar with Last’s translations of Hughes in leftist journals such as Links Richten (‘Aim Left,’ see also chapter 1), but it would take another two decades before Pool actually got to know Hughes himself. Although by the 1960s she often liked to brag about their ‘forty years’ of friendship,10 her first letter to him was dated 1945, and 241

showed no signs of familiarity whatsoever. On the contrary, Pool introduced herself extensively, suggesting this was indeed their introduction. Hughes was personally touched by her story that she was ‘one of the millions that were put into concentration camps by the Germans,’11 and he started sending materials, books, and also names and addresses of other poets, including those of Gwendolyn

Brooks, Ralph Ellison, Jessie Fauset, Chester Himes, and Melvin Tolson, and later also those of Julian

Bond, Audre Lorde, and Derek Walcott.

Hughes became Pool’s gateway to Black America. ‘Les amis de mes amis sont mes amis,’ she wrote to him in amusement.12 Having Langston Hughes as a pen pal opened up her world. She started using his name when she met new people, with a convincing ‘easy assurance and familiarity’ that opened many doors.13 The over 250 letters, postcards, clippings, and notes they exchanged over the course of twenty-two years certainly gave Pool the impression that he valued the contact as much as she did, yet in reality this was only a fraction of his total correspondence: in his archives he left behind over 250 boxes (121 linear feet) of letters. Despite this astonishing number, it was true that Hughes had a talent to make people feel special. ‘He was the kind of man,’ one biographer wrote, ‘who could even nurture an enduring friendship through the mails with someone he never saw.’14 And even more importantly, he remained conscious of his own celebrity status, which he exploited to enable others to fulfill their dreams as well.

The first phase of their friendship, from 1945 to 1959, was perhaps more of a pen pal correspondence than an actual ‘friendship.’ It was Pool who had to keep the correspondence going, eagerly trying to get closer to this famous poet, while Hughes consistently kept addressing her as

‘Dear Miss Pool.’ Their relationship deepened in 1952 when Pool introduced him to the Guyanese poet Jan Carew, an anti-colonialist activist and novelist from British Guiana. Around this time, Pool also mentioned that she got to know Hughes’s old Harlem friend Hermie Dumont, who by then was living in Amsterdam. It was likely no coincidence that she described her as ‘the wife of one of my very

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best Surinam friends,’15 not mentioning the name of her husband Otto Huiswoud, the Suriname activist and CPUSA co-founder who was followed by various secret services. Hughes certainly knew

Huiswoud. They had even traveled the Soviet Union together in the 1920s, where they were even allowed to visit Vladimir Lenin on his deathbed. 16 Presumably Hughes appreciated this Old Left type of confidentiality.

With the advance of the Cold War, Hughes had quietly disassociated himself from leftwing politics, but his past as a ‘fellow traveler’ continued to haunt him, especially during the Red Scare of the 1950s. He was even questioned by a McCarthy committee in 1953. ‘You’ll be hearing from me soon, especially about my TV show with McCarthy,’ he wrote to Pool in amusement in 1953.17 But soon Hughes was no longer ‘laughing to keep from crying’ (to use one of his famous quotes), and the hearing affected him more than he initially had anticipated, both personally and professionally. The

1953 McCarthy trial became a turning point: in future publications he removed most of his old ‘red’ work. He also stopped publicly discussing his controversial past.18 He also never wrote about the hearing to Pool, and she was wise never to ask him about it.

A real breakthrough for their friendship came in 1959, when Pool visited the US.19 There

Hughes was introduced to what was perhaps Pool’s greatest quality: her ‘talent for friendship.’20 His career had gotten rusty the past years. Young Black writers like Richard Wright and James Baldwin made Hughes, who was by then ove fifty, look outdated.21 Perhaps this is why the usually cool and gentle Hughes could simply not resist Pool’s charm, and he was pleasantly surprised by her dynamic vivacity. Hughes finally opened up and offered her an insight into his private life. He seemed to find particular pleasure in namedropping and in showing off how his career was resurfacing in the 1960s, in fact. ‘Wole Soyinka was just here,’ he wrote. ‘[Senegalese president Leopold] Senghor, too --- with whom I had luncheon at the White House (with our President, too).’22 ‘Rosey,’ another postcard said, this time from Hollywood, ‘Loved hearing from you. I’m out with Harry Belafonte doing a TV script 243

for his autumn show. Working by the swimming pool. Hello to Isa.’ 23 With Hughes, Pool entered a whole new level of influence, with Hughes consciously lending a hand to help a friend to advance her career as well.

Lagos, Nigeria

All friendships are based on similarities that individuals can have, like age, education, gender, religion, and social context.24 Yet there is no blueprint for friendships, although most are characterized by trust, openness, honesty, acceptance, reciprocity, solidarity, and loyalty.25 Pool and Hughes certainly seemed to share some of those. The immediate click between Hughes and Pool was probably caused by a shared interest: both had turned their focus to Africa, a continent that was freeing itself from colonialism at this time.26 Pool had just finished a series of articles on what she called the ‘African

Renaissance,’ discussing modern art and writing from Nigeria, Kenya, and other places. This interest was most certainly politically motivated: ‘[I] am not a politician,’ she wrote in one of those articles.

‘But [I] do know - and that is [my] political conviction - that the ignorance about the arts of Africa and the political position of that continent are closely connected.’27 This brought her surprisingly close to Hughes’s position at a propitious moment, as he was just working on an anthology called African

Treasury, and was on the brink of a series of momentous trips to Africa.

Hughes was also an honorary member of the American Society of African Culture

(AMSAC), an organization of African American writers, artists, and scholars, which was founded in

1957 as a subdivision of the French Société Africaine de Culture (SAC). Based on ideals of Négritude and Pan-Africanism, this organization supported the idea that people from the Black diaspora, whether they lived in Africa, the Caribbean, or the Americas, shared a ‘natural bond.’ The year 1960

- also known as the ‘Year of Africa’ - became a watershed in the decolonization of Africa, and the

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continent also became a source of inspiration to activists of the American Civil Rights Movement.28

As a result, a public debate arose within the United States on the relations between African Americans and Africans, and AMSAC organizers were sad to conclude that Black Americans and Africans were so alienated from each other. They decided to organize a massive event in Lagos, Nigeria, in order to bring Africans and Black Americans closer together.29

The organization started looking for celebrities and experts to join them. Hughes suggested

Pool as ‘really a stimulating personality’ who needed to be included in this historic event.30 And so

Pool went on a fully-paid trip across Nigeria for nine days in December 1961. In press releases her photo appeared next to those of Nina Simone, Odetta, Randy Weston, Michael Olatunji, Lionel

Hampton, and of course Langston Hughes.31 Needless to say, Pool was an outcast among these

‘leading personalities’ of Black America. Although she was ‘thrilled’ about her first visit to Africa, she felt rather uncomfortable being one of the few white people of the delegation. ‘I feel all at once: deeply grateful, honoured, unworthy, humble and… very white…,’ she said.32 This feeling increased as the days progressed. The group went to receptions, did sightseeing tours, had meetings with Nigerian officials, and - the grand finale - performed at a massive festival in front of 5,000 people. Her initial excitement slowly made way for discomfort:

Never before had I felt so pale, so colourless as during those first days of that humid-hot

December in Nigeria. My voice appeared life-less to me, my laughter unreal and thin, my face

ridiculously drained of colour. I felt caught in a vacuum. 33

Perhaps things were becoming too real now. Behind her typewriter Pool could easily say that she belonged ‘more to the American Negro community than to teadrinking England.’34 But here, with an almost all-Black group, in a Black country, she felt painfully out of place, a feeling that she had been

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trying to avoid since childhood. ‘Suddenly I knew how coloured people must feel when pale faces look at them,’ she wrote.35 And she got something she had never had before: stage fright. ‘Nothing could relieve it,’ she later recalled. ‘Not Langston Hughes’s laughter, not Randy Weston’s soothing piano, not the helpfulness and cordiality of every single one in our group, not the generous hospitality, the warm welcome of our african hosts.’36

Her feeling of estrangement was not entirely imagined. At a festival centered around

Blackness, it only seemed logical that white people should be serving, not shining. In photographs

AMSAC consistently put the biggest stars up front. Langston Hughes was often the center of all the attention, together with the freshly appointed Nigerian governor general Nnamdi Azikiwe: he and

Hughes had been classmates at Lincoln University back in the 1920s, and therefore were the epitome of Pan-African brotherhood.37 The less prominent members of the group were featured further in the back. In one photograph, Pool’s face is merely half visible on the far right of the frame, rather behind than actually with the group. She was far removed from the center of power, an outcast almost, because of her skin color, but also because of her gender. Pool had no place in this fraternity.

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Figure 10.3 The AMSAC delegation with governor general Nnamdi Azikiwe (in the center, dressed in white), Lagos, December 1961. Pool stands second from the right. Source: Weston, African Rhythms 148.

Yet she still had a voice and stage when she read her paper at a panel on Drama and

Literature, two days later. There she presented herself as an atypical white person by telling her own life story. ‘During World War II, I was a member of the Dutch Underground Resistance against

Fascism and eventually a prisoner of the Nazis,’ she spoke, leaving her Jewish background again oddly unmentioned. Also rather incongruously, she chose not to mention the Dutch colonial past, but rather referred to a much more distant past: ‘[B]elieve me,’ she said, ‘the freedom struggle of Holland against

Spain, a struggle that took place three hundred years ago, inspired us to fight oppression in the years

1940-1945.’38 She likely hoped that this was an inspirational boost to anti-colonial activists, but by hinting at Spain she possibly hinted at the 1930s as well, especially as her dear friend Langston

Hughes sat in the crowd.

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Figure 10.4 Group (left to right) Godwin Mbadiwe Ewelaku (Nigerian policeman), Dr. Horace Mann Bond (first president of Lincoln University, father of SNCC activist Julian Bond), Rosey Pool, Langston Hughes, outside Randdek Hall, Lagos, Nigeria, 18 December 1961. Source: Yale.

Behind the scenes, Pool was certainly aware of her powerful allegiance with Hughes. As friendships have the potential to level hierarchies and enable outsiders to blend in,39 she tried to be as close to him as possible - literally, as we see in Figure 10.4 - in an attempt to overcome the problem that she was not a person that mattered. It certainly seemed to work because here she made some new, powerful friends, including Horace Mann Bond, dean of Atlanta University, as well as the singer

Nina Simone. Pool remembered how one morning Simone burst into her hotel room. ‘Rosey,’ she shouted, ‘come out to the lobby. They’ve put up these presspictures of yesterday’s party. You look one hell of a lot of funny!’ Pool rushed downstairs to see them and saw her white face, heavily overexposed on film. Pool exclaimed that she looked ‘like a spook,’ [meaning: a ghost], and laughter arose since this was also a derogative term for African Americans. With the laughter she finally felt welcomed and accepted. She was forever grateful to Simone ‘for showing me that I was not an intruder but just a friend who looked one hell of a lot of funny.’40 Pool used this encounter in her later writings to 248

exemplify the peculiarities of transracial belongings, but also the unconditional acceptance she encountered in Black circles. And as often in her stories, the celebrity names gave a glamorous ring to it all. Yet while this anecdote ended with laughter, it nevertheless has a melancholy undertone as

Pool voiced her perennial fear of being left out.

Between A-list and blacklist

After her first trip to Africa, Pool and Hughes continued their whirlwind correspondence of hundreds of letters, notes, and telegrams across the ocean. Hughes was especially fond of Pool’s partner Isa

Isenburg, the stoic and usually reserved figure on the background. When Pool worked in Alabama in the mid-1960s, Hughes would occasionally call Pool before sending a note to Isenburg to let her know that Pool was doing okay. ‘That sort of kindness is so rare among human beings…,’ Pool sighed.41 In essence Pool and Isenburg were in a same-sex relationship, but to outsiders Pool often said that she lived together with her ‘best friend.’42 Hughes, for his part, lingered somewhere between being asexual and homosexual, remaining forever ambiguous and elusive about his sexuality.43 However, Pool assumed that Hughes was homosexual. In 1962 she translated his work for the journal Vriendschap

[‘Friendship’], of a Dutch LGBT organization. She did not ask him for permission: ‘I told [editor]

Benno Premsela […] I could not get hold of you because you were wandering about Africa.’ But she did tell Hughes in excitement that ‘homo-sexuality […] is not a criminal offense in Holland!’44

Hughes responded to the sexual reference as he usually did: by simply ignoring it ever happened.

Their friendship seemed to be partly based on sweeping secrets under the proverbial carpet and never mentioning painful moments again. One notable exception was when Hughes was in Europe in 1965, where he briefly visited Holland. He wrote exultant to Pool: ‘I absolutely adored Amsterdam. I could

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live there,’ adding, again ambiguously: ‘The acceptance of one’s private life is just fabulous: I hated to leave.’45

This covert admittance of his sexual orientation was exactly the type of ‘small unveiling gestures’ that one scholar saw in Hughes’s letters, displaying ‘a sort of rhetorical and ideological striptease.’ Like most radicals at this time, he generally assumed that his correspondence was read by intelligence agencies, at least occasionally, and these signals were used to ‘affirm his or her political identity while maintaining plausible deniability.’46 The Cold War was a minefield for people with an

Old Left past, so it should not come as a surprise that the correspondence between Pool and Hughes left considerable room for interpretation. She did not write, for example, that after the festival in

Lagos she traveled on to Ghana to meet several African American radicals living in exile, including

W.E.B. Du Bois and his wife Shirley Graham, but also the writer Julian Mayfield. All of these luminary figures were closely followed by the FBI.47

This caution suggests that Pool was far more on the left of the political spectrum than her materials suggest. Therefore correspondence is not the best source to examine this friendship, as

McCarthyism put a serious strain on their correspondence. ‘In his letters I do not find any speeches or […] references to world events,’ Pool proudly wrote: ‘Only warmth and human contact.’48 Overt political ideas remained carefully hidden, making it extremely hard to find out what they ‘truly’ felt.

Yet it was apparent that danger always lured. Pool also remembered another time she and Hughes met at an international festival in Spoleto, Italy, in July 1962. While they were having dinner a white

American man loudly started to yell at Hughes for being a ‘communist’ and an ‘atheist.’49 Despite these dangers, face-to-face meetings were still far less dangerous than the writing of letters. So unsurprisingly they met at different international festivals, where they could speak openly.

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Dakar, Senegal

After Lagos, Pool and Hughes were closer than ever, and he even came to visit her home a couple of times. On a visit in 1964 to London he informed Pool about another gigantic festival that would take place in Senegal. The ‘First World Festival of Negro Arts,’ as the 1966 event became known, promised to become the event of a lifetime. Hughes evidently told her: ‘You […] are the world’s authority on

American Negro Poetry, you ought to go. See that you get there.’50 How, was irrelevant. ‘[M]aybe

Radio Haversum [sic] in Holland,’ he suggested.51 After a long struggle, Pool was only able to become a member of the British preselection jury. She was about to give up trying to go until, one week before the actual festival when, out of the blue an invitation arrived from the British Committee to join the festival; as a member of Dakar’s Grand Jury, no less. Undoubtedly, this must have been caused by the head of that same Grand Jury: Hughes himself.

Perhaps Pool hoped for a rerun of Lagos. Yet, that festival was tiny in comparison with this one. Dakar was flooded with more than 2,500 artists and 20,000 visitors from 45 countries. The festival attracted visitors as diverse as the South African anti-apartheid activist Nelson Mandela, the

African American dancer Alvin Ailey, and the Martinican writer Aimé Césaire. Dakar was a challenge to all the senses. Pool saw a dance group from Mali, and was impressed by the Benin treasures that had been sent from museums all over the world. She was also invited for a meeting at the house of

American ambassador Mercer Cook where Duke Ellington gave a private performance, and posh

African officials, waiters, and taxi drivers all danced together.52 If there was such a thing as the ultimate meeting place of the Black Atlantic, it was Dakar in 1966.

With her place in the Grand Jury, Pool was now officially part of the establishment, but she was not at all pleased with it. She actually felt clobbered by all the formalities and rules. ‘I am not at all an “organization” lover,’ she confided to a friend: ‘I believe in priorities and the waving of inessential

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rules in favour of more important points.’53 Most of her time in Dakar she was ‘stuck’ at the colloquium, sitting and listening to presentations, attending jury meetings, and participating in discussions with other committee members. ‘And outside the sun shines,’ she sighed. She briefly considered to ‘skip class’ to simply look at the ‘stunningly beautiful’ people on the street, with a hint of what Edward Said called orientalism. The real festival, she thought, was outside.

Pool felt that the ‘waving of inessential rules’ were inherently ‘feminine’ traits which were clearly not fully appreciated at here.54 Idealism notwithstanding, Black Atlantic networks often mirrored white power structures: they were male-dominated and centered around ideals of fraternity and brotherhood, which often led to sexist hierarchies and masculinist rhetoric.55 Pool was not immune to sexism or simply had to comply to the power hierarchy. Yet she was also transfixed on important men who walked around there. In a Dutch article she described how she met African drummer Philip Gbeho, and how she was hugged in the middle of the Place de l’Indépendance by

Nigerian artists Ben Enwonwu and Akinola Lasekan. ‘Look, there is Jan-Heinz Jahn, the German africanist and [Paul] Lebeer from Paris (of the journal Afrique),’ she bragged, ‘and there comes Duke

Ellington with the American ambassador Mercer Cook.’56

Despite these heartwarming encounters and no matter how observant she was, she remained practically invisible to these important men. President Senghor addressed her as ‘Monsieur’ in his letters, even after the festival.57 To make things even more disappointing and anticlimactic, she also could not rely too much on Hughes this time. He was also consumed in all-male networks. Reportedly he spent many nights on a Russian cruise ship that was used as a floating hotel, mostly drinking vodka with the Russian poet Yevgeny Yevtushenko. Pool did not have access to that man’s world.

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Figure 10.5 The Anglophone Grand Jury at the festival in Dakar, April 1966. From left to right: dancer- anthropologist Katherine Dunham (USA), chairman Langston Hughes (USA), Rosey Pool (England), author and college president Davidson Nicol [also Nicoll] (Sierra Leone) holding Christopher Okigbo’s book Limits, and on the far right Clifford Simmons (England). Source: JHM.

Here, her white skin was for the first tiem a serious obstacle, much more than it had been in

Lagos. Pool tried to overcome the gap by saying she firmly believed in Négritude, which was a central theme of the festival. Both a concept and a movement, Négritude stood for the cultural and artistic richness of African society, and for the elevation of Black pride through the realization of how African heritage had been degraded through the slave trade and subsequently by colonialism.58 Pool interpreted the concept as the ‘unconditional acceptance of one’s own individual self,’ and concluded that ‘I, in my blanchitude can fully accept my “negritude.”’59 Pool was walking on a tight rope with these dubious claims that could easily be linked to ‘white pride’ or even ‘white power.’

Unlike Lagos, Pool was not assigned a lecture herself, which was probably for the best. White was increasingly seen as the color of the oppressor and the colonizer, and the presence of whites at the festival was openly criticized.60 It was not that anti-white sentiment had grown in the past years; it was simply expressed more by Black activists, most notably James Baldwin, Harry Belafonte, Ralph 253

Ellison, Ossie Davis, and Sidney Poitier; all whom boycotted the festival out of protest because they thought Négritude was hopelessly outdated. Meanwhile they also despised Senghor’s uncritical stance towards the west. As a Jewish woman, Pool held an ambiguous position towards and within these discussions on whiteness. She was white, but was also proud that she did not ‘act white.’61 Yet in the second half of the sixties Pool was evermore confronted and ultimately determined by the Black/white dichotomy that dominated US society, and later also global Black communities. While someone like

Baldwin acknowledged that Jews indeed had suffered abroad, he also claimed that in the US his ‘only relevance is that he is white.’62 Increasingly, whiteness was no longer a source of authority, something she had relied upon without fully realizing it.

One notable writer who was excluded from Dakar was Amiri Baraka, who was still using the name LeRoi Jones. A few years before he had been included in Pool’s poetry anthologies, but shortly after that he had embraced Black Nationalism, crowning his work with a play ironically called The

Dutchman (1964), which called for the destruction of the white Western aesthetic, and ‘THE

DESTRUCTION OF AMERICA.’63 Hughes, a moderate especially after his 1953 trial, firmly disassociated from Baraka in Dakar, by saying that his own generation of writers ‘never dreamed of revealing the Negro people to themselves in terms of mother-fuckers.’64 In his defence, however,

Hughes had always been a fierce supporter of a Black consciousness. Now at a time that interracial dreams were replaced by Black pride, Hughes was suddenly surprisingly contemporary:

The very fact that all the major publishers of African writers are in Paris or London or New York,

and the ultimate editors are white, is not unlike a similar problem that has long faced American

Negro writers. Until the recent formation of the Johnson Publishing Company in Chicago

[founded in 1942, LG], all the major publishers in the United States where Negro writers might

get published were white. All the major literary magazines are white.65

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By mentioning London, he was possibly hinting at his friend Pool sitting in the crowd. After all, she was one of those white editors he mentioned who published with white publishers. Yet this time there was no cozy subtext of Old Left togetherness: Pool was part of the problem of white editors and publishers that were forcing Black writers to also write ‘white.’

While Hughes was caught in the maelstrom of newly-found Black pride, Pool shifted her attention. She made it her mission to give the Literary Prize to the relatively unknown poet Robert

Hayden, a 53-year-old professor whom she met at Fisk University in 1960.66 She convinced the rest of the Grand Jury that Hayden deserved the prize for his book A Ballad of Remembrance (published by

Pool’s former protégé Paul Breman in 1962, one of those white publishers from London). In the jury report, Pool motivated this choice in her own peculiar way: ‘Hayden sees the suffering of the men and women who died at Dachau and Buchenwald for their specific Négritude,’ as she wrote.67 This could not fully hide that giving the award to the clearly moderate Hayden went at the expense of relatively young and radical writers, such as Christopher Okigbo or the future Nobel Laureate Derek Walcott.

The 1966 Dakar festival was an important baromete of shifting power relations, both globally as well as in Black Atlantic networks. And the winds were not blowing in Pool’s favor.

The curtain falls

In hindsight, Dakar was the beginning of the end of Pool’s career and transnational networks. As a cultural revolution was now sweeping the United States, Pool was suddenly out of touch with the times. ‘I am enjoying reading your anthology [Beyond the Blues, 1962],’ Jean Blackwell Hutson, curator of the prestigious Schomburg Center in New York, wrote to her in 1965, ‘but I am somewhat distracted by a review copy of the Autobiography of Malcolm X,’68 like Amiri Baraka a member of the Black Muslim movement. It was symbolic for the years to come. Most regard 1968 as the symbolic

255 end of the sixties: hope, promise, Martin Luther King’s ‘dream.’ They all shattered that year, only to be replaced by hostility, resentment, and further polarization.69 This turning point came particularly early for Pool when Langston Hughes unexpectedly died in May 1967, at the age of 65. Pool was heartbroken when she heard the news. Never again would she receive letters or postcards from him, leaving ‘a big gap’ in her life.70

That gap became ever wider as both Hughes’s death as well as ‘1968’ kickstarted the deterioration of Pool’s network. Many of her transnational friendships did not survive ‘1968.’ ‘[O]ld friendships have lost their lustre,’ Pool wrote, sensing that ‘reservedness and careful wording crop up in letters from friends of decades.’71 She went on to say that: ‘People whom I thought were my real friends, don’t reply to letters; turn their backs on me.’72 This not only affected her personally, but also professionally. Poet after poet sent her abrupt notes that they no longer wanted to be included in her anthologies, sometimes extremely viciously, while others simply stopped writing. For a freelancer, this disintegrating network was disastrous, for it had been her social capital. She rapidly estranged from her American contacts now that her ‘best friend’ and ‘substitute brother’ was gone: ‘[S]ince Langston was called away from this world, I feel much further away from the U.S.,’ she confided in Margaret

Danner, one of those few friends that kept writing.73 Out of sight across the Atlantic Ocean, Pool became more and more isolated. What was worst was that she merely became what others thought she was: white. But perhaps even more painful was that her newly acquired family again abruptly disappeared from her life, bringing back the desolate times of the late war.

256 Figure 10.6 Letters sent to and from Pool that survived in the archives. Received (light gray) and sent letters (dark gray), n=2087 letters, excluding 154 undated letters. Total letters sent: 658; total received: 1430. Derived from various sources. Visualized with Raw.

Dakar should have been Pool’s highlight of her life. Instead, it set her off to the road to oblivion.

While the Black Atlantic was celebrating independence, Pool still had an anti-colonial focus, failing to make the transition towards a postcolonial rhetoric. By 1971 there was little that remained of Rosey

Pool’s life work and transatlantic Black Atlantic networks (see Figure 10.6). The last three years of her life she largely withdrew from the public sphere. Her income had ran dry and she was going in and out of the hospital. Still, she refused to be victimized and told friends she had a cold, while in reality she was struggling with leukemia. Her death thus came rather unexpectedly, in September

1971, when she was only 66 years old. Only a handful of people showed up at the cremation in north

London.74 As her ashes were scattered afterwards, it now seemed final: she no longer had a place in this world. ⌇⌇⌇

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Figure 11.1 Rosey Pool during a press interview for Lachen om niet te huilen, ca. 1968. In the background an artwork that is possibly made by the Nigerian sculptor Justus D. Akeredolu. Source: Sussex.

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CONCLUSIONS

Rosey Pool led an amazingly rich and eventful transnational life, which took her to various hotbeds of the twentieth century: Amsterdam during the height of the Old Left; Berlin, as the Weimar

Republic morphed into Nazi Germany; again Amsterdam, during WWII, where she taught Anne

Frank; Camp Westerbork, from which she miraculously escaped; the Deep South in the throes of the

Civil Rights Movement; Nigeria and Senegal as they were celebrating decolonization; London as it became a center of a global Black consciousness. Pool’s life was is some way a microcosm of the twentieth century. This book focused on several ‘contact zones,’ which Mary Louise Pratt defined as

‘spaces where cultures meet, clash, and grapple with each other,’ and where (the remnants of) world history are played out.1 Each of the chosen places exemplified a definite change in Pool’s eventful but problematic life, which raises multiplemany questions.

This dissertation set out to examine how Pool’s life was determined by her own conscious decisions, but also by the specific historical contexts, places, and networks she operated in. First, there was one very basic question I wanted to answer: who was Rosey Pool? What did she do, what were her accomplishments, and how can she be characterized? Secondly, I wanted to find out what her personal motives were. What drove her to each of these hotbeds of history, and to take action outside of her own comfort zone? What did she want to achieve? Thirdly, I wanted to know what Pool’s influence was on public discourses about race, both within the US itself and within the Netherlands.

Did she transfer ideas, literature, or protest repertoires across the Atlantic, and in what way did her networks play a role in this? And finally, again a straightforward question that is related to historiography: how is it possible that this woman has been forgotten?

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Survivor, agitator

There are different ways to look at who Rosey Pool was, what her accomplishments were, and how she can be characterized. We might look at her personality to determine who she was: a mercurial and creative person, who was charismatic, big-mouthed, witty, and opinionated. Then again, we could also define her by looking at the things she opposed: Pool was anti-militarist, anti-fascist, anti-racist, anti-segregationist, and anti-colonialist. Or perhaps we should focus on the different types of work she did. She was after all a recitist, a poetess, an activist, a translator, an educator, a resistance fighter, an anthologist of African American poetry, a biographer, a writer, a literary agent, an actress. She was actually all of those things, which shows how difficult it is to summarize a person’s life into a few sentences. She freelanced her way through life with many ‘bread and butter jobs,’ and only occasionally

‘heart and soul jobs.’

However, this dissertation presents and frames Pool foremost as both a survivor and as an agitator, two terms that both proved to be equally suitable for her personality, life, and work. Pool was a survivor - foremost of the Holocaust obviously, a tragedy that she simply refused to let overshadow her future or her sanity. She took little time to mourn or to become a victim. Instead, she actively chose to dedicate her life to prevent such things from ever happening again to other groups of people, making it the survivorship that defined her. Oddly enough, that survivor mentality was surprisingly familiar to her life events, because she had survived something utterly different and completely incomparable, albeit profoundly formative for her personality: being bullied as a child. To be excluded by her peers when she was young became a highly formative and traumatic experience, which led her to see things throughout her life through the eyes of the marginalized and the oppressed, the underdog. Her trauma was thus more layered than was known, and could be dated back to an early age. She became the helping hand to others she so desperately needed when she was young,

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fighting for emancipation of laborers within the Old Left and later of German Jewish refugees. Pool showed that if anything good can come out of tragedy, it is the determination to prevent that it will ever happen again. After each terrible event she decided to do things ‘right’ this time, or to right the wrongs of the world.

Rosey Pool was also an agitator, stirring up others in order to upset the status quo and further several social causes, continuously working in the service of other people and goals. Derived from the widely used term ‘outside agitator,’ the term ‘agitator’ aptly enumerates Pool, whose tendency to

‘agitate’ repeatedly manifested itself in her life: when she attended demonstrations of Socialist and

Communist groups; when she lectured about the dangers of fascism in the 1930s; when she joined the Dutch resistance in the 1940s; all the way to the 1960s, when she compared Jim Crow with

Nazism. Like her survivorhood, Pool’s agitation was not something that can solely be attributed to the Holocaust, nor to her Jewish background alone. It was based on humanistic and pacifist ideals rooted in her childhood or perhaps even her genes. From her materials there was something simply elusive: her inner will to stand out.

Often these two entities, survivor and agitator, were inseparable from each other. For Pool the personal was indeed political, as she repeatedly made herself part of the stories she told and of the changes she accomplished. She wanted the world to change, but she was determined to make herself a part of it as well. Typical of her resolve was that she took her disastrous experiences as learning moments, adding experiences to her own personal narratives, turning them into ammunition in her fight for justice. She was a survivor/agitator, because it was her trauma that kept her going, and it was her agitation that led to a deeper understanding of her own experience and that of others.

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Contact zones and comfort zones

Additionally, I wanted to find out what Rosey Pool’s personal motives were. If we look at all the things that Pool witnessed and accomplished in a life time, Pool was present at several hotbeds of the twentieth century, oddly well-timed and seemingly spontaneous. What drove her to each of these places, and what were her decisions to take action outside of her own comfort zone? Time and again

Pool found herself in what she called ‘enemy territory.’2 This happened not only in the Deep South in the 1960s, but also in Berlin (and briefly, Italy) in the 1930s, and in the 1940s she even voluntarily stepped inside a Nazi concentration camp to take a peak. Was it sheer coincidence that she ended up in the most iconic places of the twentieth century, or was it by conscious choice? It appears that it was a bit of both.

While Pool obviously did not decide that these historic events would take place, and while some of her travels were sometimes purely coincidental or random, Pool consciously sought out places in the world where the situation most urgently called for her help. Pool ‘could smell discrimination miles away,’ one former colleague from Alabama recalled,3 and Pool found herself drawn to these trouble areas. She repeatedly put herself at risk in the belly of the beast in order to study the enemy and help envoiced the oppressed. This was a conscious choice based on her deepseated conviction and desire to fight injustice, partly born out of her anti-fascist upbringing, but also stemming from an almost anthropological curiosity. Some of these choices were made because of a specific historical setting (for example WWII), some despite the political context (for example the Cold War). Many of her travels were thus not quite coincidences.

Simultaneously and contradictorily, these travels were often also searches for roots, belonging, and identification across and at far corners of the globe. Her multilayered identity made her restless, as she juggled different identifications throughout her life - Jewish, white, heterosexual,

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lesbian, woman, daughter, partner, Catholic, Bahá’í, resistance fighter, employee of the Jewish

Council, just to name a few. Some of these identifications were a result of her restlessness, but also to be part of something bigger than herself. The Black cause became her biggest and most tenacious identification. Her transracial identification was perceived as sincere and compelling. ‘Rosey understood the problem!’ one African American friend said exuberantly.4 And when she came to

Howard University, a Black university in Washington DC, in 1963, she for example spoke about her time in Camp Westerbork, and how she and fellow prisoners sang African American spirituals.

Ending with a long, emotional silence, strikingly audible on tape, one professor cracked the silence by asking: ‘Would you teach at Howard?’5 It was exemplifying for the acceptance Pool encountered in these days, and the type of uncompromising acceptance she had longed for ever since she was young. Her desire to fit in also kept her going endlessly.

A profound impact on a local scale

The second issue I wanted to explore was what Pool’s influence had been on public debates about race, both within the US and in the Netherlands. Did she transfer ideas, literature, or protest repertoires across the Atlantic, and in what way did her networks play a role in this? Pool’s travels were crucial to examine her influence, because it appears that wherever Pool went, she always made a lasting impression. Perhaps her greatest impact was during her talks in the South, which took place at a time when the Civil Rights Movement was a risky enterprise that was not evidently going to succeed. In the midst of that revolution people found her talks utterly inspiring. One African

American student who heard her speak at Fisk University recalled: ‘At this point, just before the beginnings of the nation-wide civil rights movement, it was very exciting and validating of Black culture to hear a European who was so passionately dedicated to [Black poetry],’ and remembered

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that some students fell in each other’s arms after hearing her speak, overwhelmed by emotions.6 Her talks thus strengthened some of the groundworks of mobilizing some for the upcoming Civil Rights

Movement and greatly encouraged many.

Her impact in Europe was, perhaps surprisingly, somewhat smaller. In the Netherlands she was most known in leftist and anti-racist circles. Pool became most well-known with her television appearances in the 1950s and 1960s, her writings in Vrij Nederland were a close second, but the most direct impact was perhaps on her students at the various schools she taught, and with the Black actors whom she worked with. The Dutch Black actor Otto Sterman said it was not easy to explain her significance. ‘Her very personal approach, her extensive knowledge, have [both] greatly contributed to reducing the barriers between white and black.’7 In the United Kingdom, but also (former) British colonies she accomplished significant things, including poetry readings on the BBC radio, in London theaters, and at the 1963 Aldeburgh Festival. Pool never quite chose between the high/low culture divide or the highbrow/lowbrow literature distinction; she probably did not fit in with either one category. The Guyanese poet Arthur Seymour fondly remembered Pool’s programs for the BBC, and

‘her strong championship interest and analysis of the burgeoning literature which has come of the

Third World.’8

While Pool’s influence was profound on a local scale, among ordinary people, Pool also maintained a wide network with hundreds of intellectuals, writers, and artists across several continents. It was this network that allowed her to go on new adventures, whether it was as a visiting scholar in the Deep South, or as a jury member in Dakar, Senegal. Pool plainly understood the power of such networks. ‘No man is an island,’ Pool often remarked, quoting John Donne.9 As Pool witnessed the rise of mass media, her influence likewise grew as she appeared on radio and television.

The rise of radio in the 1920s allowed her to promote poets she believed in (including Margot Vos and Frits Tingen), the arrival of television in the 1950s allowed her to promote the careers of others

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(including Gordon Heath and Otto Sterman). Yet she made the greatest impact with the poetry anthologies she edited over the years. These groundbreaking works included poetry by up-and- coming poets such as Audre Lorde, Amiri Baraka, Margaret Danner, and Dudley Randall. Although these publications were printed in small editions, they became objects that students and activists treasured and exchanged with each other. A significant moment was when Vinnette Carroll’s 1964

TV adaption of Pool’s poetry anthology Beyond the Blues landed her - Carroll, not Pool - an Emmy.

With such recognition, all of Pool’s works became sources of pride to all of the authors, with which

Pool made her mark on a new generation.

A versatile stimulator

The final question is related to historiography, and kept creeping up throughout this research: why is her name hardly mentioned anywhere? And, why have so few people ever heard about this woman?

There are multiple reasons. One basic explanation seems to be that Pool’s legacy was rapidly washed away in the years after her death, ironically by the exciting emancipation movements she helped to set in motion. Pool’s death came as a surprise to many, much like the ending of Advocaat pro deo, like a black screen after a period of suspense. The memory of Pool was solely kept alive in the international

Bahá’í community, albeit not consistently. In 1978, for example, the Rosey Pool Award was created by a Bahá’í group near Chicago, which unfortunately proved to be a one-time affair.10 In the mid-

1980s the Dutch Bahá’í writer Anneke Buys started writing a biography of Pool, which was unfortunately never published.11 This does not, however, explain why both of her massive archives were rarely used by other historians.

A second explanation is that the actions of women are valued less than those of men, and their achievements are also forgotten more easily. Closely related to this aspect was Pool’s role as

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educator, mediator, and - the title she preferred herself - ‘stimulator.’12 Often working behind closed doors, she stimulated others to explore their boundaries, a role that is easily forgotten whenever careers take off. So Pool’s biggest strength, to help other people, became her greatest weakness in terms of historical acknowledgement. Unfortunately, stimulating other people does not often get you into the history books.

Another reason Pool was forgotten was because of her sheer versatility. Pool’s work was spread across different fields, including radio, poetry, literature, recitals, translations, television, education, which made that she did not have a single ‘brand.’ Additionally, her intersection of multiple identities, as well as her various goals, created something that scholars have called ‘intersectional invisibility.’13 Compared to individuals who focus on a single issue, individuals with multiple subordinate-group identities are often non-prototypical members of their respective identity groups, making them often less committed to a single goal and rendering them less visible. Pool’s story thus had to be dug up from her largely unexplored archives, and by gathering multiple separate histories, from the labor movement to the Négritude movement. Pool connected different layers of her personality and interests in a complex yet idiosyncratic manner. Similarly, Pool also operated in various countries. Pool was thus simply too international to fit in nationalist structures: starting with her Jewish background, the socialist movement, Négritude, the Bahá’í faith, even the Scout movement

- they all had transnational organization structures and were based on internationalist ideals, while most of these movement also faced fierce opposition. Another reason was that she had no family that kept her legacy alive after her death: almost all of them were killed in the Holocaust nor did she had any children. On top of that there was another practical reason why her archives received little attention: her scattered, multilingual archives prevented other researchers to write a biography: how could one ever get funding together for such a large project? Pool, in other words, posthumously became the victim of what historians have called ‘methodological nationalism’: both historical writing,

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archives, as well as remembrance cultures were largely founded within one single national context.

The forgetfulness about Rosey Pool could also be the result of a toxic mix of antisemitism and anti-

Black racism. Notwithstanding all these logical explanations, being remembered or forgotten is often due to extremely arbitrary and completely random reasons which remain unexplicable, even to historians. This biography will hopefully turn the tide, and with a bit of luck Rosey Pool is this time remembered for good.

⌇⌇⌇

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Figure 12.1 Arthur B. Spingarn, Lonneke Geerlings, and Rosey E. Pool at a meeting of AMSAC, ca. 1960s. Source: Sussex. Photoshopped by the author.

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EPILOGUE PURSUING GHOSTS

Virginia Woolf once famously said that a human life can exist out of a thousand personalities - and that biographers should be glad when they discover about six or seven of them.14 I tried to define about one of Rosey Pool’s multiple personalities in each chapter. Still, I do not really think I know her. I like to think I ‘got’ her, or saw through her, once or twice. This often coincided with real life encounters with actual people that were ‘just like’ Pool, the ‘same type of person,’ one might say.

However, these ‘eureka moments’ were often followed by mild disappointment when these individuals were actually nothing like Pool. Real life does not comply to labels or categories.

The elusiveness of my research topic created some desperate times, but also the best of times.

Tormented by a sense of unfulfillment (and an appetite for a holiday), I traced Pool’s steps in not only her archives, but also her footsteps around the world. I visited places she had been to: Harlem, New

York, where she met Langston Hughes during her first American visit; Acre in Israel, where she experienced a religious conversion; but also Vierhouten, the Netherlands, where she made her first performances in the socialist movement. By visiting these places, Pool’s life became more real, more tangible to me, but also more malleable, and it allowed me to reflect on Pool’s own constructions. I discovered that the campus of Tougaloo College, Mississippi, was much bigger than she liked to depict in her stories.

I also learned to go beyond my own constructions and preconceptions. One of the most revelatory and yet humbling experiences was when I went to her former home at 23a Highpoint in

North London. I had seen that address so many times in her archives that I just felt I had to go there, perhaps in an attempt to find something of her soul over there. I simply went over there and rang the

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doorbell, all excited. Unexpectedly, an American woman opened the door. I explained her the story, which she listened to halfheartedly as she was just in the middle of moving. ‘We’re not really history buffs,’ she said, apologized for not having time, and closed the door. A potential magical moment was ruined. I looked around the corridor - which had apparently not changed that much since the 1950s and touched the banisters. Better than nothing at all. Perhaps the woman smelled my desperation through the door, because after a moment the American opened her door again and let me in anyway, perhaps in a moment of temporary sanity, or insanity perhaps. It was a revelation to me to be able to walk around the house that had been Pool’s home for over twenty years. I could literally see how small the apartment truly was and where she had cooked her food. However, this visit also confronted me with my own voyeurism. While I was standing on the exact same spot where her bed had been I suddenly felt I was betraying Pool’s privacy. Did I have the right to be here? Did I even have the right to be ‘her biographer’?

Over the years, I came to realize that writing a biography is a curious thing. My biographical subject influenced me, while I in turn created an image of Rosey Pool. Dogs look like their owners, some say, but the same can be said about biographers (although it is undecided who is the dog in this case. Probably the biographer?). When I started this research, Rosey E. Pool was almost a blank page that almost no one had tried to define yet. There was no significant public memory, no popular preconceptions, and no consensus among historians. In addition, since there was no one who had truly, critically reflected on Pool, I was able to project my own ideas, perceptions, and fantasies onto her. This biography thus inadvertently reveals quite a lot about myself as well. It reflects my own values, dreams, and insights from my own life.15 After all, any long-term research requires self- reflection, but perhaps a biography most of all.

Some chapters wrote themselves because of the amazing material. Others needed a more thorough orchestrating. A story needed to be created by paragraphing words, picking out sentences,

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and framing certain sources. The choices I made to make these connections were both conscious and unconscious, although I tried to convince myself they were only the former. Just to show just how easy it is to manipulate source material I edited one photograph of Pool and me together (Figure

12.1): as a gentle reminder, it is just as easy as manipulation in a written text. It has been tempting to create an illusion of reality in this book, and occasionally I broke the spell of the immersing narrative structure by reflecting, questioning, and disproving some ‘facts.’ The distinction between fiction and academic writing is a thin line, as many authors before me have argued.16 But the major difference was that this is not a fictional story - it all really happened. This biography highlights some particular aspects and characteristics of Rosey Pool, but it does not claim to provide the ‘final’ image of her.

Rosey Pool’s life was incomplete and inconsistent, often without any sense of direction - much like our own lives.

Amsterdam, October 2019

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ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

The preparations for this book started six years ago, in late 2013, when I began to explore options to do a PhD, after I had worked in several archives for some years. It was Anneke Ribberink who linked me to Susan Legêne, who together with Diederik Oostdijk, would become the supervisors of my PhD project. I can honestly say that these years have been the best ones of my life, and I have them to thank for it. They enabled me to travel the world, encouraged me to look beyond my boundaries and preconceptions, and even gave me the space to make mistakes and failures - a highly undervalued element of research and personal growth. I matured during this PhD, and I owe it largely to Susan and Diederik. I could not have wished for better supervisors.

There are so many people I want to thank but first is Peter Paardekooper, my partner who stood by me, functioned as a sounding board, and 24/7 commenter. I could not have done this without him: I discussed all my discoveries and conclusions with him, and we went to many of the ‘contact zones’ together. Moreover, I want to thank my family, my parents, and my sister and brother, who encouraged me endlessly. All my friends, the members of Helleveeg, others bands - you know who you are. A special thanks to Rudi Wesselius, a relative of Rosey Pool, whom I could always talk to.

Three people in particular influenced my thinking and writing: Anneke Ribberink on women’s history and biographies; Dienke Hondius on the intersection of racism and anti-Semitism; and of course Babs Boter with her meticulous knowledge of literary theory, gender, and history. You are the best.

I found great support in the ‘intervisie’ group that was formed by a group of PhD students and my colleagues, including Jos van Beurden, Marieke Oprel, Michel van Duijnen, Caro Verbeek,

Miel Groten, Berend Mul, Fieke Smitskamp, Tjalling Bouma, Marja van Heese, Heleen Blommers,

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and Maaike van den Berg. During my internship at NWO there were people who similarly supported each other, including Eva Mulder, Job Vossen, Jolien Cremers, Kim van Gent, and Niké Wentholt.

Some other colleagues at the VU were helpful, each in their own way, including (in no particular order) Karin Lurvink, Hans de Waardt, Frans Huijzendveld, Pepijn Brandon, Martha Visscher-

Houweling, Chiel van den Akker, Bettine Siertsema, Bart Wallet, George Harinck, Christoph van den Belt, Widya Fitria Ningsih, Wouter de Vries, Jos de Weerd, Alexander Geelen, Ab Flipse,

Martina Amoksi, Inger Leemans, Erika Kuijpers, Riedwaan Moosage, Wybren Verstegen, Serge ter

Braake, Antske Fokkens, Kristine Steenbergh, Gea Dreschler, Nelleke Moser, Dirk Visser, Janet van der Meulen, and of course Liesbeth Geudeke. I might have forgotten some, my apologies. All of you were indispensable, always ready to discuss research, academia, and the quality of coffee at the VU.

Other valuable colleagues at the VU included Amrita Das and her knowledge on literature and humor, Marijke Huisman who gave commentaries on early versions of chapters, Nancy Jouwe and Wim Manuhutu who were endlessly supportive. Dineke Stam, who gave me advice for diaries on

Otto Frank. I was able to discuss my research during guest lectures at the VU as well in courses taught by Ronald Kroeze, Norah Karrouche, Tijl Vanneste, and Dienke Hondius. Eric Akkerman and Onno

Huber largely made the digital part of this research possible.

A special shout out to archivists worldwide: you are the real heroes. I especially want to thank

Annette Mevis (formerly of Atria) for her great tips, Jo Baines (formerly of Sussex) for her advice;

Gertjan Broek and Erika Prins of the Anne Frank House; Guido Abuys of the Westerbork memorial center; Barbara Schieb of the Gedenkstätte Deutscher Widerstand; Frans van Domburg of the Stichting

1940-1945; Jasper Snoeren of the Institute for Sound and Vision in Hilversum; Beverly Cook of the

Chicago Public Library (this woman deserves a statue); Carlijn Keijzer of the NIOD who discovered letters written by Pool in Westerbork. And to all the archivists I forgot to mention: THANK YOU.

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I greatly benefited from exchanges with international scholars at some summer schools I went to: on European Jewish history (Brighton, UK), Cold War history (Vienna, Austria), transnational history (OPG), and people I met at specialized courses on Digital Humanities, databases, networks analysis, but also on intersectionality, oral history, food history, and many, many more.

There was great institutional support from the Huizinga Institute for Cultural History (Paul

Koopman and Afke Berger) and the expert group ‘Unhinging the National Framework’ that was initiated by Babs Boter. But also people I randomly emailed and who surprisingly emailed back. Some

I’d like to thank in person include Brooks Marmon for his work on AMSAC and South Africa; Hugh

Wilford for his knowledge on AMSAC; Bart de Cort; James Davis (NYU) for his insights on Rosey

Pool; Marlen Eckl (Frankfurt area) and David Jünger (Sussex) for our collaboration in Münster; M.J.

O'Brien for sharing his knowledge on Tougaloo College; Myriam Everard for her tip on an IISH archive; Dawn Skorczewski for her suggestions on my chapters; Volkert Visser for his help with

Nodegoat and everything digital; Andrina Tran who did research for me at Yale University; and of course Ellen de Vries for great talks and collaboration on Nola Hatterman; Nanka de Vries at the

RIAS.

I also want to thank the entire board of the Association for Gender History (VVG) and all the – current and former – editors at Historica, the journal for gender history. I truly enjoyed doing interviews together with Kirsten Zimmerman, Greetje Bijl, and Laura Nys.

I want to mention some in particular: Shima Jalal Kamali for her tips of Langston Hughes;

Clive Webb (Sussex); Also to Shaul Kelner, Ellie Flier, and Jeana Pointdexter who enabled me to speak at Vanderbilt University in 2017. and a special thanks to Diarmuid Hester (formerly Sussex, now Cambridge) who also saw how special Rosey Pool was and organized an entire festival around this amazing woman, in 2018.

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This project has financially been supported by a PhD grant from the Netherlands

Organisation for Scientific Research (NWO) that included a generous travel grant as well. I was able to do two international fellowships: one at the British Library in London, financed by the Eccles

Centre; and another one at the Bundesarchiv in Berlin, made possible by the European Holocaust

Research Infrastructure (EHRI). Other financial support came from the German Historical Institute

(GHI) in Washington DC to visit a conference; the EAAS for research in the US, the Catharina

Halkes fonds for research in Chicago; and additional funding from VU’s CLUE+ to invite international scholars. And finally, the Institute for Sound and Vision, where I researched my chapter on Advocaat pro deo in even more detail as a guest researcher. All of these institutions helped creating this work. Thank you.

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ENDNOTES

NOTES INTRODUCTION

1 Howard University, Moorland Spingarn Center, Rosey Pool Papers, Folder 6, Samuel Allen: Letter Rosey Pool to Samuel W. Allen [a.k.a. Paul Vesey], 30 January 1961. 2 While ‘postwar’ refers to the period after 1945, ‘post-Holocaust’ explicitly refers to the time when the Holocaust became the benchmark of genocide. See: Eric J. Sundquist, Strangers in the Land. Blacks, Jews, Post-Holocaust America (Cambridge: Harvard University Press [2005] 2009) 6. 3 Michael Rothberg, Multidirectional Memory. Remembering the Holocaust in the Age of Decolonization (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press 2009) 21. 4 Sherna Gluck, ‘What’s so Special about Women? Women’s Oral History’, Frontiers. A Journal of Women Studies 2.2 (Summer 1977) 3-17; Fia Dieteren & Els Kloek, Writing Women into History (Amsterdam: Historisch Seminarium van de Universiteit van Amsterdam 1990); Mieke Aerts, ‘Contesting Representations. Towards New Histories of Women’s Activism,’ in: Mieke Aerts (ed.), Gender and Activism. Women’s Voices in Political Debate [Yearbook of Women’s History, Vol. 35] (Hilversum: Verloren, [2015]) 9-13:11. 5 Buys, Anneke, ‘The Marvelous Gift of Friendship. A Biography of Rosey E. Pool, 1905-1971.’ Apeldoorn, unpublished manuscript, 1986, n.p. 6 Alessandro Portelli, ‘What Makes Oral History Different,’ in: Luisa Del Giudice (ed.), Oral History, Oral Culture, and Italian Americans. Italian and Italian American Studies (New York: Palgrave Macmillan 2009) 21-30. 7 Rosey Pool’s visit to the Soviet Union in 1965 is not included in this book, but a separate article can be found on this holiday. See: Lonneke Geerlings, ‘“Much More Freedom of Thought Than Expected There.” Rosey E. Pool, a Dutch Fellow Traveler on Holiday in the Soviet Union (1965),’ in: Sune Bechmann Pedersen & Christian Noack (eds.), Tourism and Travel During the Cold War. Negotiating Tourist Experiences across the Iron Curtain (London: Routledge 2019). In Print. 8 Eric Hobsbawm, The Age of Extremes. A History of the World, 1914-1991 (New York: Vintage Books [1994] 1996). 9 Sussex, SxMs19/11/3/18, 16-1: Rosey Pool, As Waves of One Sea 30. 10 Kimberlé Crenshaw, ‘Mapping the Margins. Intersectionality, Identity Politics, and Violence Against Women of Color,’ Stanford Law Review 43.6 (July 1991) 1241-1299. Helma Lutz, Maria Teresa Herrera Vivar & Linda Supik, Framing Intersectionality. Debates on a Multi-Faceted Concept in Gender Studies (Burlington, VT: Ashgate 2011) 1-21; Kathy Davis, ‘Intersectionality as Buzzword. A Sociology of Science Perspective on What Makes a Feminist Theory Successful,’ Feminist Theory 9.1 (April 2008) 67-85; Kathryn Pauly Morgan, ‘Describing the Emperor’s New

277 Clothes. Three Myths of Educational (In-)Equity,’ in: Ann Diller et al. (eds.), The Gender Question in Education. Theory, Pedagogy and Politics (Boulder, CO: Westview 1996) 105-122. 11 Judith Butler, ‘Performative Acts and Gender Constitution. An Essay in Phenomenology and Feminist Theory,’ Theatre Journal 40.4 (December 1988) 519-531; Mineke Bosch, ‘Persona and the Performance of Identity. Parallel Developments in the Biographical Historiography of Science and Gender, and the Related Uses of Self Narrative,’ L’Homme. Europäische Zeitschrift für Feministische Geschichtswissenschaft (theme issue Auto/Biographie) 24.2 (2013) 11-22. 12 Nancy K. Miller, But Enough About Me. Why We Read Other People’s Lives (New York: Columbia University Press 2002) 63. 13 Toni Morrison, Playing in the Dark. Whiteness and the Literary Imagination (New York: Vintage Books [1990] 1992) xii. 14 Pamela Pattynama, ‘Op zoek naar het verkeerde verlangen. Literatuur en lesbische seksualiteit,’ Wim Neetens (red), Vrouw en Literatuur (Antwerpen: Vrouwenstudies Universiteit Antwerpen 1993) 82-93; Pamela Pattynama, ‘Maskering en geheimhouding. Het lesbisch verhaal,’ in: Margriet Prinssen & Lucie Th. Vermij (eds.), Schrijfsters in de jaren vijftig (Amsterdam: Sara/van Gennep 1991) 251-264. See also footnotes in chapter 2 (Berlin). 15 Astrid Erll, Memory in Culture (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan 2011) 8. 16 Erika Apfelbaum, ‘Halbwachs and the Social Properties of Memory,’ in: Susannah Radstone & Bill Schwarz (eds.), Memory. Histories, Theories, Debates (New York: Fordham University Press 2010) 77- 92:82; Nanci Adler & Selma Leydesdorff (eds.), Tapestry of Memory. Evidence and Testimony in Life- Story Narratives (New Brunswick, NJ: Transaction Publishers 2013) ix-xxix; Molly Andrews, ‘Beyond narrative. The Shape of Traumatic Testimony,’ in: Matti Hyvarinen̈ (ed.), Beyond Narrative Coherence (Amsterdam: John Benjamins Publishing Company 2010) 147-166. 17 Sussex, SxMs19/11/3/18: Pool, ‘As Waves of One Sea’ [English manuscript Lachen om niet te huilen], 205. 18 Recent research on whiteness emphasizes that white is a system of privilege, but also a master narrative, and an identity that is performed in specific contexts, both historical and social. Moreover, Valerie Babb writes that whiteness is part of ‘an artificially crafted identity [...] to maintain hierarchy and divisiveness.’ See: Valerie M. Babb, Whiteness Visible. The Meaning of Whiteness in American Literature (New York: New York University Press 1998) 6; Gwendolyn Audrey Foster, Performing Whiteness: Postmodern Re/Constructions in the Cinema (Albany, NY: State University of New York Press 2003) 2; Richard Dyer, White. Essays on Race and Culture (London: Routledge 1997) 1-40; Morrison, Playing in the Dark 1-28. 19 Sussex, SxMs19/11/3/18: Pool, ‘As Waves of One Sea’ [English manuscript Lachen om niet te huilen], 58-59. 278 20 Pamela Pattynama, ‘Etnocentrisme en waarheid,’ in: Margo Brouns, Mieke Verloo & Marianne Grünell (ed.), Vrouwenstudies in de jaren negentig. Een kennismaking vanuit verschillende disciplines (Bussum: Coutinho 1995) 211-232:213; Gloria Wekker, White Innocence. Paradoxes of Colonialism and Race (Durham, NC: Duke University Press 2016). 21 Nancy Jouwe, ‘Standing at the Crossroads. The Black, Migrant & Refugee Women’s Movement’in the Netherlands,’ Historica 39.3 (October 2016) 3-8:4. 22 Hans Blom & Joël J. Cahen, ‘Joodse Nederlanders, Nederlandse joden en joden in Nederland 1870-1940,’ in: Hans Blom, David J. Wertheim, Hetty Berg & Bart Wallet (eds.), Geschiedenis van de Joden in Nederland (Amsterdam: Uitgeverij Balans [1995] 2017). 23 Sarah Panter, Johannes Paulmann & Margit Szöllösi-Janze, ‘Mobility and Biography. Methodological Challenges and Perspectives’, in: Sarah Panter (ed.), Mobility and Biography [European History Yearbook, Vol. 16] (Munich: De Gruyter 2015) 1-14:3. Quote from Ulrich Beck. 24 Paul Gilroy, The Black Atlantic. Modernity and Double Consciousness (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press 1993) 19. 25 Sussex, SxMs19/11/3/18, 16-1: Rosey Pool, As Waves of One Sea 2. Quote from Aimé Césaire’s Les Armes Miraculeuses. 26 Stuart Hall, ‘Political Belonging in a World of Multiple Identities,’ in: Steven Vertovec & Robin Cohen, Conceiving Cosmopolitanism. Theory, Context, and Practice (Oxford: Oxford University Press 2002) 25-31:26. 27 Babs Boter & Marleen Rensen, ‘Introduction,’ in: Babs Boter, Giles Scott-Smith & Marleen Rensen (eds.), Unhinging the National Framework. Case Studies in Transnational Life Writing (Leiden: Sidestone Press 2019), in print. 28 Desley Deacon, Penny Russell & Angela Woollacott, ‘Introduction,’ in: Desley Deacon, Penny Russell & Angela Woollacott (eds.), Transnational Lives. Biographies of Global Modernity, 1700- Present (Basingstoke; New York: Palgrave Macmillan 2010) 1-11:2. 29 The archivist, Dorothy Porter, thanked Pool in late 1965 for sending ‘556 letters and items written to you by the many young poets you have inspired and given a place in “the sun.”’ Source: Howard, Folder 128, Dorothy B. Porter: Letter Dorothy B. Porter to Rosey Pool, 29 December 1965. See also: Janet L. Sims-Wood, Dorothy Porter Wesley at Howard University. Building a Legacy of Black History (Charleston, SC: The History Press 2014). 30 Sussex, SxMs19/1/1, Correspondence, A-J, 1-165: Letter Rosey Pool to Julia Fields, 9 February 1966. 31 Sussex, SxMs19/4/36/8, 5-86: Dakar File. 32 Paul John Eakin, The Ethics of Life Writing (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press 2004) 6-8.

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33 Private archive Rudi Wesselius: Letter Rosey Pool to Mr. Boele van Hensbroek, 26 February 1969 [letter not sent]. For the review see: J. Kuin, ‘Rosey E. Pool schrijft bewogen en nuchter over negers in Amerika,’ De Volkskrant, 28 January 1969. 34 Ann Laura Stoler, Along the Archival Grain. Epistemic Anxieties and Colonial Common Sense (Princeton: Princeton University Press 2009) 96, 155. 35 Stuart Hall, ‘Encoding, Decoding,’ in: Centre for Contemporary Cultural Studies (ed.), Culture, Media, Language. Working Papers in Cultural Studies, 1972-1979 (London: Routledge [1973] 1980) 128-138. 36 James Smethurst, ‘The Black Arts Movement and Historically Black Colleges and Universities,’ in: Lisa Gail Collins & Margo Natalie Crawford (eds.), New Thoughts on the Black Arts Movement (New Brunswick: Rutgers University Press 2006) 75-91:90f13. Smethurst writes that the inclusion of iconic names were crucial, including those of the scholar W.E.B. Du Bois and the poet/journalist Walter Lowenfels. They could be linked to the communist party, but also to other causes. See also: James Smethurst, ‘”Don’t Say Goodbye to the Porkpie Hat.” Langston Hughes, the Left, and the Black Arts Movement,’ Callaloo 25.4 (Autumn 2002) 1225-1236:1226. 37 Maaike Meijer, ‘M’n hart stond van stocht bijna stil!’ (F. Harmsen van Beek). Dichters en hun biografen (Maastricht: Maastricht University 2014) 13. 38 Susan Legêne. Spiegelreflex. Culturele sporen van de koloniale ervaring (Amsterdam: Bakker 2010) 83-118; John E. O’Connor, ‘History in Images/Images in History. Reflections on the Importance of Film and Television Study for an Understanding of the Past,’ The American Historical Review 93.5 (December 1988) 1200-1209; Susan Sontag, ‘The Image-World,’ in: Jessica Evans and Stuart Hall (eds.),Visual Culture. The Reader (London: Sage 1999) 80-94. 39 Arianne Baggerman & Rudolf Dekker, ‘“De gevaarlijkste aller bronnen.” Egodocumenten: nieuwe wegen en perspectieven,’ TSEG/ Low Countries Journal of Social and Economic History 1.4 (2004) 3-22. Quote from historian Jan Romein. 40 Sussex, SxMs19/1/2, Correspondence, L-Z, 2-57: Letter Rosey Pool to Mae Mallory, 5 July 1963. 41 Mineke Bosch, Een onwrikbaar geloof in rechtvaardigheid. Aletta Jacobs, 1854-1929 (Amsterdam: Balans 2005) 14. 42 Sidney G. Tarrow, Power in Movement. Social Movements, Collective Action and Politics (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1994) 15; Doug McAdam, ‘Recruitment to High-Risk Activism. The Case of Freedom Summer,’ American Journal of Sociology 92.1 (July 1986) 64-90:70; Bob de Graaff & Lidwien Marcus, Kinderwagens en korsetten. Een onderzoek naar de sociale achtergrond en de rol van vrouwen in het verzet, 1940-1945 (Amsterdam: Bakker, 1980) 30-34; Bert Klandermans, ‘Motivation and Types of Motives (Instrumental; Identity, Ideological Motives),’ in: 280

David A. Snow, Donatella della Porta, Bert Klandermans & Doug McAdam (eds.), The Wiley- Blackwell Encyclopedia of Social and Political Movements (Malden: Wiley-Blackwell 2013) 778-780. 43 I especially like to thank Eric Akkerman and Onno Huber of the Vrije Universiteit for their help. 44 Peter Boot, ‘Te groot voor het blote oog. Over interactie visualisatie in de studie van correspondenties,’ Tijdschrift voor Nederlandse Taal- en Letterkunde 124.3 (2008) 201-210. 45 Stephen P. Borgatti, Martin G. Everett & Jeffrey C. Johnson, Analyzing Social Networks (London: SAGE 2013) 5; Lonneke Geerlings, ‘A Visual Analysis of Rosey E. Pool’s Correspondence Archives. Biographical Data, Intersectionality, and Social Network Analysis,’ CEUR Workshop Proceedings [Proceedings of the First Conference on Biographical Data in a Digital World, Amsterdam, 9 April 2015], 1339 (2015) 61-67. URL: http://ceur-ws.org/Vol-1399/paper10.pdf. 46 This website can be accessed via the URL: http://roseyepool.wordpress.com/network-analysis. 47 Mary Louise Pratt, ‘Arts of the Contact Zone,’ Profession (1991) 33-40:34. 48 Stephen Greenblatt (ed.), Cultural Mobility. A Manifesto (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press 2010) 251. 49 Leif Jerram, ‘Space. A Useless Category for Historical Analysis?,’ History and Theory. Studies in the Philosophy of History 52.3 (October 2013) 400-419:404. 50 Garth L. Lean, ‘Transformative Travel. A Mobilities Perspective,’ Tourist Studies 12.2 (August 2012) 151-172; Babs Boter, ‘Heavenly Sensations and Communal Celebrations. Experiences of Liminality in Transatlantic Journeys,’ in: Michael Boyden, Hans Krabbendam & Liselotte Vandenbussche (eds.), Tales of Transit. Narrative Migrant Spaces in Atlantic Perspective, 1850-1950 (Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press 2013) 179-195.

NOTES CHAPTER 1: AMSTERDAM

1 Jozeph Michman, Hartog Beem & Dan Michman, Pinkas. Geschiedenis van de joodse gemeenschap in Nederland (Amsterdam: Contact 1999) 284; Selma Leydesdorff, Wij hebben als mens geleefd. Het Joodse proletariaat van Amsterdam 1900-1940 (Amsterdam: Meulenhoff 1987) 62; Philo Bregstein, Salvador Bloemgarten & Joka Bloemgarten-Barends (eds.), Herinnering aan Joods Amsterdam (Amsterdam: De Bezige Bij [1978] 1999) 11. 2 IISH, Archive Frank van der Goes, inv.no. 1486/1: Correspondence Louis Pool to Frank van der Goes, 1903. 3 ‘Vriendelijk verzoek,’ [advertisement] Het volk. Dagblad voor de arbeiderspartij 2.398 (21 July 1901) 4. 4 ‘Comité tot ondersteuning der werklooze Diamantbewerkers. Opgave van tot en met 30 December 1899 ontvangen gelden,’ Het nieuws van den dag. Kleine courant, no. 9200 (10 January 1900), 11; ‘Attentie uitgesloten en werklooze arbeiders van alle vakken,’ [advertisement], Het volk. Dagblad voor 281

de arbeiderspartij, 2.587 (2 March 1902) 4; ‘Attentie werkeloozen’ [advertisement], Het Volk 3.721 (10 August 1902) 4; ‘Attentie!!! Stakers en uitgeslotenen!,’ [advertisement] Het Volk 4.924 (8 April 1903) 4; ‘Ingezonden. Nogmaals oproep Jordaanbuurt,’ Het Volk 4.937 (24 April 1903) 3. 5 Sussex, SxMs19/13/1, Memorial Volume, M.W. Ferrée-Beugeling (December 1972). 6 Rosey E. Pool, Lachen om niet te huilen (Rotterdam: Lemniscaat 1968) 22-23. 7 J.C.H. Blom & J.J. Cahen, ‘Joodse Nederlanders, Nederlandse joden en joden in Nederland (1870-1940), in: Hans Blom, David Wertheim, Hetty Berg & Bart Wallet (eds.), Geschiedenis van de joden in Nederland (Amsterdam: Uitgeverij Balans [1995] 2017) 247-310:273. 8 Interview with unidentified person by Anneke Buys, ca. 1985. 9 Sussex, SxMs19/10/1/5, Scrapbook 1959-1960: Joy Lee Taylor, ‘Anne Frank’s Teacher Discusses Dangerous Wartime Experiences,’ The Spectator. Highland Park High School [Michigan] 45.6 [ca. November 1959], n.p. 10 Sussex, SxMs19/11/3/18, 16-1: Rosey Pool, As Waves of One Sea 28. 11 Rosey E. Pool, Lachen om niet te huilen (Rotterdam: Lemniscaat 1968) 24. 12 Rosey E. Pool, Lachen om niet te huilen (Rotterdam: Lemniscaat 1968) 23. 13 Rosey E. Pool, Lachen om niet te huilen (Rotterdam: Lemniscaat 1968) 24 14 Sussex, SxMs19/11/3/18, 16-1: Rosey Pool, As Waves of One Sea 29. 15 Jan Willem Stutje, ‘Antisemitisme onder Nederlandse socialisten in het “fin de siècle,”’ BMGN - Low Countries Historical Review 129.3 (September 2014) 4-26:9. 16 Jozeph Michman, Hartog Beem & Dan Michman, Pinkas. Geschiedenis van de joodse gemeenschap in Nederland (Amsterdam: Contact 1999) 108. 17 Sussex, SxMs19/11/3/18, 16-1: Rosey Pool, As Waves of One Sea 28. 18 Amsterdam City Archives, inv.no. 708, Archive Gerrit van der Veen Scholengemeenschap en rechtsvoorgangers, no. 9: ‘Aantekeningen omtrent leerlingen, In alfabetische volgorde van 1910- 1914, daarna elk jaar afzonderlijk,’ 298. 19 Sussex, SxMs19/13/1, Memorial Volume, M.W. Ferrée-Beugeling (December 1972). 20 Personal archive Anneke Buys, interview Hilda Verwey-Jonker by Anneke Buys, n.d.; Interview Jaap Reens by Anneke Buys, 22 January 1985, n.p. 21 Ine was the sister of Arie den Hollander, who would become a well-known Sociology professor. 22 Sussex, SxMs19/11/3/18, 16-1: Rosey Pool, As Waves of One Sea 29-30. 23 Sussex, SxMs19/11/3/18, 16-1: Rosey Pool, As Waves of One Sea 30. Child obesity indeed became increasingly unacceptable in the 1920s. See: Laura Dawes, Childhood Obesity in America. Biography of an Epidemic (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press 2014) 2, 7.

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24 Dan Olweus, ‘Bullying at school. Long-term outcomes for the victims and an effective school-based intervention program,’ in: L. Rowell Huesmann (ed.), Plenum Series in Social/Clinical Psychology. Aggressive Behavior. Current Perspectives (New York: Plenum Press 1994) 97-130:100. 25 Sussex, SxMs19/13/1, Memorial Volume, [anonymous, printed on Barlaeus Gymnasium paper]. 26 Sussex, SxMs19/13/1, Memorial Volume, M.W. Ferrée-Beugeling (December 1972). 27 Victoria Talwar, Heidi M. Gordon & Kang Lee, ‘Lying in the Elementary School Years: Verbal Deception and its Relation to Second-Order Belief Understanding,’ Developmental Psychology 43.3 (May 2007) 804-810. 28 Sussex, SxMs19/11/3/18, 16-1: Rosey Pool, As Waves of One Sea 29. 29 Sussex, SxMs19/13/1, Memorial Volume, M.W. Ferrée-Beugeling (December 1972). Mies Beugeling here writes her family was ‘half Jewish.’ The Dienaren van de Ster in het Oosten was led by Cruys Voorbergh, who later became a famous actor. 30 Sussex, SxMs19/13/1, Memorial Volume: ‘Rosey E. Pool [resume and bio written by Pool] 2 31 ‘Uitgaan. Intieme oorspronkelijke kunst,’ Nieuw Israelitisch weekblad 58.34 (12 January 1923) 3. Here Pool performed in a comedy named Ongeloovige Thomas (‘Doubting Thomas’), together with four women (Stella Kroese, Ro. Spits, Netty Wijnperle, Jenny Spits) and seven men (Lo Keizer, J. Voorzanger, M. Montezinos, J. Keizer, J. Cohen, S. Lobatto and Jac. Cohen). 32 Salomon Santen, Dapper zijn omdat het goed is. Brieven uit de cel (Amsterdam: De Bezige Bij 2012) 81. Quoted from letter Sal Santen to his son, 30 October 1960. 33 Bart van der Steen, ‘Met de Roode Auto op reis. Een fragment uit de memoires van Jef Last,’ Onvoltooid verleden 23 (May 2007) 7-27:8. 34 Ger Harmsen, Blauwe en rode jeugd. Ontstaan, ontwikkeling en teruggang van de Nederlandse jeugdbeweging tussen 1853 en 1940 (Nijmegen: SUN [1961] 1973) 298. 35 ‘Instituut voor Arbeidersontwikkeling,’ Het volk. Dagblad voor de arbeiderspartij, 10 January 1927, 12; Hendrik Cornelis Marie Michielse, Socialistiese vorming. Het Instituut voor Arbeidersontwikkeling (1924-1940) en het vormings- en scholingswerk van de Nederlandse sociaal-demokratie sinds 1900 (Nijmegen: Socialistiese Uitgeverij Nijmegen 1980) 111-115. 36 ‘Van de Jeugdgroepen. Afd. Amsterdam,’ Onze strijd. Orgaan van den Algemeenen Nederlandschen Bond van Handels- en Kantoorbedienden 27.26 (1 July 1932) 8. 37 Sussex, 21-2, Memorial Volume: Autobiography-bibliography, 1. 38 Sussex, SxMs19/11/1/2, 13-30, Documentatie Zielen vol soul [ca. late 1960s]: ‘Mijn zwarte ziel ....,’ 2. 39 Interview Jaap Reens by Anneke Buys, 22 January 1985. 40 The African American issue became a spearhead of leftist movements in this period - ‘The International’ even literally spoke of ‘enslaved masses.’ It is possible that Pool had access to the work 283

of her friend Jef Last (1898-1972), a poet and translator. Although he was often abroad - either at sea, traveling in the Soviet Union, of fighting in the Spanish Civil War - Last and Pool kept in touch, likely because he translated African American poetry as early as 1933, even that of Langston Hughes, and he was one of the first Dutch people that ever met Hughes in person (see also chapter 10). 41 Private archive Anneke Buys. Notes telephone interview Henk Weggelaar by Anneke Buys, 25 September 1985. 42 Interview Jaap Reens by Anneke Buys, 22 January 1985. 43 Evelien Gans, De kleine verschillen die het leven uitmaken. Een historische studie naar joodse sociaal- democraten en socialistisch-zionisten in Nederland (Amsterdam: Vassalucci 1999) 415. 44 Philo Bregstein, Herinnering aan Joods Amsterdam (Amsterdam: De Bezige Bij [1978] 1999) 162. 45 Karin Hofmeester, Jewish Workers and the Labour Movement. A Comparative Study of Amsterdam, London and Paris, 1870-1914 (Aldershot, Hants, UK; Burlington, VT: Ashgate 2004) 95. 46 Amsterdam City Archives, inv.no. 708, Archive Gerrit van der Veen Scholengemeenschap en rechtsvoorgangers, no. 9 Aantekeningen omtrent leerlingen, In alfabetische volgorde van 1910- 1914, daarna elk jaar afzonderlijk. p. 298. ‘gaat studeeren voor de Acte Nederl. M.O.’ 47 Anneke Buys, ‘The Marvelous Gift of Friendship. A Biography of Rosey E. Pool (1905-1971).’ Unpublished manuscript, Apeldoorn 1986, n.p. 48 Howard Rosey Pool Papers, Folder 48: Mari Evans: Letter Rosey Pool to Mari Evans, 9 February 1966. The story is confirmed by Rudi Wesselius in an interview with the author. 49 ‘Examens. Akte-examen L.O.,’ Het Volk. Dagblad voor de arbeiderspartij 25.7427 (4 July 1924) 10. 50 Interview Jaap Reens by Anneke Buys, 22 January 1985. 51 Private archive Anneke Buys. Letter B.W. (Bertus) Schaper to Anneke Buys, 28 July 1985. See also: Peter Jan Knegtmans, ‘Voor wetenschap en maatschappij. Het zelfbeeld van studenten in de Sociaal-Democratische Studentenclubs,’ in: Leen Dorsman & Peter Jan Knegtmans (eds.), Keurige wereldbestormers. Over studenten en hun rol in de Nederlandse samenleving sedert 1876 (Hilversum: Verloren 2008) 45, 48. 52 On photographs from this period Pool appears together with well-known people, including: Garmt Stuiveling (1907-1985), student Dutch literature and future professor; Theo Eskens (?- 1944), student of Law and resistance fighter; Stien de Zeeuw (1907-1995), student of Law and future member of the Provincial-Executive of South Holland; Jo Spier (1900-1978), illustrator; Ritsaert Stoop (1906-1988), student of medicine, future doctor; Arie Treurniet (1903-1992), student of social sciences, AJC youth leader and later NIOD employee; Bertus Schaper (1907- 1991), student of history, later professor in Leiden; Cor Gorter (1907-1980), physics student, later a professor at the UvA; Mien Kroeze, activist and member of the Communist Party Holland (CPH); and Duco Middelburg (1907-1974), future ambassador. 284

53 Personal archive Anneke Buys, interview Hilda Verwey-Jonker by Anneke Buys, n.d. 54 Margit van der Steen, Drift en koers. De levens van Hilda Verwey-Jonker (1908-2004) (Amsterdam: Bakker 2011) 60. 55 Salomon Santen, Dapper zijn omdat het goed is. Brieven uit de cel (Amsterdam: De Bezige Bij 2012) 81. Letter from Sal Santen to his son, 30 October 1960. 56 Interview Jaap Reens by Anneke Buys, 22 January 1985. 57 R.P. [Rosey Pool], ‘Ça Ira,’ Kentering. Maandblad van den Bond van Sociaal-Democratische Studentenclubs, 2.4 [1925], 56-57. 58 ‘Clubnieuws,’ Kentering. Maandblad van den Bond van Sociaal-Democratische Studentenclubs 3.5 [1926] 79. Pool describes a talk of Albarda from February 1926. 59 R.E.P. [Rosey E. Pool], ‘De Diets-Akademiese Leergang te Amsterdam,’ Kentering 3.7 [1926] 110-111. See also: Amsterdam City Archives, inv.no. 1215, Amsterdams Studenten Corps, 1614 VVSL, ‘Jaarverslag 1925/1926,’ 1-10. 60 Rosey Pool, ‘Feest’ [‘Party’], Kentering, 2.8 [1926] 117. 61 On 24 July 1926, Pool accompanied G. de Broer (Zaandam) about ‘Socialisme en Theosophie,’ on VARA radio. On 19 July 1926 she accompanied R. Stenhuis who spoke about ‘De vooruitzichten in den klassenstrijd’ at the Instituut voor Arbeidersontwikkeling, in the building of the Haarlemschen Kegelbond, Haarlem. On 4 April 1927 she accompanied P. Schuhmacher who spoke about ‘Alkohol en Beschaving’ at Het Tolhuis, Amsterdam. Sources: ‘Radioprogramma. Zaterdag 24 Juli,’ Amersfoortsch Dagblad / De Eemlander 25.20 (23 July 1926) 1; ‘Instituut voor Arbeidersontwikkeling. Filmavond,’ Haarlem’s Dagblad 45.13626 (21 November 1927) 3; ‘Instituut voor Arbeidersontwikkeling,’ Het volk. Dagblad voor de arbeiderspartij 26.8348 (2 April 1927) 14. 62 Salomon Santen, Dapper zijn omdat het goed is. Brieven uit de cel (Amsterdam: De Bezige Bij [1993] 2012) 81. 63 ‘Instituut voor Arbeidersontwikkeling. R. Stenhuis te Haarlem,’ Haarlem’s Dagblad 45.13631 (26 November 1927) 14. 64 Huub Wijfjes, VARA. Biografie van een omroep (Amsterdam: Boom, 2009) 41, 50, 56; Hilda Verwey-Jonker, ‘De ideologie van de SDAP (1930-1940)’, p. 11-30:21. In: Jan Bank & Stef Temming (eds.), Van brede visie tot smalle marge. Acht prominente socialisten over de SDAP en de PvdA (Alphen aan den Rijn: Sijthoff, 1981). 65 Huub Wijfjes, VARA. Biografie van een omroep (Amsterdam, Boom, 2009) 44-45. Quoted from: Henri Polak, ‘De Mexicaansche hond blaft’, De Notenkraker, 1 November 1930, p. 702. 66 Rudolf de Jong, ‘Kunst en Cultuur,’ in: Igor Cornelissen, Ger Harmsen & Rudolf de Jong, De taaie rooie rakkers. Een documentaire over het socialisme tussen de wereldoorlogen (Utrecht: Ambo- Boeken 1965) 223-249:246. 285

67 ‘Radio-Agenda. Zaterdag 1 October. Hilversum (1060 M.),’ De Telegraaf 35.13302 (30 September 1927) 7. URL: https://resolver.kb.nl/resolve?urn=ddd:110565830:mpeg21:a0211 (accessed 25 April 2019). 68 Pool’s maternal grandmother Eva Kinsbergen (1874-1930) came from a family of musicians: her father and two of her brothers were professional musicians. 69 Susan Veldmeijer, ‘Considering Art. The role of De Brug, the ASB [Architectuur Schilderkunst Beeldhouwkunst] and the Socialistische Kunstenaarskring in the production, distribution and reception of notions on art and the position of the artist.’ Unpublished Master’s thesis, Utrecht University, 2014, 41. 70 Private Archive Anneke Buys. Letter H. van der Velde (Apeldoorn) to Anneke Buys, 5 November 1985. 71 Private Archive Anneke Buys. Letter H. van der Velde (Apeldoorn) to Anneke Buys, 5 November 1985. This eyewitness compared her to Dutch politician Charles Schwietert, who was forced to resign in 1982 after lying about studying at university on his resume. 72 ‘Ex. Hoogduitsch L.O.,’ Algemeen Handelsblad, 12 August 1927, 2; ‘Examen Duitsch L.O.,’ Het Vaderland, 12 August 1927, 3; ‘Examen Duitsch L.O.,’ De Tijd. Godsdienstig-staatkundig dagblad, 13 August 1927, 11; ‘Examens. Duitsch L.O.', De Telegraaf, 13 August 1927, 6; ‘Examens. Ex. Hoogduitsch L.O.,’ Het Volk. Dagblad voor de arbeiderspartij, 13 August 1927, 3. 73 Sussex, SxMs19/13/1 Rosey Pool Memorial Volume, [bio-bibliography], p. 2. 74 Karin Hofmeester, Jewish Workers and the Labour Movement. A Comparative Study of Amsterdam, London and Paris, 1870-1914 (Aldershot, UK; Burlington, VT: Ashgate 2004) 38.

NOTES CHAPTER 2: BERLIN

1 University of Sussex, Special Collections at The Keep, Rosey Pool Collection, SxMs19/14/1/9 Scrapbook 1962-1963: ‘Nederlandse vrouw expert van de neger-literatuur,’ Algemeen dagblad, 19 April 1966. 2 Interview Bernhard van Tijn by Anneke Buys, n.d.; Universitätsarchiv Berlin, Verzeichnisse der Studierenden. Sommer-Semester 1926. Friedrich-Wilhelms-Universität, 1 von 2, 57. martikelnummer 3078/114: Gerhard Kramer. 3 Staatsarchiv Hamburg, 731-8, A760, Archive Gerhard Kramer: ‘[no title],’ Die Welt, 13 December 1961, n.p. Kramer’s past as a Vorsitzender (president) of the Berliner Ortsgruppe der Vereinigung Sozialdemokratischer Studenten is mentioned here. 4 Interview A.S. (Wim) Rijxman by Anneke Buys, 14 December 1984; Interview Bernhard van Tijn by Anneke Buys, n.d.

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5 Peter Gay, Weimar Culture. The Outsider as Insider (New York: W.W. Norton & Company [1968] 2001) 128. 6 August Hans den Boef & Sjoerd van Faassen, ‘Verrek, waar is Berlijn gebleven?’ Nederlandse schrijvers en hun kunstbroeders in Berlijn 1918-1945 (Amsterdam: Bas Lubberhuizen / The Hague: Letterkundig Museum 2002) 6. 7 Pool was in the Netherlands during January 1928, and made herself formally available for declamations on party meetings for a couple of months after November 1931.Perhaps the marriage had reached a rough patch in 1932, and she registered at her parental home from March to September of that year. See: Private archive Anneke Buys. Letter Gemeentelijke dienst voor het bevolkingsregister, ‘Staat van inlichtingen,’ Rosa Eva Pool, d.d. 30 October 1984. 8 During the war Kramer became a Dutch-German interpreter. In his ‘fictional’ 1952 anti- militaristic novel Wir Werden Weiter Marschieren (translated as We Shall March Again in 1955), Kramer displayed a thorough knowledge of the Amsterdam Jewish Quarter and also used some Dutch Jewish expressions. See: Gerhard Kramer, We Shall March Again (New York: Putnam 1955) 82; Digitale Landesbibliothek Berlin (ZLB), Berliner Adreßbuch für d. Jahr 1941, 1640, ‘Bei dem Kammergericht und für den Landgerichtsbezirf Berlin beedigte Dolmetscher,’ Niederländische Sprache. 9 Gordon Heath, Deep Are The Roots. Memoirs of a Black Expatriate (Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press 1992) 90. 10 Stichting 1940-1945, File G.M. van Wees (soc.29750) 6: ‘Rosey E. Pool.’ 11 Sussex, SxMs19/10/1/3, Scrapbook 1952-1962: ‘Onze gast vandaag: Rosey E. Pool. Negerliteratuur,’ Het Parool, 2 September 1954, n.p. It is possible that the journalist accidentally replaced the word antiquariaat [bookstore] for kunsthandel [art trade firm or antique shop], a common mistake in Dutch. 12 Interview Albert Mol by Anneke Buys, 18 February 1985. 13 Interview Rudi Wesselius by Anneke Buys, 27 September 1984. 14 This chapter is based on a handful oral testimonies that Anneke Buys took in the 1980s. Other contemporary sources are: one review article (1929), one letter (1930), two translations from 1930 and one photograph (ca. 1935). Pool destroyed all of her correspondence which might endanger leftwing friends in 1940. Source: Private archive Anneke Buys. Interview Herman Rabbie by Anneke Buys, 8 May 1985. 15 IISH, Archive Henk Sneevliet, no. 437: Letter Rosey Pool to Henk Sneevliet, 4 February 1930. 16 This bookstore was located on the same address from where she sent a letter: the Potsdamer Stra e 123. β 287

17 The Karl Marx Schule was a progressive school was a Volksschule in the broadest sense. With almost 1200 students from every background, the Karl Marx Schule weaved together progressive pedagogical ideas with political ambitions and offered every type of schooling, from high school to adult education.Although her name does not pop up in the archives of this school, multiple eyewitnesses remember that Pool mentioned her affiliation with this school. It is therefore possible that Pool was at least a substitute teacher here. See: Archiv der Bibliothek für Bildungsgeschichtliche Forschung (BBF), Berlin, Karl-Marx-Schule [Neukölln], microfilm 1929- 1932; Gerd Radde, ‘Fritz Karsens Reformwerk in Berlin-Neukölln,’ in: Gerd Radde (ed.), Schulreform. Kontinuitaten̈ und Bruche.̈ Das Versuchsfeld Berlin-Neukolln.̈ 1. 1912 bis 1945 (Opladen: Leske + Budrich, 1993) 175-187. 18 Marion Palfi (1907-1978) was a German photographer who moved to the United States, and often focused on racial discrimination in her work. Source: Yale, Beinecke, Langston Hughes Papers, JWJ MSS 26 Box 130 f. 2429: Letter Rosey Pool to Langston Hughes, 4 January 1946. 19 Interview Henk Vermeyden by Anneke Buys, n.d. 20 R.E.P. [Rosey E. Pool], ‘Arbeiderstooneel en film te Berlijn,’ De nieuwe weg, vol. 4 (1929) 125- 127:125. 21 Ibidem, 125. 22 Ibidem, 125. 23 Ian Christie, ‘Eastern Avatars. Russian Influence on European Avant-Gardes,’ in: Malte Hagener (ed.), The Emergence of Film Culture: Knowledge Production, Institution Building and the Fate of the Avant-Garde in Europe, 1919-1945 (New York: Berghahn Books 2017) 143-161:153; Robert Kolker, Film, Form, and Culture (London: Routledge 2016) 102. 24 R.E.P. [Rosey E. Pool], ‘Arbeiderstooneel en film te Berlijn,’ De nieuwe weg, vol. 4 (1929) 125- 127:126. 25 Ibidem, 125. 26 Bart van der Steen & Ron Blom (eds.), Wij gingen onze eigen weg. Herinneringen van revolutionaire socialisten in Nederland van 1930 tot 1950 (Delft: Eburon 2011) 11; Bart van der Steen, ‘”Kiest Sneevliet uit de cel!” Henk Sneevliet, de RSP en de verkiezingen van 1933,’ Leidschrift 22.3 (December 2007) 79-88:82-83. 27 IISH, Archive Henk Sneevliet, no. 437: Letter Rosey Pool to Henk Sneevliet, 4 February 1930. Pool referred to the communist riots of 1/2 February 1930 that were actually part of a failed revolution that was violently repressed. The first of May - Labor Day - was traditionally widely celebrated. Attached to the letter is a manuscript of Henk Sneevliet’s article ‘Die jüngste Explosion kolonialen Machtsübergriffes in Indonesien,’ translated by Rosey Pool, 1930.

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28 Fritjof Tichelman, ‘Hendricus Josephus Franciscus Marie (Henk) Sneevliet,’ Biografisch Woordenboek van het Socialisme en de Arbeidersbeweging in Nederland (BWSA) 1 (1986) 111-119. 29 By the mid-1930s social democrats were regarded as ‘too neat’ and ‘cowards’ by revolutionary and radical socialists. See: Rudolf de Jong, ‘Kunst en Cultuur,’ in: Igor Cornelissen, Ger Harmsen & Rudolf de Jong, De taaie rooie rakkers. Een documentaire over het socialisme tussen de wereldoorlogen (Utrecht: Ambo-Boeken 1965) 223-249:228. A Dutch social democrat newspaper forcefully denounced the protest of 1/2 February 1930: ‘Thank God we have nothing to do with this [communist] gang!’ Het volk wrote. See: ‘Ook in Berlijn fiasko. De Duitsche arbeider verfoeit het kommunistisch regiem. Aan de aangekondigde revolutie ontbrak de politieke mogelijkheid,’ Het volk. Dagblad voor de arbeiderspartij, 3 February 1930, 2. 30 ‘Nieuw Socialistische Concentratie,’ De tribune. Sociaal-democratisch weekblad, 19 January 1928, 6. 31 Menno Eekman & Herman Pieterson, Linkssocialisme tussen de wereldoorlogen. Twee studies (Amsterdam: Stichting Beheer IISG 1987) 137. 32 Leo Hartveld, Frits de Jong Edz. & Dries Kuperus, De Arbeiders Jeugd Centrale AJC. 1918-1940, 1945-1959 (Amsterdam: Van Gennep 1982) 149. Quote from AJC leader Koos Vorrink. 33 Interview Nico Gorlee by Anneke Buys, 19 September 1985. 34 William Smaldone, Confronting Hitler. German Social Democrats in Defense of the Weimar Republic, 1929-1933 (Lanham, MD: Lexington Books 2009) 12-15. 35 Vorwärts, 8 June 1930 [morning edition, no. A133], 47,264, 14; Vorwärts, 24 June 1930 [morning edition, no. A146] 47.289, 8. 36 ‘Van de Jeugdgroepen. Afd. Amsterdam,’ Onze strijd. Orgaan van den Algemeenen Nederlandschen Bond van Handels- en Kantoorbedienden 26.1 (2 January 1931) 12. On 2 January 1931 Rosey Pool held a talk on ‘Het Fascisme in Duitschland’ at the offices of the Algemeenen Nederlandschen Bond van Handels- en Kantoorbedienden. 37 ‘”Jonge Strijders” tegen den oorlog,’ Het volk. Dagblad voor de arbeiderspartij, 1 September 1932, 9; ‘Agenda,’ Het volk. Dagblad voor de arbeiderspartij, 3 September 1932, 3. This event was held on Saturday 3 September 1932, 8 p.m., at the Handels- en Kantoorbediendenbond, a union for office personnel, 179 P.C. Hooftstraat in Amsterdam. 38 ‘Kramer over oorlog en fascisme. In een bijeenkomst van de “Jonge Strijders,”’ Het volk. Dagblad voor de arbeiderspartij, 5 September 1932, 9. 39 Ibidem. 40 William Smaldone, Confronting Hitler. German Social Democrats in Defense of the Weimar Republic, 1929-1933 (Lanham, MD: Lexington Books 2010) 15. 41 Staatsarchiv Hamburg, 731-8, A760, Archive Gerhard Kramer: ‘Senator Kramer wird sechzig. Ein Berliner repräsentiert die Freie und Hansestadt in Bonn,’ Die Welt, 8 October 1964, n.p. 289

42 Kramer became a member of the NSDAP and eventually translator with the Nazi army. He later claimed that he had no other choice. Seen his post-war work he indeed does not seem like a convinced Nazi. After the war Kramer again became active in the German Social Democrat Party (SPD). As a Hamburg minister of Law he fought to arrest ‘Nazi judges,’ and in 1964 he published an anticolonial book about Portugal. See: ‘Duitse Bondraad is voor ontslag nazi-rechters. Oorlogsmisdadiger ontmaskerd door katholiek tijdschrift,’ Leeuwarder courant. Hoofdblad van Friesland, 13 March 1965, 3; Gerhard Kramer, Portugal am Pranger. Der portugiesische Kolonialismus. Feind der Völker Afrikas (Berlin: Dietz Verlag 1964). 43 ‘Van de Jeugdgroepen. Afd. Amsterdam,’ Onze strijd. Orgaan van den Algemeenen Nederlandschen Bond van Handels- en Kantoorbedienden 27.35 (2 September 1932) 320. 44 Interview Ina v.d. Hogen by Anneke Buys, 18 July 1985. 45 ‘Vragen aan een arbeidersvrouw’ [poem by Theobald Figer, translation by Rosey Pool], De proletarische vrouw. Blad voor arbeidsters en arbeidersvrouwen, 25-26.767 (7 May 1930) 1. 46 Interview Bea Polak by Anneke Buys, 24 September 1985. She seems to be a different Lena Fischer than the KJVD activist with the same name (1906-1985), who mostly operated outside of Berlin. See: ‘Fischer, Lena,’ in: International Biographical Dictionary of Central European Émigrés, 1933-1945. Online Datenbank. De Gruyter, retrieved 6 May 2015. Originally from: Werner Röder & Herbert A. Strauss (eds.), Biographisches Handbuch der deutschsprachigen Emigration nach 1933 (Munich: K.G. Saur 1970) 177-187. 47 Interview Henk Vermeyden by Anneke Buys, n.d.; Interview Herman Rabbie by Anneke Buys, 8 May 1985. 48 Rosey Pool, Beperkt zicht (Amsterdam: Querido 1945) ‘Aan mijn vrienden,’ 19. 49 Judith Schuyf, Een stilzwijgende samenzwering. Lesbische vrouwen in Nederland, 1920-1970 (Amsterdam: Stichting Beheer IISG 1994) 263-267. 50 Jewish Historical Museum Amsterdam, D013703, Typescript poems by Rosey Pool (1943), 20. ‘Vriendinnen, X. Aan mijn moeder.’ 51 William J. Spurlin, Lost Intimacies. Rethinking Homosexuality Under National Socialism (New York: Peter Lang 2009) 58; Claudia Schoppmann, Days of Masquerade. Life Stories of Lesbians During the Third Reich (New York: Columbia University Press 1996) 17. 52 Pool, Beperkt zicht, ‘Aan mijn vrienden,’ 19. 53 Pool, Beperkt zicht, ‘Kwatrijn voor L.F.,’ 11. 54 Interview Bea Polak by Anneke Buys, 24 September 1985. 55 Angeles Espinaco-Virseda, ‘“I feel that I belong to you.” Subculture, Die Freundin and Lesbian Identities in Weimar Germany,’ spacesofidentity 4.1 (April 2004) 83-113:87; Schuyf, Een stilzwijgende samenzwering 254. 290

56 Literatuurmuseum, 18-2 QUE, Correspondence R.E. Pool: Letter Rosey Pool to Alice von Eugen [Querido publisher], n.d. [ca. 1953]. 57 Deirdre Heddon, ‘Performing Lesbians. Constructing the Self, Constructing the Community,’ in: Maggie B. Gale & Vivien Gardner, Auto/Biography and Identity. Women, Theatre and Performance (Manchester: Manchester University Press 2004) 217-238; Barbara Ponse, ‘The Social Construction of Identity and Its Meanings Within the Lesbian Subculture,’ in: Peter M. Nardi & Beth E. Schneider (eds.), Social Perspectives on Lesbian and Gay Studies. A Reader (Abingdon: Routledge 2013) 246-260. 58 Schuyf, Een stilzwijgende samenzwering 258. 59 Jewish Historical Museum Amsterdam, D013703, Typescript poems by Rosey Pool (1943), 19. ‘Sapphische Ode voor Emily Dickinson.’ 60 Jewish Historical Museum Amsterdam, D013703, Typescript poems by Rosey Pool (1943), 17. ‘Vriendinnen, VI. Bobby N.’ Sadly the poem concludes that this woman also did not survive. If we have to believe the poem, this woman ended in a ‘sanatorium hall.’ 61 Robert Beachy, Gay Berlin. Birthplace of a Modern Identity (New York: Alfred A. Knopf 2014) 170. 62 Chicago Public Library, Heritage Press archive, 6-3, Robert Hayden: Paul Breman, The Heritage Series of Black Poetry - 1962 to 1975. A Memoir (London: private publisher 2006) n.p. Quote from Paul Breman. 63 Stadsarchief Amsterdam, Archiefkaart Rosa Eva Pool. The Landesarchiv Berlin provided a document which states that barely a year later, in April 1936, Kramer married for the second time to a woman named Maria Schulz (1905-?). 64 Interview A.S. (Wim) Rijxman by Anneke Buys, 14 December 1984. 65 Interview Jaap Reens by Anneke Buys, 22 January 1985. 66 Schuyf, Een stilzwijgende samenzwering 266. 67 Adrienne Rich, ‘Compulsory Heterosexuality and Lesbian Existence,’ Signs. Journal of Women in Culture and Society 5.4 (Summer 1980) 631-660; Adrienne Rich, ‘When We Dead Awaken. Writing as Re-Vision,’ College English 34.1 (1972) 18-30. 68 Alice Walker, ‘In Search of Our Mothers’ Gardens’ [1972] reprinted in: Eleanor Palo Stoller, Rose Campbell Gibson (eds.), Worlds of Difference. Inequality in the Aging Experience (Thousand Oaks, CA: Pine Forge Press [1994] 2000) 48-53:50. 69 Staatsarchiv Hamburg, 731-8, A760, Archive Gerhard Kramer: D.R.D., ‘Hohes Amt für Kramer. Leitender Oberstaatsanwalt wurde Generalstaatsanwalt,’ Hamburger Abendblatt, 26 November 1956, n.p. Kramer is quoted here: ‘I love to cook. But I’m only allowed to do so occasionally by my wife, who is afraid for the mess in the kitchen!’ Although the statement is clearly not serious and clearly a 291 product of the 1950s, there is also not a single sign that he saw a different role for women than outside of the home. 70 R.E.P. [Rosey E. Pool], ‘Arbeiderstooneel en film te Berlijn,’ De nieuwe weg, vol. 4 (1929) 125- 127:126. Pool comdemned not only the situation in tsarist Russia, but also Austrian, catholic and East-Jewish legislation about divorce. 71 R.E.P. [Rosey E. Pool], ‘Arbeiderstooneel en film te Berlijn,’ De nieuwe weg, vol. 4 (1929) 125- 127:126. 72 Interview Jaap Reens by Anneke Buys, 22 January 1985. 73 The city of Berlin had that effect on more women. The many possibilities in this modern metropolis raised the expectations of many women of how they wanted to live their lives. Moreover, the visibility of lesbians on the streets, in literature, and in movies made many women recognize previously undefined feelings of ‘otherness. See: Laurie Marhoefer, ‘”The Book Was a Revelation, I Recognized Myself In It.” Lesbian Sexuality, Censorship, and the Queer Press in Weimar-era Germany,’ Journal of Women’s History 27.2 (Summer 2015) 62-86:69; Katharina Sykora, “Kesse Väter” und “Neue Frauen.” Zum Zusammenhang von lesbischer (Sub) Kultur und dem Massenphänomen der “Garçonne” in der Weimarer Republik. Ein Motivvergleich bei Jeanne Mammen und Christa Schad,’ FKW. Zeitschrift für Geschlechterforschung und visuelle Kultur 7.9/10 (1990) 26-33; Anneke Smelik, ‘Gay and Lesbian Criticism,’ in: John Hill & Pamela Church Gibson (eds.), The Oxford Guide to Film Studies (Oxford: Oxford University Press 1998) 135-147:142; Ruby Rich, ‘From Repressive Tolerance to Erotic Liberation. Maedchen in Uniform,’ Jump Cut 24-25 (March 1981) 44-50. 74 Rosey E. Pool, Ik ben de nieuwe neger. Gedichten, rijmen, liedjes en dokumenten uit 300 jaar verzet van de Amerikaanse neger (The Hague: Bert Bakker Daamen 1965) 20. ‘Their songs show who they are,’ Pool wrote about ‘supporters of Hitler.’ 75 Rosey E. Pool, ‘Anne Frank. The Child and the Legend,’ World Order 6.3 (Spring 1972) 51- 70:53. 76 Paula E. Hyman, ‘Keeping Calm and Weathering The Storm. Jewish Women’s Responses to Daily Life in Nazi Germany, 1933-1939,’ in: Dalia Ofer & Lenore J. Weitzman (eds.), Women in the Holocaust (New Haven: Yale University Press 1998) 39-54:41. 77 Anja van Kooten Niekerk & Sacha Wijmer, Verkeerde vriendschap. Lesbisch leven in de jaren 1920- 1960 (Amsterdam: Feministische Uitgeverij Sara 1985) 151. 78 Sussex, SxMs19/10/1/4, Scrapbook 1959-1960: William A. Fowlkes, ‘Author Pool Notes Similarity Of Nazi Oppression, Segregation,’ Atlanta Daily World, 12 February 1960, 1 79 Sussex, SxMs19/10/1/5, Scrapbook 1959-1960: Joy Lee Taylor, ‘Anne Frank’s Teacher Discusses Dangerous Wartime Experiences,’ The Spectator. Highland Park High School [Michigan] 45.6, n.p. 292 80 Rosey Pool is mentioned to live at Helmstedter Strasse 6, Wilmersdorf, Berlin. Source: Digitale Landesbibliothek Berlin, Amtliches Fernsprechbuch für Berlin 4.1. III (April 1936) 898; Berliner Adreßbuch (1937) 2096. 81 Sussex, SxMs19/10/1/5, Scrapbook 1959-1960: Joy Lee Taylor, ‘Anne Frank’s Teacher Discusses Dangerous Wartime Experiences,’ The Spectator. Highland Park High School [Michigan] 45.6, n.p. 82 Email Bart de Cort to author, 3 February 2016; Lonneke Geerlings, ‘Heynemann, Susanne,’ Digitaal Vrouwenlexicon van Nederland (4 July 2018). URL: http://resources.huygens.knaw.nl/vrouwenlexicon/lemmata/data/Heynemann (accessed 26 April 2019). 83 Amsterdam City Archives, NL-SAA-3924223, Archive card Rosa Eva Pool (07-05-1905). 84 Eric Hobsbawm, Fractured Times. Culture and Society in the Twentieth Century (London: Little, Brown 2013) 68. 85 Sussex, SxMs19/13/1, Rosey Pool Memorial Volume: Gordon Heath (1972). 86 Heath, Deep Are The Roots, 90. 87 Saul Friedländer, Nazi Germany and the Jews, 1933-1945 (New York: Harper Perennial 2009) 112. 88 Rosey E. Pool, ‘Anne Frank. The Child and the Legend,’ World Order 6 (1972) 51-70:53. 89 Sussex, SxMs19/10/1/4, Scrapbook 1959-1960: William A. Fowlkes, ‘Author Pool Notes Similarity Of Nazi Oppression, Segregation,’ Atlanta Daily World, 12 February 1960, 1. 90 Sussex, SxMs19/10/1/4, Scrapbook 1959-1960: ‘Youth Allowed To Forget Nazi Horror, Dr. Pool Says. Anne Frank Teacher Speaks Here,’ The Knoxville News-Sentinel, 17 February 1960, 25. 91 Sussex, SxMs19/11/3/18, 16-1: Rosey Pool, As Waves of One Sea [English translation of Lachen om niet te huilen (1968)] 148. 92 Rosey E. Pool, ‘The Negro Actor in Europe,’ Phylon 14.3 (3rd Quarter 1953) 258-267:265. 93 Sussex, SxMs19/14/1/9, Scrapbook 1962-1963: ‘Nederlandse vrouw expert van de neger- literatuur,’ Algemeen dagblad, 19 April 1966; Sussex, SxMs19/14/1/4, Scrapbook 1959-1960, ‘Dutch Visitor. Strengthening Ties,’ The Otherlander. Official Publication Of Wayne State University Press and Publications Division. Also a German title of her dissertation is mentioned occassionally: Die Dichtung des nordamerikanischen Negers. Source: ‘Schrijfster Rosey Pool in Londen overleden,’ Het Parool 31.8193 (2 October 1971) 9. 94 Atlanta University Center, UNCF microfiche 1924 [Box 5, Folder 69], filed under Frederick D. Patterson. Application Rosey E. Pool UNCF grant, including curriculum vitae, 16 March 1959. 95 After 1936 Schönemann, held the only chair for literature and art history in North America within Nazi Germany, and was associated with the Amerika-Abteilung des Englischen Seminars of the Friedrich-Wilhelms-Universität. See: Frank-Rutger Hausmann, ‘English and Romance Studies in Germany’s Third Reich,’ in: Anson Rabinbach & Wolfgang Bialas (eds.), Nazi Germany and the 293 Humanities. How German Academics Embraced Nazism (London: Oneworld Publications 2014) 341- 364:345; Email Frank-Rutger Hausmann to author, 2 January 2018. 96 Pool’s name cannot be found in the university archives. There is a possibility that Pool wrote a PhD thesis and perhaps even a Habilitation in her private time, maybe with an expelled professor. Yet this must have happened off the record. The University of Berlin became a dangerous place for Jews and after 1935 Jews were even no longer allowed to take doctoral exams. This did not withheld Pool to use a ‘PhD’ or an occasional ‘D.Litt.’ behind her name after the war. 97 Interview Harry Hagedorn by Anneke Buys, ca. 1985.

NOTES CHAPTER 3: WESTERBORK

1 Sussex, SxMs19/14/1/4, Scrapbook 1959-1960, n.p. ‘Anne Frank’s Diary Genuine, Says Teacher,’ New Orleans States and Item, 14 March 1960, n.p. 2 Sussex, SxMs19/13/5, Scrapbook 1947-1966, Robert Cromie, ‘Cromie Looks at Authors and Books,’ Chicago Tribune, 20 May 1965 [Section 2] 6. 3 Sussex, SxMs19/14/1/4, Scrapbook 1959-1960, n.p. ‘Anne Frank’s Diary Genuine, Says Teacher,’ New Orleans States and Item, 14 March 1960, n.p. 4 Sussex, SxMs19/10/1/5, Scrapbook 1959-1960, Joy Lee Taylor, ‘Anne Frank’s Teacher Discusses Dangerous Wartime Experiences,’ The Spectator. Highland Park High School [Highland Park, Michigan] 45.6 [ca. November 1959], n.p. 5 Howard, Rosey Pool Papers, Folder 20, Benjamin Britten: Letter Rosey Pool to Benjamin Britten, 8 December 1963; Rosey Pool, ‘Anne Frank. The Child and the Legend,’ World Order 6.3 (Spring 1972) 51-56:53. 6 ‘Nieuwe stoomcursussen in de Engelsche taal voor vluchtelingen,’ Nieuw Israelitisch weekblad 75.52 (26 April 1940) 14; ‘Verenigingsleven. Andere verenigingen,’ Het volk. Sociaal-Democratisch Dagblad 40.16226 (3 February 1940, evening edition)7; ‘Engelsche avond voor Joodsche vluchtelingen,’ Nieuw Israelitisch weekblad 75.45 (8 March 1940) 6. 7 Sussex, SxMss19/13/1, Memorial volume: Lotte Medak-de Wolff, n.d. 8 Sussex, SxMs19/10/1/9, Scrapbook 1963-1967: Rosey E. Pool, ‘Kleurbekentenissen. Vijfentwintig minuten “Damnyankee,”’ Vrij Nederland, 12 March 1966, n.p. 9 Sussex, SxMs19/13/1: Memorial volume, Max Gruber [1972]. The song is derived from: Hannelore Grünberg-Klein, Zolang er nog tranen zijn (Amsterdam: Nijgh & Van Ditmar 2015) 61- 62. See also: Annette Lubbers, Lloydhotel (Amsterdam: Lubberhuizen 2004) 78, 81; Martijn Felder, Chin-Ee Ong & Claudio Minca, ‘Governing Refugee Space. The Quasi-Carceral Regime of Amsterdam’s Lloyd Hotel, a German-Jewish refugee Camp in the Prelude to World War

294 II,’ Geographica Helvetica 69.5 (December 2014) 294 365 -375:367. 10 Rosey Pool, ‘Anne Frank. The Child and the Legend,’ World Order 6.3 (Spring 1972) 51-56:53. 11 Evelien Gans, De kleine verschillen die het leven uitmaken. Een historische studie naar joodse sociaaldemocraten en socialistisch-zionisten in Nederland (Amsterdam: Uitgeverij Vassallucci 1999). 493; Beatrix Herlemann, ‘Het Exil als operatiebasis. De Duitse communistische emigratie in Nederland, 1933-1945,’ in: Kathinka Dittrich & Hans Wurzner̈ (eds.), Nederland en het Duitse exil 1933-1940 (Amsterdam: Van Gennep 1982) 127-143:129. 12 Bob Moore, Refugees from Nazi Germany in the Netherlands, 1933-1940 (Dordrecht: Martinus Nijhoff Publishers 1986) 11, 29. 13 Sussex, SxMs19/13/1: Memorial volume, Max Gruber [1972]. 14 Kristen Renwick Monroe, ‘Cracking the Code of Genocide. The Moral Psychology of Rescuers, Bystanders, and Nazis During the Holocaust,’ Political Psychology 29.5 (October 2008) 699-736:703; Ervin Staub, ‘The Psychology of Bystanders, Perpetrators, and Heroic Helpers,’ International Journal of Intercultural Relations 17.3 (Summer 1993) 315-341; Gay Block & Malka Drucker, Rescuers. Portraits of Moral Courage in the Holocaust (New York: Holmes & Meier 1992) 6. 15 Rosey E. Pool, Lachen om niet te huilen (Rotterdam: Lemniscaat 1968) 29. 16 IISH, ARCH00619, Archive Internationaal Instituut voor Sociale Geschiedenis (IISG), inv.no. 295, Chronological register of donated archival and library materials to IISH (1935-1940), 131: Entry 16 June 1939. Rosey Pool donated three items: Ferdinand Avenarius, Die Mache im Weltwahn. Schriften für echten Frieden (Berlin: Büxenstein], n.d. [ca. 1917]); Adolf Hitler, Reden des Führers am Parteitag der Ehre 1936 (Munich 1936); and a lost book by A. Maslon called Die Alg. Voraussetzung der Russische Revolution (1924). I want to thank Myriam Everard who mentioned this entry to me. 17 Rosey Pool, ‘Wat is “normal” in Alabama? Dagelijks leven in het zuiden,’ Vrij Nederland, 17 April 1965, 15. 18 Sussex, SxMs19/11/3/18, 16-15: ‘Carry Me...’ [1960] 1-3:2. Pool here wrote that in the Deep South in 1960 she ‘re-developed the mentality into we were forced in the Dutch Resistance against Hitler.’ 19 Sussex, SxMs19/10/1/5 Scrapbook 1959-1960: Dave Tarr, ‘Anne Frank's Teacher Says Diary A Surprise,’ The Ann Arbor News, [November 1959], n.p. 20 Harvard University, Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study, Arthur and Elizabeth Schlesinger Library on the History of Women in America, Sch00211, Shirley Graham Papers, 19.4: Letter Rosey Pool to Shirley Graham, 25 June 1966. Pool also said she found Harriet Tubman’s underground railroad recognizable to the Dutch because they also needed to develop and improvise codes ‘on the telephone and in their correspondence.’ See: Sussex, SxMs19/11/3/18, 16-5: Introduction to I am the New Negro [November 1967] 4.

295 21 Sussex, SxMs19/9/1/10, Poetry readings by Sterling Brown and speech by Rosey Pool at Howard University, Washington DC, 1963. 22 Sussex, SxMs19/10/1/5 Scrapbook 1959-1960: Dave Tarr, ‘Anne Frank's Teacher Says Diary A Surprise,’ The Ann Arbor News, [November 1959], n.p. 23 Bart van der Boom, ‘Wij weten niets van hun lot.’ Gewone Nederlanders en de Holocaust (Amsterdam: Boom 2012) 163. 24 Beinecke, Richard Wright Papers, JWJ MSS 3, Box 104, Folder 1553: Letter Rosey Pool to Richard Wright, 3 March 1946. 25 Rosey Pool, Beperkt zicht (Amsterdam: Querido 1945) 26: ‘Het teken’ [The sign, my translation]. 26 Library of Congress, Melvin Tolson Papers, Box 1, General correspondence, P-Q, Rosey Pool 1: Letter Rosey Pool to Melvin Tolson, 2 June 1946. 27 Rosey Pool, ‘Anne Frank. The Child and the Legend,’ World Order 6.3 (Spring 1972) 51-56:53 28 Dienke Hondius & Miep Gompes-Lobatto, Absent. Herinneringen aan het Joods Lyceum Amsterdam, 1941-1943 (Amsterdam: Vassallucci 2001) 123. Quote from Ruth Klemers Wiener. 29 Institute for War, Holocaust and Genocide Studies (NIOD), 181e W.S.H. Elte, Folder 5, Correspondence, 364: Letter W.S.H. Elte to L.J.F. Wijsenbeek, 17 February 1943. 30 Joseph Melkman [also Michman], ‘David Cohen,’ Studia Rosenthaliana 4.2 (July 1970) 219- 227:223. Pool formed a commission together with her Zionist colleague Joseph Melkman. According to Melkman, it was the chairman of the Jewish Council (David Cohen) who objected their conclusions and prevented that the report was published out of fear to insult the Nazis. The Jewish Council was established in 1941 by order of the Nazi occupation authorities. This organization took care of deportees, health care, education, and food distribution, and its employees were (temporarily) exempt from the deportations. After the war, the Jewish Council was criticized as an instrument of the persecutors that gave false hope to Jewish communities. The organization was disbanded on 29 July 1943 when the Netherlands were declared ‘free of Jews.’ 31 Sussex, SxMs19/10/1/5, Scrapbook 1959-1960: Dave Tarr, ‘Anne Frank’s Teacher Says Diary A Surprise,’ The Ann Arbor News, [November 1959], n.p. 32 Institute for War, Holocaust and Genocide Studies (NIOD), 181e W.S.H. Elte, Folder 3, 41: Letter Rosey Pool to W.S.H. Elte, 14 May 1943. 33 Jacques Presser, Ondergang. De vervolging en verdelging van het Nederlandse jodendom 1940-1945, Deel 1 (Staatsuitgeverij, Den Haag 1985) 254-255. Based on testimony from J. Hemelrijk, principal at Jewish Lyceum. 34 USC Shoah Foundation, 5715: Interview with Hajo Meyer, 9 November 1995. Meyer later concluded that this man was associated with the Westerweel resistance group, but since there was some contact between this group and the Van Dien group (Kurt Hirschfeld, b. 1922, is one 296

example) there is a possibility that the hiding of the boy was a joint effort. Meyer was discovered, sent to Auschwitz, but survived the war. 35 Anne Frank House, Audio recording BgetuigenV007B, Rosey Pool. 36 Rosey Pool, ‘Anne Frank. The Child and the Legend,’ World Order 6.3 (Spring 1972) 51-56:53. 37 Anne Frank House, Audio recording BgetuigenV007B, Rosey Pool. 38 Howard, Rosey Pool Papers, Folder 92, Catherine Leslie: Letter Rosey Pool to Catherine Leslie, 20 June 1967. 39 Rosey Pool, ‘Anne Frank. The Child and the Legend,’ World Order 6.3 (Spring 1972) 51-56:54 40 Howard, Rosey Pool Papers, Folder 92, Catherine Leslie: Letter Rosey Pool to Catherine Leslie, 20 June 1967. 41 It remains unclear whether Pool actually worked at the Jewish Lyceum before Anne Frank went into hiding (on 6 July 1942). Former biographer Anneke Buys claims that Pool only started her job at the Jewish Lyceum on 1 December 1942 - almost five months after Anne Frank went into hiding with her family. In the records of the Jewish Council on the Jewish Lyceum, Pool’s name is not included on a list of August 1942, which suggests that she did not work here. When Pool tried to get reparation payments from the German government, her lawyer wrote that she was not enlisted until 1 May 1943, so long after the Franks had gone into hiding. However, I still consider the possibility that Pool worked as a substitute teacher at this school before these dates, as substitute teacher leave behind little traces in the archives. See: Anneke Buys, ‘The Marvelous Gift of Friendship. A Biography of Rosey E. Pool, 1905-1971.’ Apeldoorn, unpublished manuscript, 1986, n.p.; Institute for War, Holocaust and Genocide Studies (NIOD), Archive 182, Joodse Raad, Folder 166: 5h, Overzicht van personeel Joods Lyceum, 25 August 1942; National Archives of the Netherlands, Archive Dutch Red Cross, File 139.751, Family Louis Pool: Letter Hanns Pachner to Dutch Red Cross, ca. 1949. 42 Ben Braber, ‘Passage naar vrijheid. De groep-Van Dien. Duitse joden in Nederlandse illegaliteit.’ Unpublished master’s thesis. Amsterdam, 1986, 68. Interview Alice Heymann-David [Stertzenbach] by Ben Braber, 12 April 1983. 43 Sussex, SxMs19/10/1/5 Scrapbook 1959-1960: Kay Pittman, ‘Anne Frank’s Teacher Relates Sad Memories. Visits Mississippi,’ unknown newspaper, n.d., n.p. 44 Michael Seidman, Transatlantic Antifascisms. From the Spanish Civil War to the End of World War II (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press 2018) 1-8; Igor Cornelissen, ‘Tegen het fascisme,’ in: Igor Cornelissen, Ger Harmsen & Rudolf de Jong, De taaie rooie rakkers. Een documentaire over het socialisme tussen de wereldoorlogen (Utrecht: Ambo-Boeken 1965) 148-173. 45 Milo Anstadt, Kruis of Munt, Autobiografie 1920-1945 (Amsterdam: Contact 2000) 195, 200.

297

46 ‘Manifest bij de invoering der slavernij,’ De Waarheid, no. 51 (3 August 1942), 1. Reprinted in: Hansje Galesloot, Susan Legêne & Joop Morrien̈ (eds.), De Waarheid in de oorlog. Een bundeling van illegale nummers uit de jaren ’40-‘45 (Amsterdam: Pegasus 1980) 132. 47 Hansje Galesloot & Susan Legêne, Partij in het verzet. De CPN in de Tweede Wereldoorlog (Amsterdam: Pegasus 1986) 127-131. 48 Jan Willem Stutje, De man die de weg wees. Leven en werk van Paul de Groot 1899-1986 (Amsterdam: De Bezige Bij 2000) 201-202. Based on testimony by Trudel van Reemst-de Vries. 49 Sussex, SxMs19/10/1/5 Scrapbook 1959-1960, n.p.: Kay Pittman, ‘Anne Frank’s Teacher Relates Sad Memories. Visits Mississippi,’ unknown newspaper, n.d., n.p. 50 Sussex, SxMs19/9/1/10, Poetry readings by Sterling Brown and speech by Rosey Pool at Howard University, Washington DC, 1963. 51 Bundesarchiv Berlin, RY1/I 2/3/364 KPD, Emigration Holland, Fiche 2: Martin Löwenberg (Hamburg) 3486. Uberprüfungs-Protokoll von 16.12.37; Ben Braber, Passage naar vrijheid. Joods verzet in Nederland 1940-1945 (Amsterdam: Balans 1987) 40. 52 Bundesarchiv Berlin, SgY 30/1567: Report from Cilly Hansmann-Knopp (b. 15 June 1908) 30. 53 Pool possibly already worked since the early 1930s as a secretary. She was active in the Jonge Strijders, a youth group of the Algemene Nederlandse Bond van Handels- en Kantoorbedienden (Dutch Association of Trade and Office Clerks), which strongly suggests she did this type of work. 54 Raul Hilberg, Perpetrators, Victims, Bystanders. The Jewish Catastrophe, 1933-1945 (New York: Aaron Asher Books 1992) 116. 55 Sussex, SxMs19/10/1/5, Scrapbook 1959-1960: Joy Lee Taylor, ‘Anne Frank’s Teacher Discusses Dangerous Wartime Experiences,’ The Spectator. Highland Park High School [Highland Park, Michigan] 45.6 [ca. November 1959], n.p. Pool here remarked that she worked at a ‘Nazi school for Jewish children.’ 56 J.C.H. Blom, ‘Verzet als norm,’ Maatstaf 34.1 (January 1986) 20-29:24. 57 Ben Braber, Passage naar vrijheid. Joods verzet in Nederland 1940-1945 (Amsterdam: Balans 1987) 40. 58 ‘Een reuze-baan !!!’ [‘A fabulous job!!!’], derived from: Guido Abuys & Dirk Mulder, Een gat in het prikkeldraad. Kamp Westerbork, ontsnappingen en verzet (Hooghalen: Herinneringscentrum Kamp Westerbork 2003) 16-17. Although the poem is anonymous, Pool’s style is clearly recognizable and the signature at the bottom of the page strongly resembles hers and appears to spell ‘Rosa’ - her birth name, and perhaps her German name. 59 Lawrence L. Langer, Versions of Survival. The Holocaust and the Human Spirit (Albany: State University of New York Press 1982) 72.

298

60 It is likely that Pool used her position at the camp administration to alter the records of Kurt Baschwitz: his file is missing from the administration. Source: Email Guido Abuys (curator the Memorial Center Camp Westerbork) to author, 7 November 2018. See also: Jaap van Ginneken, Kurt Baschwitz. A Pioneer of Communication Studies and Social Psychology (Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press 2018) 220-223. See also: Ben Braber, ‘Passage naar vrijheid. De groep-Van Dien. Duitse joden in Nederlandse illegaliteit.’ Unpublished master’s thesis. Amsterdam, 1986, 109. 61 Institute for War, Holocaust and Genocide Studies (NIOD), 250i Judendurchgangslager Westerbork, 41, Verzoekschriften van kampingezetenen aan commandant J. Schol en Lagerkommandant A.K. Gemmeker, 1940-1944, N-R: Letter Tehuis Oosteinde to Frau Dr. R. Pool [Westerbork], 8 August 1942; Letter Manfred Grünberg to Mrs. Pool, 9 August 1942. These letters included requests from the Oosteinde/Van Dien group to get dispensation for Kurt Baschowitz [Baschwitz] (survived); Bruno Ast (survived); Albert Heppner and his wife (survived); Cilia Jacobs and her mother (died in Auschwitz the next month); Meyer Vorst (died in Auschwitz the next month); Family Mijrtiel Michel (fate unknown). I want to thank Carlijn Keijzer for finding these letters. 62 Michael L. Gross, ‘Jewish Rescue in Holland and France During the Second World War. Moral Cognition and Collective Action,’ Social Forces 73.2 (December 1994) 463-496:470; Adam Brown, ‘Beyond “Good” and “Evil.” Breaking Down Binary Oppositions in Holocaust Representations of “Privileged” Jews,’ History Compass 8.5 (May 2010) 407-418. 63 Sussex, SxMs19/10/1/4, Scrapbook 1959-1960, Lysbeth Bledsoe Tirrell, ‘Anne Frank Was “Very Ordinary” Girl,’ The Washington Daily News, 4 April 1960, n.p. 64 Sussex, SxMs19/9/1/10, Poetry readings by Sterling Brown and speech by Rosey Pool at Howard University, Washington DC, 1963. 65 So far I have not been able to find evidence for Pool’s arrest. However, she does consistently speak of ‘an underground struggle against Nazism, partly in prison, partly in slavery, partly in hiding,’ on multiple occasion. Anneke Buys argues that her wrist was also broken during this questioning, which remains unsettled. 66 Rosey Pool, ‘Kleurbekentenissen,’ Vrij Nederland, 25 September 1965, n.p. 67 Rosey Pool, Beperkt zicht (Amsterdam: Querido 1945) ‘Amsterdam,’ 13. 68 Rosey Pool, Beperkt zicht (Amsterdam: Querido 1945) ‘Amsterdam,’ 13. 69 Howard, Folder 6, Samuel W. Allen: Letter Rosey Pool to Samuel W. Allen, 25 June 1961. 70 Eva Moraal, Als ik morgen niet op transport ga... Kamp Westerbork in beleving en herinnering (Amsterdam: De Bezige Bij 2014) 17. 71 Sussex, SxMs19/10/1/4, Scrapbook 1959-1960: ‘Youth Allowed To Forget Nazi Horror, Dr. Pool Says. Anne Frank Teacher Speaks Here,’ The Knoxville News-Sentinel, 17 February 1960, 25. 299

72 Jewish Historical Museum, D013703, Typescripts, 6: Rosey Pool, ‘Stacheldraht VI’ [‘Barbed wire VI,’ ca. 1943]. 73 Sussex, SxMs19/10/1/4, Scrapbook 1959-1960: ‘Youth Allowed To Forget Nazi Horror, Dr. Pool Says. Anne Frank Teacher Speaks Here,’ The Knoxville News-Sentinel, 17 February 1960, 25. 74 Eva Moraal, Als ik morgen niet op transport ga... Kamp Westerbork in beleving en herinnering (Amsterdam: De Bezige Bij 2014) 269. 75 Santje Kramer, De keuken van kamp Westerbork. Alle dagen stamppot (NPO documentary, August 2016). Quote from Herman van Praag. 76 Memorial Center Camp Westerbork, Archive Werner Stertzenbach, RA 2635: ‘Verzet in het “Polizeiliche Durchgangslager [W]esterbork,”’ 3. 77 Memorial Center Camp Westerbork, Archive Werner Stertzenbach, RA 1507, 10985-126: Letter Werner Stertzenbach to Stella Pach, 14 June 1943. 78 Sussex, SxMs19/13/1: Memorial volume, Max Gruber [1972]. 79 Memorial Center Camp Westerbork, Archive Werner Stertzenbach, RA 2635, ‘Verzet in het “Polizeiliche Durchgangslager [W]esterbork,”’ 3. 80 Frank van Riet, De bewakers van Westerbork (Amsterdam: Boom 2016) 65. 81 Memorial Center Camp Westerbork, Carthotheek Jewish Council, 278364: Person’s card Rosey Pool. 82 Ben Braber, ‘Passage naar vrijheid. De groep-Van Dien. Duitse joden in Nederlandse illegaliteit.’ Unpublished master’s thesis. Amsterdam, 1986, 112, 156f48. 83 Sussex, SxMs19/11/3/18: Rosey Pool, ‘As Waves of One Sea’ [English manuscript Lachen om niet te huilen] 242-243. 84 Robert Cromie, ‘Cromie Looks at Authors and Books,’ Chicago Tribune, 20 May 1965 [Section 2], 6. 85 Notes interview Beth McKenty by Anneke Buys, 17 November 1984. 86 National Archives of the Netherlands, Westerbork, Popgids transporten 2.09.34.01, ‘Deportatie- periode 24 Augustus t/m 16 November 1943’; National Archives of the Netherlands, Westerbork, Popgids transporten 2.09.34.01, No title, (‘Transporten’), 31 August/7 September; National Archives of the Netherlands, inv.no. 20, Ministerie van Justitie, Commissie tot het doen van aangifte van Overlijden van Vermisten; ‘Transport from Westerbork, Camp, The Netherlands to Auschwitz Birkenau, Extermination Camp, Poland on 07/09/1943,’ Yad Vashem, URL: http://db.yadvashem.org/deportation/transportDetails.html?language=en&itemId=9446925 (accessed 18 December 2018).

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87 One eyewitness wrote that the Westerbork library was a library for punished Aryans who would be accommodated in the camp. See: Philip Mechanicus, In depot. Dagboek uit Westerbork van Philip Mechanicus (Amsterdam: Polak & Van Gennep 1964) 168. 88 Private archive Anneke Buys. Letter Alice Heymann-David [Stertzenbach] to Anneke Buys, 5 February 1985 89 Eva Moraal, Als ik morgen niet op transport ga... Kamp Westerbork in beleving en herinnering (Amsterdam: De Bezige Bij 2014) 196. 90 To one journalist Pool told that she was escorted out of Camp Westerbork by an SS officer that turned out to be a resistance fighter. However, I did not use this story because this article contains too much incorrect information, including that Pool’s head was shaved and that she wore striped clothes (none happed in Camp Westerbork). It is unclear what Pool has said and what the journalist wrote. See: Sussex, SxMs19/13/5, Scrapbook 1947-1966: Robert Cromie, 'Cromie Looks at Authors and Books', Chicago Tribune, 20 May 1965 [Section 2] 6. 91 Stichting 1940-1945, File 29750, G.M. van Wees: ‘Rosey E. Pool’. 92 Pool’s absence did not go unnoticed in the camp. When she did not return on 21 September 1943 her sleeping barrack was in disbelief and people became agitated. The interim barrack leader was called in for an interrogation. See: Philip Mechanicus, In depot. Dagboek uit Westerbork van Philip Mechanicus (Amsterdam: Polak & Van Gennep 1964) 168. 93 Sussex, SxMs19/13/1, Memorial Volume: Susanne Heynemann, [1972] 3. 94 Stichting 1940-1945, File 29750, G.M. van Wees: ‘Rosey E. Pool.’ 95 Stichting 1940-1945, File 29750, G.M. van Wees: ‘M.J. van Wees, 19 December 1975’, 3. Quote from his brother M.J. van Wees. 96 Jewish Historical Museum, D013703, Typescripts Rosey Pool, 7: ‘Stacheldraht VII’ [‘Barbed wire VII,’ ca. 1943]. 97 Ruth Leys, From Guilt to Shame. Auschwitz and After (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press 2009) 4-5; Amber L. Griffioen, ‘Regaining the “Lost Self.” A Philosophical Analysis of Survivor’s Guilt,’ in: Alexander Gerner & Jorge Goncalveş (eds.), Altered Self and Altered Self-Experience ([no location]: Norderstedt Books on Demand 2014) 43-57; Giorgio Agamben, Remnants of Auschwitz. The Witness and the Archive (New York: Zone Books 1999) 87-136. 98 Library of Congress, Melvin Tolson Papers, Box 1, General correspondence, P-Q, Rosey Pool 1: Letter Rosey Pool to Melvin Tolson, 2 June 1946. 99 Marten Düring, ‘The Dynamics of Helping Behavior for Jewish Refugees During the Second World War. The Importance of Brokerage,’ in: Markus Gamper, Linda Reschke & Marten Düring (eds.), Knoten und Kanten III. Soziale Netzwerkanalyse in Geschichts-und Politikforschung (Bielefeld: Transcript 2015) 321-337:324. 301

100 Ben Braber, This Cannot Happen Here. Integration and Jewish Resistance in the Netherlands, 1940- 1945 (Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press 2013) 131. By late 1943 the Van Dien group now largely organized itself in the Association of German and Stateless Anti-Fascists and would continue to do so until after the war. 101 Museum Meermanno, Archive Susanne Heynemann, SH0691: Letter Susanne Heynemann to Stichting 40-45, 9 February 1976. 102 Museum Meermanno, Archive Susanne Heynemann, SH0691: Letter Susanne Heynemann to Stichting 40-45, 9 February 1976; Sussex, SxMs19/13/1, Memorial Volume, Susanne Heynemann [1972] 5. 103 Anneke Buys, The marvelous gift of friendship, n.p. 104 Interview Rudi Wesselius by author, 9 October 2018. 105 Sussex, SxMs19/1/2, Correspondence L-Z, 2-42: Letter Rosey Pool to John Lovell Jr, January 1970. 106 Sussex, SxMs19/11/3/18: Rosey Pool, ‘As Waves of One Sea’ [English manuscript Lachen om niet te huilen] 92. 107 Stichting 1940-1945, File 29750, G.M. van Wees: ‘Rosey E. Pool.’ G.M. van Wees lived at the time at the Hamburgerstraat 21, in the center of Utrecht. 108 Stichting 1940-1945, File 29750, G.M. van Wees: ‘Rosey E. Pool.’ 109 Literatuurmuseum, 7-2 QUE, Correspondence R.E. Pool: Letter Rosey Pool to Querido, 5 December 1952. 110 Yale University, Beinecke Rare Book & Manuscript Library, JWJ MSS 26, Langston Hughes Papers, Box 130, Folder 2429, no. 13: Letter Rosey Pool to Langston Hughes, 11 May 1947. 111 These publications were: Emily Dickinson, Ten poems [translation to the English and German by Rosey Eva Pool] (Amsterdam: Vijf Ponden Pers, 1944); William Shakespeare, Three sonnets [translation of sonnets XX, XCVI and CXXIX by Rosey Eva Pool] (Utrecht: G.M. van Wees 1944); Voltaire, Sur la moderatioń . Fragment [translation by Rosey Pool] ([Utrecht]: G.M. van Wees, 13 September 1944)]. 112 Even employees of the Five Pound Press refused to see their work as ‘resistance work’ as they thought it did not require any ‘courage.’ See: Lisette Lewin, Het clandestiene boek, 1940-1945 (Amsterdam: Van Gennep 1983) 192; Hans Renders, Gevaarlijk drukwerk. Een vrije uitgeverij in oorlogstijd (Amsterdam: De Bezige Bij 2004) 29, 31. 113 Jeroen Dewulf, Spirit of Resistance. Dutch Clandestine Literature During the Nazi Occupation (Rochester, NY: Camden House 2010) 162; Robert Rozett, ‘Jewish Resistance,’ in: Dan Stone (ed.), The Historiography of the Holocaust (London: Palgrave Macmillan 2004) 341-363:359. 114 Rosey E. Pool, Lachen om niet te huilen (Rotterdam: Lemniscaat 1968) 63. 302

115 Sussex, SxMs19/11/3/18, 16-11: Speech Women’s Day [ca. 1962] 1-4:3. 116 BBC Written Archives Centre, TELI-D421-157, 06639A, TV program Perspective, episode no. 19, ‘How Should We Face Death?’ [recorded 8 February 1962], 10. 117 Etty Hillesum (edited by Klaas A.D. Smelik), Etty. The Letters and Diaries of Etty Hillesum, 1941-1943 (Ottawa: William B. Eerdmans Publishing 2002) 668. One eyewitness, Jopie Vleeschouwer, remarked about the train departure of 7 September 1943: ‘Etty finished up in Wagon No. 12, after having gone to look for a friend in Wagon 14, who was pulled out again at the last moment.’ Since both knew Werner Stertzenbach there is a possibility that this friend was Rosey Pool. 118 Memorial Center Camp Westerbork, Archive Werner Stertzenbach, RA 2635: ‘Verzet in het “Polizeiliche Durchgangslager [W]esterbork,”’ 5. 119 Private archive Anneke Buys. Interview Jaap Reens by Anneke Buys, 22 January 1985. 120 Literatuurmuseum, 1-2 QUE, Correspondence R.E. Pool: Letter Rosey Pool to Querido [Alice von Eugen], 9 July 1945. 121 Sussex, SxMs19/11/1/2, Rosey Pool, Zielen vol soul: ‘Mijn zwarte ziel....,’ 2. 122 Sussex, SxMs19/1/2, Correspondence: L-Z, 2-42, Letter Rosey Pool to John Lovell Jr, January 1970. 123 Howard, Rosey Pool Papers, Folder 17, Samuel Boyea: Letter Rosey Pool to Samuel Boyea, 13 June 1966.

NOTES CHAPTER 4: AMSTERDAM [2]

1 University of Sussex, Rosey Pool Collection, Sussex, SxMs19/11/3/18: Rosey Pool, ‘As waves of one sea’ [English translation of Lachen om niet te huilen, ca. 1968], 233. 2 Dienke Hondius, Return. Holocaust Survivors and Dutch Anti-Semitism (Westport, CT: Praeger 2003) 55. 3 Isaac Lipschits, De kleine sjoa. Joden in naoorlogs Nederland (Amsterdam: Mets & Schilt 2001) 191. See also: Lrud Ibsch, ‘Writing Against Silence. Jewish Writers of the Generation-After in the Netherlands, Germany, Austria, and France. A Comparison,’ in: Yosef Kaplan (ed.), The Dutch Intersection. The Jews and the Netherlands in Modern History (Leiden: Brill 2008) 389-402. 4 Literatuurmuseum, 64-2 QUE: Correspondence R.E. Pool, Letter Rosey Pool to Querido [Alice von Eugen], 17 November 1945. 5 Pool, Beperkt zicht, ‘Thuiskomst’ [‘Arrival’], 27. 6 Rosey E. Pool, Beperkt zicht (Amsterdam: Querido 1945) ‘Amsterdam,’ 13.

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7 National Archives, Dutch Red Cross, Information bureau The Hague, 2.19.288, European personal files, inv.no. EU 139.751 (S.O. A19 764/84): Louis Pool and Jacoba Jessurun-Pool. Their deaths were officially announced on 5 January 1950 in the Staatscourant. 8 In one autobiographical poem Pool revealed that she often thought about her mother, but she simply did not know where to start looking for her. See: Pool, Beperkt zicht, ‘Aan mijn moeder’ [‘To my mother’], 9. See also: Jennifer Goldenberg, ‘”I had no family, but I made family.” Immediate Post‐War Coping Strategies of Adolescent Survivors of the Holocaust,’ Counselling and Psychotherapy Research 9.1 (February 2009) 18-26:22; Roberta R. Greene & Sandra A. Graham, ‘Role of Resilience Among Nazi Holocaust Survivors. A Strength‐Based Paradigm for Understanding Survivorship,’ Family & Community Health 32.1 (January/March 2009) S75-S82. 9 Sussex, SxMs19/13/5, Scrapbook 1948-1962: “Frik” [alias Rosey Pool], ‘Zeg ik het nu goed?,’ VDSA [Vereniging van Duitse en Statenloze Antifascisten, ‘Association of German and Stateless Antifascists’], 28 October 28, 1946. 10 Gerrold van der Stroom, ‘The Diaries, Het Achterhuis and the Translations,’ in: Anne Frank, edited by Harry Paape et al., The Diary of Anne Frank. The Revised Critical Edition (New York: Doubleday 2003) 59-77:64; Carol Ann Lee, The Hidden Life of Otto Frank (New York: Perennial 2003) 228. 11 Anne Frank Museum Amsterdam, sound recording Rosey Pool BgetuigenV007B. 12 Anne Frank Museum Amsterdam, Otto Frank Archive, 2.2.4, Translations, Reel 36 / inv.no. 132: Great Britain: Letter Otto Frank to Vallentine Mitchell and Company Limited, 21 November 1950. 13 I have not been able to find Rosey Pool’s translation in the archive of Otto Frank (Amsterdam) nor in the extensive Meyer Levin archive (Boston, MA). I consider it to be lost or destroyed. According to historian Ralph Melnick, Pool’s translation was sent to Meyer Levin, and then ‘retrieved’ or stolen by Otto Frank in October 1951 from Levin’s house in Paris. In the 1957 court case that Levin started against Otto Frank and Levin’s subsequent writings on the case (especially his book The Obsession from 1974), Pool’s translation seems to be forgotten, but not entirely. When Levin and Otto Frank had a fall-out in 1954, Levin noticed some parallels between how Frank treated him and Frank’s ‘cavalier treatment of the writer who undertook the first translation.’ See: Ralph Melnick, The Stolen Legacy of Anne Frank. Meyer Levin, Lillian Hellman, and the Staging of the Diary (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press 1997) 13, 104. 14 Anne Frank House, sound recording BgetuigenV007B Rosey Pool. 15 Sussex, SxMs19/13/5, Scrapbook 1948-1962: “Frik” [alias Rosey Pool], ‘Zeg ik het nu goed?,’ VDSA [Vereniging van Duitse en Statenloze Antifascisten, ‘Association of German and Stateless Antifascists’], 28 October 1946. 304

16 Ben Braber, ‘Passage naar vrijheid. De groep-Van Dien. Duitse joden in Nederlandse illegaliteit.’ Unpublished master’s thesis, University of Amsterdam, 1986, 136. 17 Sussex, SxMs19/13/1, Memorial Volume: Nola Hatterman, n.d. During the war Hatterman and her partner Arie Jansma often hid in a small house on the Veluwe where Wilhelm Knöchel - an old friend from Jansma, they went to the International Lenin School in Moscow together in the 1920s - and Knöchel’s partner Cilly Hansmann-Knopp often stayed. I believe that Pool and Hatterman met during the May 1945 celebrations where they met ‘other emigrant comrades.’ Source: Bundesarchiv, Berlin, SGY30.1567: ‘Erinnerungen Cilly Hansmann Knopp,’ 265. See also: Ellen de Vries, Nola. Portret van een eigenzinnig kunstenares (Schoonhoven: Klapwijk & Keijsers [2008] 2009) 71-72. 18 Frank Zichem, Beeldspraak. Nola Hatterman (en de konsekwente keuze) (TV documentary 1982) 14-15min. 19 Nola Hatterman made illustrations for: Rosey Pool, ‘De kunst van den neger,’ Vrij Nederland 6.49 (3 August 1946) 7; James Weldon Johnson, ‘Noah heeft een ark gebouwd’ [translation Rosey Pool], De Boekenmolen. Een tweemaandelijks tijdschrift voor de arbonné’s 1.5 (15 December 1948) 6-7; and Countee Cullen, ‘Incident in Baltimore’ [translation of ‘Incident’ by Rosey Pool], De Boekenmolen. Een tweemaandelijks tijdschrift voor de arbonné’s 1.5 (15 December 1948) 24-25. 20 Sussex, SxMs19/10/1/2, Scrapbook 1945-1949: ‘Vrouwen pleiten voor de negers. Dr Rosey E. Pool en Nola Hatterman in Mariënburg,’ Gelders dagblad [ca. 9 April 1948]. 21 Carla Kaplan, Miss Anne in Harlem. The White Women of the Black Renaissance (New York: Harper 2013); Bruce Kellner, “’Refined Racism.’ White Patronage in the Harlem Renaissance,’ in: Harold Bloom (ed.), The Harlem Renaissance (Philadelphia: Chelsea House Publishers 2004) 53-66. Other white women who acted as spokespersons for the Black race were for example the British ‘mother of Jamaican art’ Edna Manley, the Austrian art collector Susanne Wenger, and the British writer and activist Nancy Cunard. 22 Sussex, SxMs19/11/3/18: ‘As Waves of One Sea,’ 26. 23 Tamiment Library and Robert F. Wagner Labor Archive, Hermina Dumont Huiswoud Papers and Photographs, Box 1, Folder 35, Biographical Essays on “Women I Have Known Personally”: ‘Rosey Pool.’ 24 Yale, JWJ MSS 26, Langston Hughes Papers, Box 130, Folder 2430, 37: Letter Rosey Pool to Langston Hughes, 3 February 1952. 25 Private archive Anneke Buys. Meijer van der Sluis, ‘In Memoriam: Rosey E. Pool,’ 4-7:5-6. 26 Mink van Rijsdijk, Reünie op papier. Joodse oorlogskinderen kijken terug op hun jaren aan die ‘wonderlijke school’ (Weert: Van Buuren 2000) 59. 27 Sussex, SxMs19/13/1: Memorial Volume, Enny [Mols] van Alff-de Leeuwe [ca. 1971]. 28 Private archive Anneke Buys. Meijer van der Sluis, ‘In Memoriam: Rosey E. Pool,’ 4-7:5-6. 305

29 Bettine Siertsema, Uit de diepten. Nederlandse egodocumenten over de nazi concentratiekampen (Vught: Skandalon 2007) 37. 30 Library of Congress, Melvin Tolson Papers, Box 1, General correspondence, P-Q: Letter Rosey Pool to Melvin Tolson, 2 June 1946. 31 Yale University, Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library, JWJ MSS 26, Langston Hughes Papers, Box 130, Folder 2429: Letter Rosey Pool to Langston Hughes, 21 October 1945. 32 Thomas Sugrue, ‘Hillburn, Hattiesburg, and Hitler. Wartime Activists Think Globally and Act Locally,’ in: Kevin M. Kruse & Stephen Tuck, Fog of War. The Second World War and the Civil Rights Movement (Oxford: Oxford University Press 2012) 87-102:88. 33 Cheryl Lynn Greenberg, Troubling the Waters. Black-Jewish Relations in the American Century (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press 2006) 114-168; Kevin M. Kruse & Stephen G.N. Tuck, Fog of War. The Second World War and the Civil Rights Movement (New York: Oxford University Press 2012) 88; Eric J. Sundquist, Strangers in the Land. Blacks, Jews, Post-Holocaust America (Cambridge: Harvard University Press [2005] 2009) 221. Pool’s arguments fitted in perfectly with Langston Hughes’ own writings, see for example: ‘Nazi and Dixie Nordics,’ [published in Chicago Defender, 10 March 1945], reprinted in: Jonathan Birnbaum & Clarence Taylor, Civil Rights Since 1787. A Reader on the Black Struggle (New York: New York University Press 2000) 318-320. 34 Howard University, Moorland-Spingarn Manuscript Collections, Rosey Pool Papers, Folder 153, Melvin B. Tolson: Letter Melvin B. Tolson to Rosey Pool, 16 October 1946. 35 Sussex, SxMs19/10/1/1, Scrapbook 1945-1946, ‘Poems by Negro soldiers sent to R.E.P. by Langston Hughes and dated by him’: Joe Willie Johnson, ‘Mood Negro,’ Pittsburgh Courier, 19 January 1946, n.p. 36 Sussex, SxMs19/10/1/1, Scrapbook 1945-1946, ‘Poems by Negro soldiers sent to R.E.P. by Langston Hughes and dated by him’: ‘Why?,’ Pittsburgh Courier, 2 February 1946. 37 Paul Breman, You Better Believe It. Black Verse in English from Africa, the West Indies and the United States (Harmondsworth: Penguin 1973) 20. 38 Dienke Hondius, Blackness in Western Europe. Racial Patterns of Paternalism and Exclusion (New Brunswick, NJ: Transaction Publishers 2014) 268. 39 Library of Congress, Melvin Tolson Papers, Box 1, General correspondence, P-Q: Letter Rosey Pool to Melvin Tolson, 2 June 1946. 40 Sussex, Sxms19/12/2/4: Rosey Pool, ‘First Collection’ [unpublished anthology of African American poetry, compiled 1939-1940, probably also 1945].

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41 Literatuurmuseum, 66-2 QUE, Correspondence R.E. Pool: Letter Querido [Alice von Eugen] to Rosey Pool, 14 November 1945. Alice von Eugen-Nahuys (1894-1967) was ‘half Jewish.’ 42 Yale, Beinecke, JWJ MSS 26, Langston Hughes Papers, Box 130, Folder 2429: Letter Rosey Pool to Langston Hughes, 4 January 1946. 43 Yale, Beinecke, JWJ MSS 3, Richard Wright Papers, Box 104, Folder 1553: Letter Rosey Pool to Richard Wright, 3 March 1946. 44 Frank van Vree, In de schaduw van Auschwitz. Herinneringen, beelden, geschiedenis (Groningen: Historische Uitgeverij 1995) 63. 45 Peter van Steen, ‘Rosey Pool draagt negergedichten voor,’ De waarheid, Volksdagblad voor Nederland, Stadseditie [Amsterdam] 5.136 (15 October 1945) 3. Frank Mongo played the apinti drums, and spirituals and preaches were performed by Majo Oosie and Bill Olf a.k.a. ‘Billy the Kid’ of the group the Moengo Boys. 46 Sussex, SxMs19/10/1/2, Scrapbook 1945-1949: ‘I too am America,’ Het Parool [Rotterdam], 14 December 1945, n.p. 47 Hansje Galesloot & Susan Legene,̂ Hansje, Partij in het verzet. De CPN in de Tweede Wereldoorlog (Amsterdam: Pegasus 1986) 266-267. 48 Sussex, SxMs19/10/1/2, Scrapbook 1945-1949: A. v.d. Steenhoven, ‘Politieke kunst. De Negerzangers in “Kunstmin,”’ Dordtsch Dagblad, 17 December 1945, n.p. 49 Rosey Pool, ‘De kunst van den neger,’ Vrij Nederland 6.49 (3 August 1946) 7. 50 Rosey E. Pool, ‘Schril licht op zwarte zijde der democratie in Amerika, het land van de zeven vrijheden. Dertien millioen negers vernederd door geschreven en ongeschreven wetten,’ Haarlems dagblad 61.18614 (22 April 1947) 2. 51 Mel van Elteren, Imagining America. Dutch Youth and Its Sense of Place (Tilburg: Tilburg University Press 1994) 29. 52 Sussex, SxMs19/11/3/18: ‘As Waves of One Sea,’ 38. 53 Sussex, SxMs19/11/3/18, 16-16: ‘Devil’s Food’ (1960) 1. 54 Anne Frank Museum Amsterdam, Otto Frank Archive, Reel 25, inv.no. 100: Letter Rosey Pool to Otto Frank, 9 September 1949. 55 Sussex, SxMs19/11/3/18, 16-16: ‘Devil’s Food’ (1960) 1. 56 Anneke Buys, ‘The Marvelous Gift of Friendship. A Biography of Rosey E. Pool (1905-1971).’ Unpublished manuscript, Apeldoorn, 1986, n.p. Quoted from radio interview Rosey Pool by Hanna van der Linden, February 1968 57 Sussex, SxMs19/11/3/18: ‘As Waves of One Sea,’ 22. 58 Sussex, SxMs19/11/3/18: ‘As Waves of One Sea,’ 29. 59 Sussex, SxMs19/11/3/18: ‘As Waves of One Sea,’ 30. 307

60 Waldie van Eck, ‘Indrukken uit Zwart-Amerika,’ De Groene Amsterdammer, no. 2759 (19 April 1930) 16. This article mentions that the Amsterdam Public Reading Room and the Library owned books by authors like Countee Cullen, W.E.B. Du Bois, Langston Hughes, James Weldon Johnson, Nella Larsen, Claude McKay, and others. 61 Pool refers to ‘a bundle from Countee Cullen’ in a letter from September 1945. She is probably referring to the collection Color (1925), which also can be found in her library at the University of Sussex. Source: Literatuurmuseum, B00907 B1 Pool, R.E. 14.547, Letter Rosey Pool to Miss Brugman, 9 September 1945. 62 Sussex, SxMs19/11/3/18: ‘As Waves of One Sea,’ 119. Pool thought that her appetite was partially racially determined: Jews had suffered throughout history which had made her a ‘hearty eater.’ 63 Anneke Buys, The marvelous gift of friendship. A biography of Rosey E. Pool (1905-1971) [unpublished manuscript 1986], n.p. Letter Rosey Pool to Hermie Huiswoud, 25 February 1969. 64 Minati Singh, ‘Mood, Food, and Obesity,’ Frontiers in Psychology 5.925 (September 2014) 1-20:1; Ada H. Zohar, Lotem Giladi & Timor Givati, ‘Holocaust Exposure and Disordered Eating. A Study of Multi-Generational Transmission,’ European Eating Disorders Review 15.1 (January/February 2007) 50-57:50; Bessel A. van der Kolk, The Body Keeps the Score. Mind, Brain and Body in the Transformation of Trauma (London: Allen Lane 2014) 144. 65 Dienke Hondius, Return. Holocaust Survivors and Dutch Anti-Semitism (Westport, CT: Praeger 2003) 91-112; Evelien Gans, ‘”Vandaag hebben ze niets - maar morgen bezitten ze weer tien gulden.” Antisemitische stereotypen in bevrijd Nederland,’ in: Conny Kristel (ed.), Polderschouw. Terugkeer en opvang na de Tweede Wereldoorlog. Regionale verschillen (Amsterdam: Bakker 2002) 313- 353. 66 Judith Lewis Herman, Trauma and Recovery. The Aftermath of Violence, From Domestic Abuse to Political Terror (London: Pandora 1997) 162. 67 Sussex, SxMs19/11/3/18: ‘As Waves of One Sea,’ 30. 68 Peter N. Stearns, Fat History. Bodies and Beauty in the Modern West (New York: New York University Press 1997) 73; Sander L. Gilman, Fat. A Cultural History of Obesity (Cambridge: Polity 2008) 71-89; Susan Bordo, Unbearable Weight. Feminism, Western Culture, and the Body (Berkeley: University of California Press 1993) 5. 69 Interview Hilda Verwey-Jonker by Anneke Buys, 19 February 1985. 70 Selma Leydesdorff, ‘When All is Lost. Metanarrative in the Oral History of Hanifa, Survivor of Srebrenica,’ in: Mark Cave & Stephen Sloan (eds.), Listening on the Edge. Oral History in the Aftermath of Crisis (Oxford: Oxford University Press 2014) 17-32:27; Francesca Polletta, It Was Like a Fever. Storytelling in Protest and Politics (Chicago: University of Chicago Press 2006) 96. 308

71 Jill K. Conway, When Memory Speaks. Exploring the Art of Autobiography (New York: Alfred A. Knopf 1998) 3-18; Sidonie Smith & Julia Watson, Reading Autobiography. A Guide for Interpreting Life Narratives (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press [2001] 2010) 266. 72 Pool quoted from letters written by Countee Cullen to ‘dear R.,’ claiming it was her (Sussex, SxMs10/11/1/2, 13-30: ‘Mijn zwarte ziel ....,’ 5-7). The ‘R.’ actually referred to Ruth Walker (born Miller) from Columbus, Ohio. Pool possibly made photocopies (Sussex, 1-99, 1-100) of these letters from the Countee Cullen Papers (Reel 3; Box 6, Folder 3) when she visited the Schomburg Center in New York in the 1960s. 73 Atria, Amsterdam, archive Willemijn Posthumus-van der Goot, Folder 1189: Rosey Pool, ‘Zie Uw kinderen voor vol aan,’ 14 May 1946, 10.30-10.35hrs, in: Korte Gesprekken van vrouw tot vrouw, radio program of Willemijn Posthumus-van der Goot. I want to thank archivist Annette Mevis for bringing this to my attention. 74 Marjan Schwegman & Jolande Withuis, ‘Moederschap. Van springplank tot obstakel. Vrouwen, natie en burgerschap in twintigste-eeuws Nederland,’ in: Georges Duby and Michelle Perrot (eds.), Geschiedenis van de vrouw. Deel 5: De twintigste eeuw (Amsterdam: Agon 1993), 557-583. See also: Jolande Withuis, ‘Mothers of the Nation. Post-war Gendered Interpretations of the Experiences of Dutch Resistance Women,’ in: Claire Duchen & Irene Bandhauer-Schöffmann, When the War Was Over. Women, War and Peace in Europe, 1940-1956 (London: New York: Leicester University Press 2000) 29-43:38. 75 Private archive Rudi Wesselius, red photo album, 1940s. 76 Maarten Kuitenbrouwer, De ontdekking van de derde wereld. Beeldvorming en beleid in Nederland 1950-1990 (The Hague: SDU uitgeverij 1994). 77 Sussex, SxMs19/13/1, Memorial Volume: Hermie Huiswoud [ca. 1971]. 78 Jules Rosen, et al., ‘Sleep Disturbances in Survivors of the Nazi Holocaust,’ The American Journal of Psychiatry 148.1 (January 1991) 62-66. 79 Sussex, SxMs19/11/3/18, 16-8: Rosey Pool, ‘White Monday,’ 1962, 1. 80 Pool, Beperkt zicht, ‘Aan mijn moeder’ [‘To my mother’], 9. 81 Interview Albert Mol by Anneke Buys, 18 February 1985.

NOTES CHAPTER 5: LONDON

1 Sussex, SxMs19/13/1, Memorial Volume: Paul Vesey [a.k.a. Samuel Allen] (n.d.). 2 Sussex, SxMs19/11/3/18: Pool, ‘As Waves of One Sea’ [English manuscript Lachen om niet te huilen], 3. 3 Gordon Heath, Deep Are the Roots. Memoirs of a Black Expatriate (Amherst: University of

Massachusetts Press 1992) 88. 309

4 Dennis J. De Witt & Elizabeth R. De Witt, Modern Architecture in Europe. A Guide to Buildings Since the Industrial Revolution (New York: E.P. Dutton 1987) 189; Anthony Jackson, The Politics of Architecture. A History of Modern Architecture in Britain (Toronto: University of Toronto Press 1970) 45. The 1930s modernist flat was built in the International Style, designed by the exiled Soviet architect Berthold Lubetkin. The modest skyscraper was called an architectonic ‘milestone’ by the famous architect Le Corbusier. 5 Howard University, Moorland-Spingarn Research Center, Rosey E. Pool Papers, Box 82-2, Folder 136, John S. Scott: Letter Rosey Pool to John Sherman Scott, 2 July 1963. 6 Rosey E. Pool, ‘n Engelse sleutel. Een ABC over het “Perfide Albion” (Amsterdam: De Boer 1957) 118. 7 Interview author with Rudi Wesselius, 16 April 2018. 8 Sussex, SxMs19/14/1/8, Scrapbook 1962-1963: ‘Nederlandse vrouw expert van de neger- literatuur,’ Algemeen dagblad, 19 April 1966. 9 Sussex, SxMs19/10/1/2, Scrapbook 1945-1949: Rosey E. Pool, ‘UNO in Croydon,’ Vrij Nederland, 17 February 1951, 8. The current names of those countries are now Myanmar, British Guiana and Ghana, respectively. 10 David Kynaston, Modernity Britain. 1957-62 (London: Bloomsbury Publishing 2015) 174. 11 Some of the most famous Black people who settled in London were the Trinidadian Pan- Africanist George Padmore, the also Trinidadian journalist and activist Claudia Jones, and the American opera singer and actor Paul Robeson and his wife Essie. See: Marc Matera, Black London. The Imperial Metropolis and Decolonization in the Twentieth Century (Oakland, CA: University of California Press 2015) 24; James Procter (ed.), Writing Black Britain 1948-1998. An Interdisciplinary Anthology (Manchester: Manchester University Press 2000) 13; Jan Carew, ‘Paul Robeson and W.E.B. Du Bois in London,’ Race & Class 46.2 (October 2004) 39-48:48. 12 Pool compiled her first collection of African American poetry when she was in hiding during WWII. Because books were scarce, she wrote most of the poems down from heart. See: Sussex, SxMs19/12/2/4: ‘First collection’ (ca. 1939-1940). 13 Sussex, SxMs19/13/1, Memorial Volume: Gordon Heath (1972), n.p. 14 Howard, Box 82-2, Folder 65, Mozell Hill: Letter Mozell Hill to Rosey Pool, 11 December 1960; Howard, Box 82-2, Folder 72, Earle Hyman: Letter Earle Hyman to Rosey Pool, 10 October 1959. 15 Shane Graham & John Walters (eds.), Langston Hughes and the South African Drum Generation. The Correspondence (New York: Palgrave Macmillan 2010) 145. Quoted from a letter from Langston Hughes to Bloke Modisane, 14 May 1962. 16 Heath, Deep Are the Roots, 88. 310

17 Sussex, SxMs19/13/1, Memorial volume: An and Wim Postema [ca. 1971]. 18 Letterkundig Museum, 66-2 QUE, Correspondence R.E. Pool: Letter Alice von Eugen [Querido] to Rosey Pool, 24 November 1945. 19 Kate A. Baldwin, Beyond the Color Line and the Iron Curtain. Reading Encounters Between Black and Red, 1922-1963 (Durham, NC: Duke University Press 2002) 36. 20 After major American publications such as Beatrice Murphy’s Ebony Rhythm (1948) and Langston Hughes’ and Arna Bontemps’ The Poetry of the Negro (1949), little to no Black poetry was published. See: Keneth Kinnamon, ‘Anthologies of African-American Literature from 1845 to 1994,’ Callaloo 20.2 (Spring 1997) 461-481:470. 21 British Library, Sound and Moving Image Catalogue, T3921: John Carroll, ‘There was a publisher,’ [Portrait of the poet and publisher Erica Marx] for BBC Radio 3, 4 April 1981; Barry Newport (ed.), ‘A Hand and Flower Anthology. Poems and Fables Commemorating Erica Marx and the Hand and Flower Press,’ Privately Printed, 1980, 8. 22 James Davis, Eric Walrond. A Life in the Harlem Renaissance and the Transatlantic Caribbean (New York: Columbia University Press 2015) 339-344. 23 The book Tropic Death can be found in Rosey Pool’s list of books. A copy of this list can be requested with the author or with archivists of The Keep, University of Sussex. Pool’s former library is currently incorporated in the library of the University of Sussex. 24 Sussex, SxMs19/12/2/6: Suggestions for a programme of poetry by American negroes [n.d., ca. 1960s], ‘Interviewer’s question to the theme of how did this interest come about.....,’ 5. 25 Anneke Buys, ‘The marvellous gift of friendship. A Biography of Rosey E. Pool, 1905-1971.’ Unpublished manuscript, Apeldoorn, 1986, n.p. Buys here refers to a 7” tape which is currently unavailable for research: Sussex, SxMs19/9/1/12, Interview with Rosey Pool by Hanna van der Linden (VPRO radio, 1966). 26 Leslie M. Collins, ‘Creole Girl,’ in: Eric Walrond & Rosey E. Pool (eds.), Black and Unknown Bards: A Collection of Negro Poetry (Aldington, Kent: Hand and Flower Press 1958) 43. 27 Calvin Hernton, ‘The Distant Drum,’ in: Rosey E. Pool & Paul Breman (eds.), Ik zag hoe zwart ik was. Poëzie van Noordamerikaanse negers. Een tweetalige bloemlezing van Rosey E. Pool en Paul Breman (Den Haag, Bert Bakker / Daamen N.V. 1958) 20. 28 Julian Bond, ‘Look at that gal...,’ in: Rosey Pool, Beyond the Blues. New Poems by American Negroes. Selected and introduced by Rosey E. Pool (Lympne, Kent: The Hand and Flower Press 1962) 4. The first line is taken from the Ray Charles hit single ‘What’d I Say’ (1959). 29 Horace Julian Bond, ‘I too, hear America singing’ [Place for Poetry #1], The Student Voice. The Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee 1.1 (June 1960) n.p. This poem was previously also

311

published in Pegasus, journal of Atlanta’s Morehouse College, where Julian Bond was a student at the time. 30 Presentation Maria Lauret on Rosey Pool at event ‘Treasures from the Rosey Pool Library,’ at Being Human. A Festival of the Humanities, University of Sussex, 21 November 2017. 31 Naomi Long Madgett, ‘Alabama Centennial,’ in: Rosey Pool, with an introduction by Jan Willem Schulte Nordholt, Ik ben de Nieuwe Neger. Gedichten, rijmen, liedjes en dokumenten uit 300 jaar verzet van de Amerikaanse neger (The Hague: Bert Bakker / Daamen 1965) 18. 32 Sussex, SxMs19/1/1, Correspondence, 1-171: Letter Rosey Pool to Betty Ford, 11 October 1965. 33 Howard, Box 82-1, Folder 50, Sarah Webster Fabio: Letter Sarah Webster Fabio to Rosey Pool, 29 October 1965. 34 Julius Eric Thompson, Dudley Randall, Broadside Press, and the Black Arts Movement in Detroit, 1960-1995 (Jefferson, NC: McFarland 1999) 43. 35 Sussex, SxMs19/1/2, Correspondence, 2-20: Letter Rosey Pool to Catherine Leslie, 28 January 1969. 36 Bruce Kellner, ‘”Refined Racism.” White Patronage in the Harlem Renaissance,’ in: Harold Bloom (ed.), The Harlem Renaissance (Philadelphia, PA: Chelsea House Publishers 2004) 53-66; Carla Kaplan, Miss Anne in Harlem. The White Women of the Black Renaissance (New York: Harper 2013). 37 ‘POOL, Rosey,’ Moorland-Spingarn Research Center, Howard University. Last edited 1 October 2015. URL: https://dh.howard.edu/finaid_manu/158 (accessed 7 December 2018). In 1965 she was formally named as a patron of London’s Negro Theatre Workshop Trust, alongside Sir Jock Campbell, Sir Learie Constantine, Sir Laurence Olivier, The Rev. Austen Williams, Oscar Lewenstein, George Devine, Joan Littlewood, Spike Milligan, and Sidney Poitier. See: ‘Letters. The Negro Theatre Workshop Trust [letter from Mrs. Tanga Morgan],’ The Stage and Television Today, no. 4416 (2 December 1965) 11. 38 Dick van Galen Last [edited by Ralf Futselaar], De zwarte schande. Afrikaanse soldaten in Europa, 1914-1922 (Amsterdam: Atlas Contact 2012) 30-31. 39 Dienke Hondius, Blackness in Western Europe. Racial Patterns of Paternalism and Exclusion (New Brunswick, NJ: Transaction Publishers 2014) 45, 197. 40 Margaret Danner, ‘Sadie’s Playhouse,’ in: Rosey Pool, with an introduction by Jan Willem Schulte Nordholt, Ik ben de Nieuwe Neger. Gedichten, rijmen, liedjes en dokumenten uit 300 jaar verzet van de Amerikaanse neger (The Hague: Bert Bakker / Daamen 1965) 117. 41 Chicago Public Library, Heritage Press Archives, 6-3 Robert Hayden: Letter Paul Breman to Robert Hayden, 19 February 1960.

312

42 Shane Graham, ‘Black Atlantic Literature as Transnational Cultural Space,’ Literature Compass 10.6 (June 2013) 508-518; Jahan Ramazani, A Transnational Poetics (Chicago: University of Chicago Press 2009) 33. 43 Melba Joyce Boyd, Wrestling with the Muse. Dudley Randall and the Broadside Press (New York: Columbia University Press [2003] 2004) 122. Quote from Ed Simpkins. Beyond the Blues featured multiple poets from the Detroit area, some did not even know each other. Many claimed that that they first sought contact with each other after this publication. 44 Vinnette Carroll received a New York area Emmy award for conceiving, adapting, and supervising the WCBS-TV production ‘Beyond the Blues’ (Stage Two, 26 February 1964, produced by Merrill Brockway). 45 Melba Joyce Boyd, Wrestling with the Muse. Dudley Randall and the Broadside Press (New York: Columbia University Press [2003] 2004) 109. Madgett here mentions the television series Black and Unknown Bards, broadcasted by Wayne State University in 1963. 46 Naomi Cornelia Long Madgett, ‘Poets Beyond the Blues (in memory of Rosey E. Pool),’ in: Exits and Entrances (Detroit, MI: Lotus Press 1978), n.p. 47 Howard, Box 82-2, Folder 130, Dudley Randall: Letter Dudley Randall to Rosey Pool, 22 November 1962. Snodgrass replied he borrowed it from one of the university librarians. It is possible that this was Dudley Randall. Wayne State University (Detroit) was also the place where Pool went on her Fulbright fellowship in 1959. 48 Sussex, SxMs19/1/2, Correspondence, 2-2: Letter Oliver LaGrone to Rosey Pool, 10 July 1969. 49 Sussex, SxMs19/10/1/9, Scrapbook 1963-1967: ‘Dr. Rosey Pool Speaks at Bowie,’ The Pacesetter [Maryland], February 1967. 50 Howard, Box 82-1, Folder 51, Julia Fields: Letter Julia Fields to Rosey Pool, n.d. 51 Richard Rive, Writing Black (Cape Town: David Philip 1981) 103-4. 52 Rive, Writing Black, 104. 53 Rive, Writing Black, 103-4. Emphasis added. 54 Yale, JWJ MSS 26, Langston Hughes Papers, Box 130, Folder 2431, no. 73: Letter Rosey Pool to Langston Hughes, 23 May 1958. 55 Howard, Box 82-2, Folder 69, Langston Hughes: Letter Rosey Pool to Langston Hughes, 17 May 1962. 56 ‘South African Tells of Brutality, Fear of War,’ Atlanta Daily World, 23 March 1963, 1; ‘S. African Writer Tours Dixie Schools,’ Afro-American, 2 March 1963, 18. 57 Rosey E. Pool, Lachen om niet te huilen (Rotterdam: Lemniscaat 1968) 24. 58 Paul Gilroy, The Black Atlantic. Modernity and Double Consciousness (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press 1993) 19. 313

59 Sussex, SxMs19/13/1, Robert Hayden [1972]. Derived from: Robert Hayden, How I Write / 1 (New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich 1972) 188-189. Pool read this poem during her visit to Fisk University (Nashville, Tennessee) in 1960. 60 Lauri Ramey & Paul Breman (eds.), The Heritage Series of Black poetry, 1962-1975. A Research Compendium (Aldershot: Ashgate 2008) 3. 61 Pierre Bourdieu & Loïc J.D. Wacquant, An Invitation to Reflexive Sociology (Chicago: University of Chicago Press 1992) 199. 62 Howard, Folder 46, Shirley Graham Du Bois: Letter Rosey Pool to Shirley Graham Du Bois, 17 January 1964. ‘Old-fashioned feminist’ quote is derived from: Sussex, SxMs19/1/2, Correspondence: L-Z, 2-148: Letter Rosey Pool to Umbra [magazine], 3 February 1964 63 Some examples are Nikki Giovanni’s modest Night Comes Softly (1970), but especially the first major on the subject, Erlene Stetson’s Black Sister. Poetry by Black American Women, 1746-1980 (1981).

NOTES CHAPTER 6: HILVERSUM

1 Hans Righart & Piet de Rooij, ‘In Holland staat een huis. Weerzin en vertedering over “de jaren vijftig,”’ in: Paul Luykx & Pim Slot (eds.), Een stille revolutie? Cultuur en mentaliteit in de lange jaren vijftig (Hilversum: Verloren 1997) 11-18:17. 2 In 1946 Rosey Pool spoke twice for the AVRO in a program of Willemijn Hendrika Posthumus- van der Goot, in January and May 1946. See: Atria, Archive Willemijn Hendrika Posthumus-van der Goot, inv.no. 1121 and 1189. In 1947 Pool spoke at least once with the Catholic KRO about the cloister ‘St. Caecilia.’ See: ‘Radioprogramma. Vrijdag 10 jan,’ De Heerenveensche koerier. Onafhankelijk dagblad voor Midden-Zuid-Oost-Friesland en Noord-Overijssel 3.7 (9 January 1947) 5. In 1949 Pool spoke once with the Wereldomroep about ‘Negro poetry’ (7 May 1949, together with Guus van der Steen). See: Jos de Roo, ‘Praatjes voor de West. De Wereldomroep en de Antilliaanse en Surinaamse literatuur 1947-1958.’ Unpublished dissertation, University of Amsterdam, 2014, 327-328, 373. 3 Yale, JWJ MSS 26, Langston Hughes Papers, Box 130, Folder 2430: Letter Rosey Pool to Langston Hughes, 31 October 1952. 4 The BBC Dutch Service ended in 1957 during cutbacks at the BBC, although it was largely financed by a conglomeration of Dutch broadcasters. See: BBC Archives, E1.829 Countries. Holland. Dutch Service. File 1. 1940-1957: ‘The B.B.C. and Holland. Notes for D.G.’; E1.829 Countries. Holland. Dutch Service. File 1. 1940-1957: ‘Some Notes on the Dutch Service’; ‘Tien jaar B.B.C. in Nederlands. Vijf jaar oorlog, vijf jaar vrede,’ Trouw 8.1515 (6 April 1950) 3. 5 BBC Archives: ‘Pool, Dr. Rosey.’ Talks File 1: 1948, 1962. 314 6 The translated titles of these TV plays were: Tweesprong, translation of Noël Coward’s 1945 movie Brief Encounter (VPRO, broadcasted 2 February 1956); Al mijn zonen, translation of Arthur Miller’s 1947 play All My Sons (VPRO, broadcasted 11 March 1958); and Christus wordt weer gekruisigd, adaption of Nikos Kazantzakis’s 1954 novel Christ Recrucified (VPRO, broadcasted 28 January 1959). See also: ‘Jack Dixon. Televisie werd zijn levensdoel,’ Het Parool 19.4365 (4 April 1959) 21. 7 ‘Televisie-uitzending over Joodse gemeenschap. Een Radio-uitzending over “Het Achterhuis,”’ Nieuw Israëlitisch weekblad No. 7 (5 November 1954) 5. 8 Jack Dixon, ‘Wat anderen er van denken. Silberbauer en zijn Nederlandse helpers,’ [reader’s letter], De Telegraaf 66.23676 (22 November 1963) 11. 9 ‘Jack Dixon. Televisie werd zijn levensdoel,’ Het Parool 19.4365 (4 April 1959) 21. 10 Liesbet van Zoonen, ‘Pia, Maartje, Hennie en Joop. De opkomst van de vrouwelijke nieuwslezer,’ Tijdschrift voor Vrouwenstudies 121.4 (December 1991) 470-483:471. 11 Private archive Anneke Buys. Interview Joes Odufré by Anneke Buys, 6 May 1985. 12 Netherlands Institute for Sound and Vision, inv.no. 162306, ‘God Bless Queen Victoria,’ television show presented by Rosey Pool, produced by Wim Ibo and directed by Joes Odufré, 18 February 1962; inv.no. 162621, ‘Op bezoek bij Eric Bramall,’ television show presented by Rosey Pool, directed by Joes Odufré, 2 July 1962. 13 ‘Hoofdrol van Nederlands TV-spel voor Amerikaanse neger,’ De Telegraaf 61.22057 (13 August 1958) 7. 14 R.M.S., ‘Losse notities van een weekeinde,’ Het Parool 22.5250 (19 February 1962) 4. 15 A.C. Zijderveld, ‘Vrij zinnig eigenzinnig. De cultuur en traditie van de VPRO’, in: J.H.J. van den Heuvel, H. Daalder & J.C.H. Blom, Een vrij zinnige verhouding. De VPRO en Nederland, 1926- 1986 (Baarn: Ambo 1987) 147-180:166. The program ‘Wit op zwart’ was presented by historian Jan Willem Schulte Nordholt, who some years later would write an introduction to Pool’s anthology Ik ben de Nieuwe Neger (1965). 16 Interview Joes Odufré by Anneke Buys, 6 May 1985. 17 ‘Kijk naar,’ De Telegraaf 60.21638 (1 April 1957) 5. ‘E Wa Jo’ [‘Let Us Dance’] was broadcasted by the VPRO on 1 April 1957; ‘Radio-Televisie,’ De Telegraaf 61.21901 (8 February 1958) 11; J.B.L., ‘Luchtpost. Stijlvolle avond met grove uitsmijter,’ Trouw 16.3914 (10 February 1958) 5. This evening included performances by the English-Chinese Chin Yu, the Surinamese women’s orchestra Los Barritos de Carmin, apinti players Roel Burnet and Frank Smit, a talk by the Surinamese Laetitia Douglas, the Irish musician Joan Manning, limbo dancers led by Francis Charles, and Dutch writers Guus Oster and Simon van Collem. 18 ‘Morgenavond in Frascati: Een ton d’r op. Veiling ten bate slachtoffers apartheidspolitiek,’ Friese koerier. Onafhankelijk dagblad voor Friesland en aangrenzende gebieden 21.201 (11 May 1966) 2. 315

19 ‘The Thursday Play, BBC Home Service Basic, broadcasted 16 January 1958,’ Radio Times, No. 1783 (10 January 1948) 42. Source: Website BBC Genome, https://genome.ch.bbc.co.uk/220064c8e2bc473eb9cb2072761b345f (accessed 8 February 2019). In this version the Trinidadian actor and playwright Errol John played the protagonist. 20 University of Sussex, Rosey Pool Collection, SxMs19/13/6, Rosey E. Pool, ‘”Advocaat Pro Deo” pleit voor allen,’ Vrije Geluiden. Radio- en Televisieprogrammablad van de V.P.R.O. 28.36 (6 September 1958) 6. 21 Gordon Heath, Deep Are the Roots. Memoirs of a Black Expatriate (Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press 1992) 88. 22 Heath, Deep Are the Roots 87; Sussex, SxMs19/13/1, Memorial Volume: Gordon Heath [1972]. 23 Heath, Deep Are the Roots, 47. See also: Stephen Bourne, ‘Gordon Heath. A Very Unusual Othello,’ in: Stephen Bourne, Black in the British Frame. The Black Experience in British Film and Television (London: Cassell 1998) 99-103:103. 24 Literatuurmuseum, 20-2 QUE, Correspondence R.E. Pool: Letter Rosey Pool to Alice von Eugen [Querido], 17 March 1953. 25 Kimberlé Crenshaw, ‘Mapping the Margins. Intersectionality, Identity Politics, and Violence Against Women of Color,’ Stanford Law Review 43.6 (July 1991) 1241-1299:1299; Verta Taylor & Nancy E. Whittier, ‘Collective Identity in Social Movement Communities. Lesbian Feminist Mobilization,’ Aldon D. Morris & Carol McClurg Mueller (eds.), Frontiers in Social Movement Theory (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press 1992) 104-129:104. 26 Heath, Deep Are the Roots, 90. 27 Pool, ‘The Negro Actor in Europe,’ 260. Quotation provided by Pool in this article; original letter not found. 28 Yale, JWJ MSS 26, Langston Hughes Papers, Box 130, Folder 2430: Letter Rosey Pool to Langston Hughes, 3 February 1952. 29 Heath, Deep Are the Roots, 91. 30 ‘Gordon Heath en Lee Payant in Nederland,’ De Telegraaf 59.21460 (1 September 1956) 4; Sussex, SxMs19/13/5, Scrapbook 1948-1962: ‘Gordon Heath en Lee Payan [sic] voor VPRO- televisie. Precies als in Parijs,’ unidentified newspaper, 7 July 1956, n.p. On 1 September 1956 Heath and Payant again performed together, now on VPRO radio, with Pool introducing their material. See: ‘Gegolfde wereld,’ Utrechts Nieuwsblad 64.101 (29 August 1956) 7. 31 Rosey E. Pool, ‘Ik zie, ik zie, wat jij niet ziet…. Namelijk: toneel in Londen,’ Vox Guyanae 3.6 (October 1959) 32-36:36. My translation. Here Pool explains her vision in a review of Moon on a Rainbow Shawl (1957), a play by the Trinidadian playwright Erroll John, which focused on the social and economic circumstances of West Indian immigrants in London. 316

32 Sussex, SxMs19/13/6, Rosey E. Pool, ‘”Advocaat Pro Deo” pleit voor allen,’ Vrije Geluiden. Radio- en Televisieprogrammablad van de V.P.R.O. 28.36 (6 September 1958) 6. 33 Rosey E. Pool, ‘Ik zie, ik zie, wat jij niet ziet…. Namelijk: toneel in Londen,’ Vox Guyanae 3.6 (October 1959) 32-36:35; Rosey E. Pool, ‘The Negro Actor in Europe,’ Phylon 14.3 (3rd Quarter 1953) 258-267:263. Pool names the actor Otto Sterman as an example. 34 Pool translated some of Annie M.G. Schmidt’s works into English. See: Annie M.G. Schmidt [translated by Rosey E. Pool], Love from Mick and Mandy, by Annie M.G. Schmidt (London: Odhams Press 1961); Annie M.G. Schmidt [translated by Rosey E. Pool], Good Luck Mick and Mandy, by Annie M.G. Schmidt (London: Odhams Press 1961) and Annie M.G. Schmidt [translated by Rosey E. Pool], Take Care, Mick and Mandy, by Annie M.G. Schmidt (London: Odhams Press 1961). 35 Giselinde Kuipers, ‘1 oktober 1957. Donald Jones verschijnt in Pension Hommeles. De rol van gekleurde acteurs in Nederlandse televisiehumor,’ in: Rosemarie Buikema & Maaike Meijer (eds.), Cultuur en migratie in Nederland. Kunsten in beweging 1900-1980 (The Hague: SDU Uitgevers 2003) 291-306:302. Quoted from: Algemeen Dagblad, 2 February 1989. 36 University of Massachusetts, MS 372, Gordon Heath Papers, Box 27, Folder 324: Letter Rosey Pool to Gordon Heath, 14 January 1958. 37 Heath, Deep Are the Roots, 89. 38 University of Massachusetts, MS 372, Gordon Heath Papers, Box 27, Folder 324: ‘”Advocaat pro deo” by VPRO Television. American Gordon Heath acts in Dutch. Amsterdam, Wednesday,’ translation from unidentified newspaper, n.d. 39 Victoria De Grazia, Irresistible Empire. America’s Advance Through Twentieth-Century Europe (Cambridge: The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press 2005) 337. 40 ‘Gegolfde wereld. Durf,’ Utrechts Nieuwsblad 66.113 (11 September 1958) 5. 41 ‘Amerikaan Gordon Heath speelt in Nederlands. “Advocaat pro Deo” bij VPRO-televisie,’ Het Parool 18.4192 (10 September 1958) 9. 42 ‘Hoofdrol van Nederlands TV-spel voor Amerikaanse neger,’ De Telegraaf 61.22057 (13 August 1958) 7; University of Massachusetts, MS 372, Gordon Heath Papers, Box 27, Folder 324: ‘”Advocaat pro deo” by VPRO Television. American Gordon Heath acts in Dutch. Amsterdam, Wednesday,’ translation from unidentified newspaper, n.d. 43 University of Massachusetts, MS 372, Gordon Heath Papers, Box 27, Folder 324: Letter Jack Dixon to Gordon Heath, 16 June 1958; Letter Rosey Pool to Lee Payant, 4 March 1958. Pool changed all the words in the script that were too difficult to pronounce for Americans. 44 Sussex, SxMs19/13/1, Memorial Volume: Gordon Heath [1972].

317

45 ‘Avondprogramma. 10 september 1958,’ Vrije Geluiden. Radio- en Televisieprogrammablad van de V.P.R.O. 28.36 (6 September 1958) 27. W.E.B. Du Bois was interviewed by Professor Lambertus Jacobus van Holk, who was known for his 1942 protest at Leiden University against anti-Jewish measures. John Thivy was interviewed by journalist Henk Hofland. 46 Lauri Ramey & Paul Breman (eds.), The Heritage Series of Black poetry, 1962-1975. A Research Compendium (Aldershot: Ashgate 2008) 128. 47 Chicago Public Library, Heritage Press archive, 6-3, Robert Hayden: Paul Breman, The Heritage Series of Black Poetry - 1962 to 1975. A Memoir (London: private publisher 2006), ‘The books,’ n.p. 48 Tamiment Library and Robert F. Wagner Labor Archive, Hermina Dumont Huiswoud Papers and Photographs, Box 1, Folder 35, Biographical Essays on “Women I Have Known Personally”: ‘Rosey Pool.’ 49 University of Massachusetts, MS 312, W.E.B. Du Bois Papers, Reel 81, Frame 1198: ‘The United States and War’ (Amsterdam, 11 September 1958) 11. These are likely the notes of the speech Du Bois gave on 11 September 1958 in The Hague, not Amsterdam as noted. 50 Harvard University, Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study, Arthur and Elizabeth Schlesinger Library on the History of Women in America, MC 476, Papers of Shirley Graham Du Bois, 15.4 [Photocopies of #15.5f, W.E.B. Du Bois scrapbook: trip to Holland, 1958]: ‘Misplaatst politiek geluid op ere-avond voor DuBois. “Ik zag hoe zwart ik was,”’ Haagsch dagblad (12 September 1958) n.p.; ‘Beroemd Amerikaans negerleider in ons land. W.E.B. Dubois (90) maakt reis om de wereld,’ De Waarheid 19.211 (9 September 1958) 3. See also: Lonneke Geerlings, ‘W.E.B. Du Bois at Ons Suriname, Amsterdam. Transnational Networks and Dutch Anti Colonial Activism in the Late 1950s,’ in: Babs Boter, Giles Scott-Smith & Marleen Rensen (eds.) Unhinging the National Framework (Leiden: Sidestone Press 2019). In print. 51 Kate A. Baldwin, Beyond the Color Line and the Iron Curtain. Reading Encounters Between Black and Red, 1922-1963 (Durham, NC: Duke University Press 2002) 35; John Munro, ‘Imperial Anticommunism and the African American Freedom Movement in the Early Cold War’, History Workshop Journal 79.1 (Spring 2015) 52-75. 52 ‘”Het concert”: tv-spel van blind meisje en negerarts. Henk Rigters brengt Canadees stuk,’ De Volkskrant 37.10624 (22 October 1959) 5. 53 ‘LD over Radio + TV. Kleurige T.V.,’ Leidsch dagblad 97.29541 (11 September 1958) 2. 54 Netherlands Institute for Sound and Vision, document ID 44403: Video excerpt from Advocaat pro deo [broadcasted 10 September 1958]. 55 Heath, Deep Are the Roots, 89. 56 Sussex, SxMs19/13/6. Stanley Mann, Script Advocaat pro Deo, 54-55. 57 Sussex, Script Advocaat pro Deo, 37-38. 318

58 Sussex, SxMs19/13/6, Rosey E. Pool, ‘”Advocaat Pro Deo” pleit voor allen,’ Vrije Geluiden. Radio- en Televisieprogrammablad van de V.P.R.O. 28.36 (6 September 1958) 6. 59 Sussex, Script Advocaat pro Deo, 11. 60 Sussex, Script Advocaat pro Deo, 69. 61 ‘”Advocaat pro deo.” Goed seizoenbegin,’ De Telegraaf 61.22082 (11 September 1958) 9. 62 ‘”TV-spel leverde stof voor gesprek.” Kijkers voelden zich “genomen” maar regisseur verklaart. Goede afloop “zat erin,”’ De Telegraaf 61.22084 (13 September 1958) 15. 63 ‘TV-kijkers wilden weten: Hoe liep het af met Donald?,’ Het Parool 18.4193 (11 September 1958) 9. 64 ‘Advocaat pro deo,’ Nieuwe Rotterdamse Courant (11 September 1958), n.p. 65 Sussex, SxMs19/13/6, Scrapbook Advocaat pro deo: ‘”Advocaat pro deo.” Amerikaan speelde hoofdrol in knap Canadees stuk,’ Haagse Post. Een Hollands weekblad, 11 September 1958, n.p.; newsclipping from Schager Courant, n.d., n.p.; newsclipping from Delfts Katholiek Dagblad, n.d., n.p. 66 Sussex, SxMs19/13/6, Advocaat pro deo: ‘Amerikaan gast-acteur in boeiend TV-spel,’ Rotterdams nieuwsblad, n.d., n.p. 67 University of Massachusetts, MS 372, Gordon Heath Papers, Box 27, Folder 324: ‘Gordon Heath,’ Het Vizier, No. 39 (27 September 1958), n.p. 68 Dienke Hondius, Blackness in Western Europe. Racial Patterns of Paternalism and Exclusion (New Brunswick, NJ: Transaction Publishers 2014) 272; Gloria Wekker, White Innocence. Paradoxes of Colonialism and Race (Durham, NC: Duke University Press 2016) 12-13. 69 Giselinde Kuipers, ‘1 oktober 1957. Donald Jones verschijnt in Pension Hommeles. De rol van gekleurde acteurs in Nederlandse televisiehumor,’ in: Rosemarie Buikema & Maaike Meijer (eds.), Cultuur en migratie in Nederland. Kunsten in beweging 1900-1980 (The Hague: SDU Uitgevers 2003) 291-306:293. 70 University of Massachusetts, MS 372, Gordon Heath Papers, Box 27, Folder 324: Letter Ineke Horree [Leiden] to Gordon Heath, 11 September 1958. 71 Sussex, SxMs19/13/6, Rosey E. Pool, ‘”Advocaat Pro Deo” pleit voor allen,’ Vrije Geluiden. Radio- en Televisieprogrammablad van de V.P.R.O. 28.36 (6 September 1958) 6. 72 Heath, Deep Are the Roots, 88. 73 University of Massachusetts, MS 372, Gordon Heath Papers, Box 27, Folder 324. The French version, Avocat pro deo, was broadcasted on 12 December 1958 by the Belgian broadcaster Institut national de radiodiffusion (INR).

319 NOTES CHAPTER 7: THE DEEP SOUTH

1 Roosevelt Institute for American Studies (RIAS), Fulbright Archives, Box 1, A.1 Program Plans, 1952-1969: Annual Program Proposal. United States Educational Foundation in the Netherlands, P.L. 584, 79th Congress, the Fulbright Act. Program Year 1959, Covering Exchanges for the Academic Year September 1959 - July 1960 [5 February 1958], 23. Pool was able to apply because of her affiliation with London’s Holborn College of Languages, where she taught Dutch evening classes. 2 Sussex, SxMs19/10/1/5, Scrapbook 1959-1960: Letter Johanna J. van Dullemen [United States Educational Foundation in the Netherlands, The Hague] to W.K. von Weiler [Consulate of the Netherlands, Detroit], 14 January 1960. 3 Judith E. Doneson, ‘The American History of Anne Frank’s Diary,’ Holocaust and Genocide Studies 2.1 (January 1987) 149-160:150. 4 Eric J. Sundquist, Strangers in the Land. Blacks, Jews, Post-Holocaust America (Cambridge: Harvard University Press [2005] 2009) 233. 5 Sussex, SxMs19/1/2, Correspondence, L-Z, 2-57: Letter Rosey Pool to Mae Mallory, 5 July 1963. Pool here gave the example of the protest song ‘Peat Bog Soldiers,’ which was often sung in concentration camps. 6 Sussex, SxMs19/10/1/5, Scrapbook 1959-1960: Barbara Williams, [untitled newspaper clipping, Detroit area], [ca. November 1959]. 7 Sussex, SxMs19/13/1, Memorial Volume: Gordon Heath (1972). 8 Sussex, SxMs19/10/1/5, Scrapbook 1959-1960: ‘Visiting Scholars in the United States Awarded U.S. Government Grants Under the Fulbright and Smith-Mundt Acts, Academic Year 1959’ -60, 29. 9 Sussex, SxMs19/10/1/5, Scrapbook 1959-1960: ‘United States Government Grant. Terms of Award,’ 9 September 1959. 10 Pool had met Professor Marion Edman in Germany’s American zone shortly after the war, where they both worked to de-Nazify the German educational system. Edman offered Pool free accommodation at her own home. See: Private archive Anneke Buys. Letter Marion Edman to Anneke Buys, 11 April 1985; Letter Marion Edman to Anneke Buys, 30 April 1985. For reports on Edman’s work in Germany’s American zone see also: New York Public Library, Marion Edman Papers: Letters Marion Edman to friends of 18 March 1947 and 4 July 1947. 11 Sussex, SxMs19/10/1/5, Scrapbook 1959-1960: List of talks and fees. Pool gave these classes during two days at Albion College (Albion, Michigan), on 12 and 13 October 1959. 12 Sussex, SxMs19/10/1/4, Scrapbook 1959-1960: ‘Youth Allowed To Forget Nazi Horror, Dr. Pool Says. Anne Frank Teacher Speaks Here,’ The Knoxville News-Sentinel, 17 February 1960, 25. 320 13 Sussex, SxMs19/10/1/5, Scrapbook 1959-1960: Charles Harmon, ‘Anne Frank’s Friend Speaks at K-College. Urges: Don’t Let Her Down Second Time,’ [Gazette, Kalamazoo, Michigan] 16 October 1959. 14 Sussex, SxMs19/10/1/5, Scrapbook 1959-1960: Letter unidentified pupil Marcy School [Detroit] to Rosey Pool, 18 November 1959. 15 Sussex, SxMs19/10/1/4, Scrapbook 1959-1960: Annette Harris [pupil Crosman Elementary school (Detroit, Michigan), 6th grade], ‘My Report On The Diary Of Ann Frank’ [12 November 1959]. 16 Sussex, SxMs19/10/1/5, Scrapbook 1959-1960: Letter Gregory Bynbrion to Rosey Pool, n.d. [ca. 18 November 1959] 17 Sussex, SxMs19/10/1/5, Scrapbook 1959-1960: Letter Joanne Carley [Highland Park High, Highland Park, Michigan] to Rosey Pool, 18 November 1959. 18 Sussex, SxMs19/14/1/4, Scrapbook 1959-1960: Lysbeth Bledsoe Tirrell, ‘Anne Frank was “Very Ordinary” Girl,’ The Washington Daily News, 4 April 1960. 19 Deborah E. Lipstadt, ‘America and the Memory of the Holocaust, 1950-1965,’ Modern Judaism 16.3 (October 1996) 195-214:195; Tony Kushner, ‘Britain, the United States and the Holocaust. In Search of a Historiography,’ in: Dan Stone (ed.), The Historiography of the Holocaust (London: Palgrave Macmillan 2004), 253-275:259. Back home in the Netherlands it was not until 1965 that Pool's former colleague from the Jewish Lyceum, Jacques Presser, sent shockwaves through Dutch society with Ondergang, a detailed book on the destruction of Dutch Jewry, similar to the response to Hilberg’s book. 20 Hilene Flanzbaum, The Americanization of the Holocaust (Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press 1999) 4. 21 Sussex, SxMs19/10/1/5, Scrapbook 1959-1960: ‘Dr. Pool To Meet Another Anne,’ The Detroit News, October 1959. 22 Sussex, SxMs19/10/1/5: Scrapbook 1959-1960, ‘Anne Frank’s Teacher Says Diary A Surprise,’ The Ann Arbor News, n.d. [November/December 1959]. 23 Anne Frank House, BgetuigenV007B, audio recording Rosey Pool about Anne Frank, undated [ca 1959-1960]. 24 Sussex, SxMs19/10/1/5, Scrapbook 1959-1960: ‘Dr. Pool To Meet Another Anne,’ The Detroit News, October 1959. This talk was held at the Wyandotte Community Theatre on 12 December 1959, who would perform the play at Jackson High School in Wyandotte on 21, 22, and 23 January 1960. 25 Anne Frank House, BgetuigenV007B, audio recording Rosey Pool about Anne Frank, undated [ca 1959-1960]. 321

26 Questionnaire Priscilla Swiat (b. Koestner), emailed to author on 28 November 2018. 27 Sussex, SxMs19/10/1/5, Scrapbook 1959-1960: Letter Claudia O. Lucas [from Ypsilanti High School, Ypsilanti, Michigan] to Rosey Pool, 5 November 1959. 28 Sussex, SxMs19/10/1/5, Scrapbook 1959-1960: Charles Harmon, ‘Anne Frank’s Friend Speaks at K-College. Urges: Don’t Let Her Down Second Time,’ [Gazette, Kalamazoo, Michigan] 16 October 1959. 29 Anne Frank House, BgetuigenV007B, audio recording Rosey Pool about Anne Frank, undated [ca 1959-1960]. 30 Sussex, SxMs19/10/1/5, Scrapbook 1959-1960: Dave Tarr, ‘Anne Frank’s Teacher Says Diary A Surprise,’ The Ann Arbor News, [November/December 1959]. 31 Sussex, SxMs19/10/1/5, Scrapbook 1959-1960: ‘Anne Frank’s Diary Genuine, Says Teacher,’ New Orleans States and Item, 14 March 1960. 32 Sussex, SxMs19/10/1/5, Scrapbook 1959-1960: Robert Churchwell, ‘Seeks Strong Anti- Semitism Controls,’ The Nashville Banner, 14 January 1960, 12; Sussex, SxMs19/14/1/4, Scrapbook 1959-1960: ‘Anne Frank’s Diary Defended,’ The Times-Picayune, New Orleans, [15] March 1960. 33 Sussex, SxMs19/10/1/5, Scrapbook 1959-1960: Barbara Williams, [untitled newspaper clipping, Detroit area], [ca. November 1959]. 34 Astrid Erll, Memory in Culture (New York: Palgrave Macmillan 2011) 8. 35 Sussex, SxMs19/10/1/5, Scrapbook 1959-1960: Dave Tarr, ‘Anne Frank’s Teacher Says Diary A Surprise,’ The Ann Arbor News, n.d. [November/December 1959]. 36 Sussex, SxMs19/10/1/5, Scrapbook 1959-1960: Barbara Williams, [untitled newspaper clipping, Detroit area], [ca. November 1959]. She later identified this ‘assistant’ actually as musicologist Nathan Notowicz. See: Sussex, SxMs19/9/1/9: Audio recording of Reader's Corner: Rosey E. Pool talks to P. Kenney (North Carolina), 1963. 37 Chicago Public Library, Heritage Press Archives, 6-3: Paul Breman, ‘The Heritage Series of Black Poetry, 1962 to 1975. A Memoir. Printed in Fifty Copies as a New Year gift for Surviving Poets and Some Friends’ (London, December 2006). Quote from Paul Breman. 38 Sussex, SxMs19/10/1/5, Scrapbook 1959-1960: Robert Churchwell, ‘Seeks Strong Anti- Semitism Controls,’ The Nashville Banner, 14 January 1960, 12. 39 Sussex, SxMs19/10/1/5, Scrapbook 1959-1960: Joy Lee Taylor, ‘Anne Frank’s Teacher Discusses Dangerous Wartime Experiences,’ The Spectator [Highland Park High School, Highland Park, Michigan], 45.6 [1959]. 40 Sussex, SxMs19/10/1/5, Scrapbook 1959-1960: Page on Rosey Pool’s talk on Anne Frank at Hadassah, The Women’s Zionist Organization of America, Inc. (6 December 1959, North Shore, Chicago, Illinois). 322

41 Sussex, SxMs19/14/1/4, Scrapbook 1959-1960: Letter Adolph Markel, Jr. [President Congregation Beth Emeth] to Rosey Pool, 5 May 1960. 42 Pool held 57 talks in the North, with a fee that was usually 25 dollars. Occasionally she spoke for free, but sometimes she was paid as much as 150 dollars. Source inflation calculator: DollarTimes, calculation of 1959 amount to 2018 value, URL: https://www.dollartimes.com/inflation/inflation.php?amount=1&year=1959 (accessed 22 November 2018). 43 Julian B. Roebuck & Komanduri S. Murty, Historically Black Colleges and Universities. Their Place in American Higher Education (Westport, CT: Praeger Publishers 1993) 37. 44 Atlanta University Center, Robert W. Woodruff Library, United Negro College Fund (UNCF) Papers, Microfilm 1925: Letter Rosey Pool to F.D. Patterson [Phelps-Stokes Fund], 12 March 1959. 45 Pool had met Mozell Hill in 1952 when he was in England for a few months, and it was Hill who convinced BBC Radio to repeat Pool’s earlier program on ‘Negro Poetry. See: BBC Written Archives’ Centre, Dr. Rosey Pool, Talks File 1. 1948, 1962: Letter Prudence Smith [BBC] to Rosey Pool, 27 January 1953; Letter Prudence Smith [BBC] to Rosey Pool, 10 April 1953. 46 Atlanta University Center, United Negro College Fund (UNCF) Papers, Microfilm 1924 Curriculum vitae Rosey E. Pool [16 March 1959]. 47 There had been UNCF visiting scholars before, but their southern visits were much shorter. The only one who came near to Pool’s 22 college tour was the South African writer Bloke Modisane, who visited ten colleges in four different states (see also chapter 8). Others UNCF visiting scholars including: a British lecturer called Dr. Victor H. Wiseman; the American psychiatrist Dr. Gloria Johnson; psychologist Pandarinath Hari Prabhu from India. Another visiting scholar that came close to Pool’s lengthy tour was Lewis Nkosi, an exiled South African writer and professor at Harvard, who visited ten Black colleges somewhere in the 1960s. 48 Robert Putnam, Bowling Alone. The Collapse and Revival of American Community (New York: Simon & Schuster 2000) 116-133. 49 Marybeth Gasman, Envisioning Black Colleges. A History of the United Negro College Fund (Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press 2007) 86-118. 50 Atlanta University Center, United Negro College Fund (UNCF) Papers, Microfilm 2635: News releases January to March 1960; Microfilm 2636: News releases April to May 1960. 51 Sussex, SxMs19/14/1/4, Scrapbook 1959-1960: Letter Calvin H. Raullerson (UNCF) to Rosey Pool, 11 May 1960.

323

52 Atlanta University Center, United Negro College Fund (UNCF) Papers, Microfilm 2355, Rufus Clement: Memo from Trudie Sarasohn Casper [UNCF] to Helen M. Coulborn [Atlanta University], 21 January 1960, re: ‘Information photos of Dr. Rosey Pool with Students.’ 53 Sussex, SxMs19/11/3/18, 16-15: ‘Carry Me...’ [1960] 1-3:1. 54 Sussex, SxMs19/10/1/5, Scrapbook 1959-1960: Barbara Williams, [untitled newspaper clipping, Detroit area], [ca. November 1959]. 55 Sussex, SxMs19/14/1/4, Scrapbook 1959-1960: William A. Fowlkes, ‘Author Pool Notes Similarity Of Nazi Oppression, Segregation,’ Atlanta Daily World, 12 February 1960. 56 RIAS, Fulbright Archive, Box 3, A.2 Annual Reports 1949-1963: Annual Report of the United States Educational Foundation in the Netherlands, Program Year 1959 [13 September 1960] 42. Anonymous quotation which is clearly from Pool. 57 Angelique van der Pol, ‘Mazirel, Laura Carola,’ Digitaal Vrouwenlexicon van Nederland, 4 July 2016. URL: http://resources.huygens.knaw.nl/vrouwenlexicon/lemmata/data/Mazirel. 58 Ervin Staub & Johanna Vollhardt, ‘Altruism Born of Suffering. The Roots of Caring and Helping After Victimization and Other Trauma,’ American Journal of Orthopsychiatry 78.3 (July 2008) 267- 280:268. 59 Nancy McWilliams, ‘The Psychology of the Altruist,’ Psychoanalytic Psychology 1.3 (Summer 1984) 193-213; Manfred Kets de Vries, ‘Leadership Coaching and the Rescuer Syndrome. How to Manage Both Sides of the Couch.’ Working paper, 2010. 60 Gerrold van der Stroom, ‘The Diaries, Het Achterhuis and the Translations,’ in: Anne Frank [edited by Harry Paape, Gerrold van der Stroom & David Barnouw], The Diary of Anne Frank. The Critical Edition, (New York: Doubleday 2003) 59-77; Ralph Melnick, The Stolen Legacy of Anne Frank. Meyer Levin, Lillian Hellman, and the Staging of the Diary (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press 1997). 61 Deborah Lipstadt, Denying the Holocaust. The Growing Assault on Truth and Memory (New York: Free Press 1993) 66, 229-235. 62 Sussex, SxMs19/14/1/4, Scrapbook 1959-1960: ‘Anne Frank’s Diary Defended,’ The Times- Picayune, New Orleans, [15] March 1960. 63 Sussex, Scrapbook 1/4: ‘Anne Frank’s Diary Genuine, Says Teacher,’ New Orleans States and Item, 14 March 1960. 64 Sussex, SxMs19/14/1/4, Scrapbook 1959-1960: Lysbeth Bledsoe Tirrell, ‘Anne Frank was “Very Ordinary” Girl,’ The Washington Daily News, 4 April 1960. 65 Sussex, SxMs19/10/1/5, Scrapbook 1959-1960: Kay Pittman, ‘Anne Frank’s Teacher Relates Sad Memories. Visits Mississippi,’ unidentified newspaper [ca. late January/early February 1960]. The

324

revenues of the Diary were sent to the Anne Frank Foundation (founded in 1957), an organization ran by Otto Frank and others. Most of its activities focused on youth education. 66 Clive Webb, Fight Against Fear. Southern Jews and Black Civil Rights (Athens, GA: University of Georgia Press 2001) 43-47, 49. 67 Sussex, SxMs19/14/1/4, Scrapbook 1959-1960: William A. Fowlkes, ‘Author Pool Notes Similarity Of Nazi Oppression, Segregation,’ Atlanta Daily World, 12 February 1960. 68 For full poem see: Robert Hayden [edited by Frederick Glaysher], Collected Poems (New York: Liveright 1996) 10. Pool later explained that the poem was not about Anne Frank, but about another student of hers who had survived Bergen-Belsen, called Shelly Visdrager. See: Sussex, SxMs19/9/1/9: Audio recording of Reader’s Corner: Rosey E. Pool talks to P. Kenney (North Carolina), 1963. 69 Sussex, SxMs19/14/1/4, Scrapbook 1959-1960: Letter Lillian W. Voorhees to Rosey Pool, 7 March 1960. The performance of the play was planned for 18 and 19 March 1960. 70 Sussex, SxMs19/11/3/18: Rosey Pool, As Waves of One Sea 41. 71 Sussex, SxMs19/1/2, Correspondence, L-Z, 2-63: Letter Rosey Pool to Herbert Woodward Martin, 26 June 1968. 72 Sussex, SxMs19/14/1/4, Scrapbook 1959-1960: ‘Clark To Hear World War II Dutch Leader,’ Atlanta Daily World, 6 February 1960, 1. 73 Sussex, SxMs19/14/1/4, Scrapbook 1959-1960: William A. Fowlkes, ‘Author Pool Notes Similarity Of Nazi Oppression, Segregation,’ Atlanta Daily World, 12 February 1960. For more on Fowlkes see: Auburn Avenue Research Library on African American Culture and History, Oral History Collection, Cassette 24: William Fowlkes. 74 Sussex, Scrapbook 1/4: William Fowlkes, ‘Seeing and Saying. A Visitor Winces,’ Atlanta Daily World, ca. mid-February 1960. 75 Eric J. Sundquist, Strangers in the Land. Blacks, Jews, Post-Holocaust America (Cambridge: Harvard University Press [2005] 2009) 234. Sundquist writes: ‘Anne’s brief comparison of the Jews being rounded up for transport in Holland to the “slave hunt of olden times” - in all likelihood a recollection of Uncle Tom’s Cabin […] - does not provide sufficient basis for analogical thought.’ 76 Judith E. Doneson, ‘The American History of Anne Frank’s Diary,’ Holocaust and Genocide Studies 2.1 (January 1987) 149-160; Lawrence L. Langer, ‘The Americanization of the Holocaust on Stage and Screen,’ in: Hyman Aaron Enzer & Sandra Solotaroff-Enzer (eds.), Anne Frank. Reflections on Her Life and Legacy (Urbana, IL: University of Illinois Press 2000) 198-202. 77 Julius Lester, Lovesong. Becoming a Jew (Skyhorse Publishing [1988] 2013) 32-33. Partially reprinted in: Julius Lester, ‘The Stone That Weeps,’ in: David Rosenberg (ed.), Testimony. Contemporary Writers Make the Holocaust Personal (New York: Times Books 1989) 192-210. 325

78 Lester, Lovesong, 33. 79 Rosey Pool’s list of books shows that Pool owned several books from Du Bois and Césaire. A copy of this list can be requested with the author or with archivists of The Keep, University of Sussex. Bryan Cheyette, Diasporas of the Mind. Jewish and Postcolonial Writing and the Nightmare of History Hardcover (New Haven: Yale University Press 2014), especially chapter 1; Michael Rothberg, Multidirectional Memory. Remembering the Holocaust in the Age of Decolonization (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press 2009), chapters 1, 3, and 4. 80 Katherine Ott, Susan Tucker & Patricia P. Buckler, The Scrapbook in American Life (Philadelphia, PA: Temple University Press 2006) 12. 81 Ellen Gruber Garvey, Writing With Scissors. American Scrapbooks from the Civil War to the Harlem Renaissance (Oxford: Oxford University Press 2013) 4. 82 University of Massachusetts Amherst Libraries, MS 312, W.E.B. Du Bois Papers: Letter Rosey Pool to W.E.B. Du Bois, 19 February 1960. 83 Sussex, SxMs19/1/1, Correspondence A-J, 1-71: Letter Samuel Boyea to Rosey Pool, 21 November 1968. 84 Sussex, SxMs19/11/3/18: Rosey Pool, As Waves of One Sea 24; Rosey Pool, Lachen om niet te huilen (Rotterdam: Lemniscaat 1968) 20.

NOTES CHAPTER 8: MISSISSIPPI

1 University of Sussex, Special Collections at The Keep, Rosey Pool Collection, SxMs19/11/3/18, 16-1: Rosey Pool, As Waves of One Sea [English translation of Lachen om niet te huilen (1968)], 196. 2 Howard University, Washington DC, Moorland-Spingarn Research Center (MSRC), Rosey Pool Papers, Folder 8, Chuck Anderson: Letter Rosey Pool to Charles L. ‘Chuck’ Anderson, 20 September 1961. 3 Howard, MSRC, AMSAC Collection, Box 1: Letter Rosey Pool to AMSAC, 19 May 1962. 4 Sussex, SxMs19/11/3/18, 16-20: ‘Praise Him in Sound,’ 7 5 Howard, Rosey Pool Papers, Folder 16, Ernst Borinski: Letter Rosey Pool to Ernst Borinski, 12 June 1961. 6 Howard, Rosey Pool Papers, Folder 118, Kurtz Myers: Letter Rosey Pool to Dorothy H. Tilly, 17 December 1963. 7 Howard, AMSAC Collection, Box 1: Letter Rosey Pool to AMSAC, 25 November 1963. 8 Atlanta University Center, United Negro College Fund (UNCF) Papers, Microfilm 1536: Biographical file Adam Daniel Beittel (Tougaloo), ‘Re: College Presidents’ [ca. 1963]. In 1963, half

326 of the faculty members and nine of the 503 students were white. See also: ‘Hundreds of Whites Attending Negro Colleges in “Reverse Integration,”’ New York Times 112.38431 (7 April 1963) 52. 9 Howard, Rosey Pool Papers, Folder 118, Kurtz Myers: Letter Rosey Pool to Dorothy H. Tilly, 17 December 1963. 10 Maria R. Lowe, ‘An “Oasis of Freedom” in a “Closed Society.” The Development of Tougaloo College as a Free Space in Mississippi’s Civil Rights Movement, 1960 to 1964,’ Journal of Historical Sociology 20.4 (December 2007) 486-520. 11 Gabrielle Simon Edgcomb, From Swastika to Jim Crow. Refugee Scholars at Black Colleges (Malabar, FL: Krieger Publishing Company 1993) 120. 12 ‘Truth Or Mud Slinging?,’ The Delta Democrat-Times [Greenville, Mississippi], 19 February 1964, 4. Quote from Carroll Gartin, lieutenant governor of Mississippi. 13 John Dittmer, Local People. The Struggle for Civil Rights in Mississippi (Urbana, IL: University of Illinois Press 1994) 234. 14 Joy Ann Williamson, ‘Black Colleges and Civil Rights. Organizing and Mobilizing in Jackson, Mississippi,’ in: Peter Wallenstein (ed.), Higher Education and the Civil Rights Movement. White Supremacy, Black Southerners, and College Campuses (Gainesville, FL: University Press of Florida 2008) 116-137:128. 15 Sussex, SxMs19/11/3/18, 16-20: ‘Praise Him in Sound,’ 1-8:3. 16 Sussex, SxMs19/11/3/18, 16-8: Rosey E. Pool, ‘White Monday’ (1962) 1-3:3. 17 Maria R. Lowe, ‘An Unseen Hand. The Role of Sociology Professor Ernst Borinski in Mississippi’s Struggle for Racial Integration in the 1950s and 1960s,’ Leadership 4.1 (February 2008) 27-47:33. 18 Lowe, ‘An Unseen Hand,’ 40. 19 Clive Webb, Fight Against Fear. Southern Jews and Black Civil Rights (Athens, GA: University of Georgia Press 2001) 207. 20 Library of Congress, Civil Rights History Project and Southern Oral History Program, 2015669178: Interview Joan Trumpauer Mulholland by John Dittmer, 17 March 2013. 21 E-mail questionnaire with Jerry Ward, Jr., by author, 12 September 2017. 22 Atlanta University Center, United Negro College Fund (UNCF) Papers, Microfilm 1254: ‘Social Science Forums,’ Tougaloo Southern News, 70.4 (May 1960) 6; Sussex, SxMs19/10/1/7, Scrapbook 1962-1963: Announcement public lecture Rosey Pool, 18 February 1963 in Woodworth Chapel, n.p.; Sussex, SxMs19/11/3/18, ‘Schedule. Humanities 21. Second Semester, 1962-1963.’ 23 Maria R. Lowe, J. Clint Morris & Madeline L. Pizzo, ‘Academic Agitators in Mississippi. Advancing the Cause of Racial Equality at Millsaps College and Tougaloo College,’ Paper

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presented at August 2000 American Sociological Association Annual Meeting in Washington DC (2001) 8. 24 Howard, Rosey Pool Papers, Folder 16, Ernst Borinski: Letter Ernst Borinski to Rosey Pool, 4 October 1960. 25 Edgcomb, From Swastika to Jim Crow, 128. 26 Lowe, ‘An Unseen Hand,’ 41. 27 Edgcomb, From Swastika to Jim Crow, 121. Quote from Reverend Edward King. 28 Lowe, ‘An Unseen Hand,’ 40. Quoted from interview with Ernst Borinski, 27 January 1980. 29 Sussex, SxMs19/11/3/18, 16-8: Pool, ‘White Monday,’ 2. 30 Edgcomb, From Swastika to Jim Crow, 121. Quote from Joyce Ladner. 31 Sussex, SxMs19/13/1, Memorial volume: Hermie Huiswoud [n.d.]. 32 Atlanta University Center, United Negro College Fund (UNCF) Papers, Microfilm 1658: Rosey Pool: ‘Biographical sketch.’ 33 Sussex, SxMs19/11/1/1, 13-18: Rosey E. Pool, ‘Twelve Students in Search of Inspiration,’ 1-3:1 34 Sussex, SxMs19/11/3/18, 16-1: As waves of one sea, ‘Creativity,’ 2. 35 Sussex, SxMs19/11/3/18, 16-1: As waves of one sea, ‘Creativity,’ 9. 36 Pool, Lachen om niet te huilen, 153; Sussex, SxMs19/11/3/18: As waves of one sea, ‘Creativity,’ 17. 37 Sussex, SxMs19/11/3/18, 16-1: As waves of one sea, ‘creativity,’ 10; Lachen om niet te huilen, 148. 38 Pool, Lachen om niet te huilen, 144. Emphasis added. 39 Marybeth Gasman & Roger L. Geiger, Higher Education for African Americans Before the Civil Rights Era, 1900-1964 (New Brunswick, NJ: Transaction Publishers 2012) 14. 40 Sussex, SxMs19/11/1/1, 13-18: Rosey E. Pool, ‘Twelve Students in Search of Inspiration,’ 1-3:3 41 Sussex, SxMs19/11/3/18, 16-1: As waves of one sea, ‘Creativity,’ 2. 42 P.J. Rossouw, ‘Die bevrydingsstryd. Biblioterapie as kognitiewe herstrukturering by slagoffers van gewapende konflik in Suidelike Afrika,’ in: Chris van der Merwe & Rolf Wolfswinkel, De helende kracht van literatuur. Over Nederlands en Suid-Afrikaans oorlogsproza (Haarlem: In de Knipscheer 2002) 33-59:45. 43 ‘Beginselverklaring,’ reprinted in: Links richten. Maandblad uitgegeven door Arbeiders-schrijvers- collectief ‘Links Richten’ (Amsterdam: Van Gennep 1973) 31-32. Originally from: Links Richten, No. 1 (1932). 44 Sussex, SxMs19/11/3/18, 16-1: As waves of one sea, ‘Creativity,’ 2. 45 Howard, MSRC, AMSAC Collection, Box 1: Letter Rosey Pool to AMSAC, 25 November 1963. 46 DuSable Museum of African American History, Margaret Burroughs Papers, Box 31, Folder 270: Letter Rosey Pool to Margaret Burroughs, 25 November 1969. 328

47 Howard, AMSAC Collection, Box 1: Letter Rosey Pool to AMSAC, 25 November 1963. 48 Sussex, SxMs19/11/3/18, 16-1: As waves of one sea, ‘Creativity,’ 5; Pool, Lachen om niet te huilen, 144. 49 Sussex, SxMs19/11/1/1, 13-20: Dianella Williams, ‘Racist.’ Reprinted in: Pool, Lachen om niet te huilen, 143. 50 Sussex, SxMs19/10/1/4, Scrapbook 1959-1960: Letter Rhoda M. Voth to Rosey Pool, 30 January 1960. 51 Pool, Lachen om niet te huilen, 33. 52 Jeffrey A. Turner, Sitting in and Speaking Out. Student Movements in the American South, 1960- 1970 (Athens, GA: University of Georgia Press 2010) 72. 53 Howard, Rosey Pool Papers, Folder 118, Kurtz Myers: Letter Rosey Pool to Dorothy H. Tilly, 17 December 1963. 54 Rosey Pool, ‘Wat is “normal” in Alabama? Dagelijks leven in het zuiden,’ Vrij Nederland, 17 April 1965, 15. 55 Ann Durkin Keating, ‘”Keep up the agitation.” Rev. Jerry Forshey and a KKK Cross from Jackson, Mississippi,’ Journal of the Illinois State Historical Society 107.1 (Spring 2014) 45-76:55. 56 Lowe, et al., ‘Academic Agitators in Mississippi,’ 12. 57 Sussex, SxMs19/11/3/18, 16-1: As waves of one sea, 196. 58 Sussex, SxMs19/11/3/18, 16-8: Pool, ‘White Monday,’ 1. 59 National Bahá’í Archives, Robert Hayden Papers, Box 16: Letter Rosey Pool to Robert Hayden, 3 February 1960. 60 Cathy Caruth, Trauma. Explorations in Memory (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press 1996) 152; Henry Krystal, ‘Trauma and Aging. A Thirty-Year Follow-Up,’ in: Caruth, Trauma, 76- 99:97. 61 Bessel A. van der Kolk, ‘The Compulsion to Repeat the Trauma,’ Psychiatric Clinics of North America 12.2 (1989) 389-411:389; Cathy Caruth, Unclaimed Experience. Trauma, Narrative, and History (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press 2016) 1. 62 Edgcomb, From Swastika to Jim Crow, 78 63 Sussex, SxMs19/11/1/1, 13-18: Audrey Prentiss, ‘A Glance at a Great Lady,’ 1-3:1 64 Ibidem 2. 65 Juan M. Floyd-Thomas, ‘Between Jim Crow and the Swastika. African American Religio- Cultural Interpretations of the Holocaust,’ Black Theology 12.1 (April 2014) 4-18:15; Eric J. Sundquist, Strangers in the Land. Blacks, Jews, Post-Holocaust America (Cambridge: Harvard University Press [2005] 2009) 171, 221. 66 Sussex, SxMs19/11/3/18, 16-1: As waves of one sea, 7. 329

67 Pool, Lachen om niet te huilen, 85 68 Rachel Lev-Wiesel & Marianne Amir, ‘Growing Out of Ashes. Posttraumatic Growth Among Holocaust Child Survivors. Is It Possible,’ in: Lawrence G. Calhoun & Richard G. Tedeschi (eds.), Handbook of Posttraumatic Growth. Research and Practice (New York: Routledge 2009) 248-263:257; Richard G. Tedeschi & Lawrence G. Calhoun, ‘The Posttraumatic Growth Inventory. Measuring the Positive Legacy of Trauma,’ Journal of Traumatic Stress 9.3 (1996) 455-471. 69 Sussex, SxMs19/11/1/1, 13-18: Audrey Prentiss, ‘A Glance at a Great Lady,’ 1-3:2. 70 Ibidem, 3. 71 Sussex, SxMs19/12/2/6, 19-327: ‘Suggestions for a programme of poetry by American negroes,’ 3. 72 Ibidem, 3. 73 Howard, Rosey Pool Papers, Folder 12, A.D. Beittel: Letter Dan Beittel to Rosey Pool, 28 January 1963. It is possible that this NAACP representative mentioned by Beittel was Medgar Evers. 74 Mike J. O’Brien, We Shall Not Be Moved. The Jackson Woolworth’s Sit-In and the Movement It Inspired (Jackson, MS: University Press of Mississippi 2013) 56. 75 Sussex, SxMs19/4/36/3, Colloque notes, 5-10a: ‘Statement by Mr. Memphis Norman, student at Tougaloo Southern Christian College, Tougaloo, Mississippi, at Broadway Congregational Church, New York City, Sunday, June 9, 1963.’ Reprinted in: Rosey E. Pool, Ik ben de nieuwe Neger. Gedichten, rijmen, liedjes en dokumenten uit 300 jaar verzet van de Amerikaanse Neger (The Hague: Bakker 1965) 168-170. 76 Dittmer, Local People, 160. Historian John Dittmer - a former Tougaloo College professor - argues that when fire hoses and police dogs were used on Black demonstrators in Birmingham, Alabama (in early May 1963), the NAACP felt compelled to direct their full attention to another big city in the South. They eventually chose for the Jackson area in Mississippi. 77 Sussex, SxMs19/10/1/7, Scrapbook 1962-1963: ‘Tougaloo Southern Christian College - Mississippi. Friday February 22nd, 1963 Assembly.’ 78 O’Brien, We Shall Not Be Moved, 63. 79 Wisconsin Historical Society, Freedom Summer Digital Collection, Mss 191, Jo Ann Ooiman Robinson Papers, Box 1, Folder 9; WIHVR1709-A, FSRobinsonB1F9000, ‘Nazi Germany. Curriculum Study for Mississippi Freedom Schools.’ A large part of the case study was devoted to resistance in Denmark. See also: Daniel Perlstein, ‘Teaching Freedom. SNCC and the Creation of the Mississippi Freedom Schools,’ History of Education Quarterly 30.3 (Autumn 1990) 297-324:310. 80 This document includes Beyond the Blues in the bibliography: Wisconsin Historical Society, Freedom Summer Digital Collection, Congress of Racial Equality (CORE), Mississippi 4th 330

Congressional District records, 1961-1966; microfilm 793, Reel 2, Segment 21; WIHVC239G-A, digital identifier: fsCOREMS4thR2S21000: Correspondence and memoranda, 1964. 81 Howard, Rosey Pool Papers, Folder 48, Mari Evans: Letter Rosey Pool to Mari Evans, 31 August 1964. 82 Howard, Rosey Pool Papers, Folder 26, Vinnette Carroll: Letter Vinnette Carroll to Rosey Pool, 21 September 1962. 83 Sussex, SxMs19/11/3/18, 16-1: As waves of one sea, ‘Creativity,’ 3. 84 Pool, Ik ben de nieuwe Neger, 14.

NOTES CHAPTER 9: ALABAMA

1 Monique Laney, German Rocketeers in the Heart of Dixie. Making Sense of the Nazi Past During the Civil Rights Era (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press 2015) 32. 2 When in the early 1970s NASA diversity officer Ruth Bates Harris read in a newspaper that Wernher von Braun had used slave labor to build rockets for Hitler’s regime, she went to his office. She asked him straight-out whether the story was true. ‘The silence between us was deafening and awesome,’ she recalled. See: Kim McQuaid, ‘Race, Gender, and Space Exploration. A Chapter in the Social History of the Space Age,’ Journal of American Studies 41.2 (August 2007) 405-434:415. 3 Christopher M. Young, ‘Alabama’s Rocket City. Cotton, Missiles, and Change in Huntsville and Madison County,’ Huntsville Historical Review 41.1 (Spring-Summer 2016) 1-24:8. 4 Pool, Lachen om niet te huilen, 33. 5 Rosey Pool, ‘Wat is “normal” in Alabama? Dagelijks leven in het zuiden,’ Vrij Nederland, 17 April 1965, 15. 6 ‘Ala. City Drops Bias To Keep From Embarrassing Space Work. Will U.S. Dollars Bring Integration to Ala.?,’ Jet 23.21 (14 March 1963) 50-53:51. 7 Sonnie W. Hereford & Jack D. Ellis, Beside the Troubled Waters. A Black Doctor Remembers Life, Medicine, and Civil Rights in an Alabama Town (Tuscaloosa, AL: University of Alabama Press 2011) 6, 55. 8 Sussex, SxMs19/11/3/18: Rosey Pool, As waves of one sea, 155. 9 Sussex, SxMs19/11/3/18: Rosey Pool, 155-156. Although the story is impossible to verify, Pool apparently found it representative for the area, and she repeatedly wrote about such instances in letters to friends but also in Dutch newspapers. 10 Sussex, 9/1/1, Correspondence, 1-9: Official announcement of appointment and contract Rosey E. Pool, signed 18 July 1966. 11 Yale, JWJ MSS 26, Langston Hughes Papers, Box 130, Folder 2433, no. 182, Letter Rosey Pool to Langston Hughes, 13 November 1964. 331

12 Yale, JWJ MSS 26, Langston Hughes Papers, Box 130, Folder 2433, no. 174, Letter Rosey Pool to Langston Hughes, 13 January 1965. 13 While the desegregation of the University of Alabama in Tuscaloosa in June 1963 was personally protested by George Wallace by standing in the door (finally commanded to step aside on federal order), nobody seemed to notice that the Huntsville branch of the same university admitted two African American students that same month. However, it seems that these students were admitted as a compromise, and to this day Alabama A&M College (now: University) is an HBCU, while the University of Alabama in Huntsville is a HWCU. See: Hella Pick, ‘More Trouble Feared in Alabama. President Considers Legislation,’ The Guardian (23 May 1963) 9. 14 Julian B. Roebuck & Komanduri S. Murty, Historically Black Colleges and Universities. Their Place in American Higher Education (Westport, CT: Praeger 1993) 25; Marybeth Gasman, Envisioning Black Colleges. A History of the United Negro College Fund (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press 2007) 22. 15 Sussex, SxMs19/11/3/18, 16-5: Introduction to I am the New Negro, 18. 16 Howard, Folder 69, Jean Blackwell Hutson: Letter Rosey Pool to Jean Blackwell Hutson, 13 September 1965. 17 Pool, ‘Wat is “normal” in Alabama?,’ 15. 18 Yale, JWJ MSS 26, Langston Hughes Papers, Box 130, Folder 2433, no. 198: Letter Rosey Pool to Langston Hughes, 1 October 1966. 19 Anneke Buys, ‘The marvellous gift of friendship. A Biography of Rosey E. Pool, 1905-1971.’ Unpublished manuscript, Apeldoorn, 1987. n.p. Quoted from letter Rosey Pool to Hermie Huiswoud, 15 February 1965. 20 Mike Marshall, ‘Washiri Ajanaku, One of First Two People Arrested in Huntsville’s Civil Rights Movement, Returns to her Hometown,’ The Huntsville Times, 17 September 2012. Washiri Ajanaku (formerly known as Frances Sims) was a student at A&M in 1962. 21 Turner, Sitting in and Speaking Out, 19. 22 Sussex, SxMs19/10/1/9, Scrapbook 1963-1967: ‘Kleurbekentenissen,’ Vrij Nederland, 15 December 1965, n.p. 23 Pool, Lachen om niet te huilen, 31, 72. 24 Private archive Anneke Buys, Vinson, ‘Rosey Pool. A Reflection’ (1984), n.p. 25 Howard, Folder 48, Mari Evans: Letter Rosey Pool to Mari Evans, 9 May 1965. 26 Pool, ‘Wat is “normal” in Alabama?,’ 15. 27 Sussex, SxMs19/11/3/18, 16-5: Introduction to I am the New Negro [November 1967, translation of Ik ben de nieuwe neger], 11. 28 Sussex, SxMs19/11/3/18: Rosey Pool, As waves of one sea, 65. 332

29 Yale, JWJ MSS 26, Langston Hughes Papers, Box 130, Folder 2433, no. 198: Letter Rosey Pool to Langston Hughes, 1 October 1966. 30 Sussex, SxMs19/11/3/18, 16-32: ‘1st. sem. 1966. World Literature - Instructor: Dr. R.E. Pool,’ n.p. 31 Sussex, SxMs19/11/3/18, 16-34: ‘World Literature. Instructor: Dr. R.E. Pool,’ 2. 32 Sussex, SxMs19/11/3/18, 16-35: ‘”Humanities” Instructor: Dr. Rosey E. Pool. Livingstone College. End of First Semester Examination, January 21st 1963.’ This is a course book Pool made when she worked at Livingstone College in North Carolina, but it is very likely that Pool reused this for Alabama A&M College. 33 William D. Wright, Black History and Black Identity. A Call for a New Historiography (Westport, CT: Praeger 2002) 46. 34 Howard, Folder 11, John Beecher: Letter Rosey Pool to Barbara and John Beecher, 16 February 1966. 35 Howard, Folder 92, Catherine Leslie: Letter Rosey Pool to Catherine Leslie, 15 May 1967. 36 Howard, Folder 92, Catherine Leslie: Letter Rosey Pool to Catherine Leslie [Letter of Recommendation], 15 May 1967. 37 Howard, Folder 92, Catherine Leslie: Letter Rosey Pool to Catherine Leslie, 15 May 1967. 38 Pool, Lachen om niet te huilen, 53. 39 Pool, Lachen om niet te huilen, 63. 40 Private archive Anneke Buys: Undated letter Catherine Leslie to Anneke Buys [ca. 1985]. 41 Private archive Anneke Buys. Audrey L. Vinson, ‘Rosey Pool. A Reflection’ (1984), n.p. 42 Yale, JWJ MSS 26, Langston Hughes Papers, Box 130, Folder 2434, no. 183: Letter Rosey Pool to Langston Hughes, 6 February 1965. 43 Sussex, SxMs19/11/3/18, 16-5: Introduction to I am the New Negro, 18. 44 Yale, JWJ MSS 26, Langston Hughes Papers, Box 130, Folder 2433, no. 183: Letter Rosey Pool to Langston Hughes, 6 February 1965. 45 Professor Randolph T. Blackwell was one of those ‘troublemakers’ who left the college in 1962 because it was impossible to combine with his work to promote voter registration. Arts teacher Alando X. Jones (a.k.a. Willie Cook) was forced to leave A&M College in 1966 because he refused to shave off his beard (which was a sign of ‘militancy’ according to the administration). 46 Jeffrey A. Turner, Sitting In and Speaking Out. Student Movements in the American South, 1960- 1970 (Athens, GA: University of Georgia Press 2010) 15. 47 The most important sources are two autobiographies and one unpublished thesis: Hereford and Ellis, Beside the Troubled Waters; Sheryll D. Cashin, The Agitator’s Daughter A Memoir of Four Generations of One Extraordinary African-American Family (New York: PublicAffairs 2008); Jonathan 333

Brandon Curnel, ‘In The Shadows of Birmingham: The 1962-1963 Huntsville Civil Rights Movement.’ Unpublished Master’s thesis, American Military University, Charles Town, West Virginia, 2015. 48 Sussex, SxMs19/4/36/3, Colloque notes, 5-1: ‘Instructions. Office of the Student Council,’ 30 May 1965, Alabama A&M College. 49 Pool, ‘Wat is “normal” in Alabama?,’ 15. 50 Sussex, SxMs19/11/3/18: Rosey Pool, As waves of one sea, 197. 51 Sussex, SxMs19/11/3/18: Rosey Pool, As waves of one sea, 197. 52 Steven L. Moss, ‘NASA and Racial Equality in the South, 1961-1968.’ Unpublished Master’s thesis, Texas Tech University, 1997, 108. 53 Ibidem, 2. 54 Hereford & Ellis, Beside the Troubled Waters, 88-89. 55 Laney, German Rocketeers in the Heart of Dixie, 138. Quoted from: interview with Michael Smith by Monique Laney, 29 July 2007. 56 Kenneth J. Bindas, ‘Re-remembering a Segregated Past. Race in American Memory,’ History & Memory 22.1 (Spring/Summer 2010) 113-134:115. 57 Sussex, SxMs19/14/1/4, Scrapbook 1959-1960: William A. Fowlkes, ‘Author Pool Notes Similarity Of Nazi Oppression, Segregation,’ Atlanta Daily World (12 February 1960) 1. 58 Moss, ‘NASA and Racial Equality in the South,’ 108. 59 Sussex, SxMs19/1/1, Correspondence, 1-220a: Letter Rosey Pool to Virginia Callahan, 3 October 1966. 60 Stephen G. Katsinas, ‘George C. Wallace and the Founding of Alabama’s Public Two-Year Colleges,’ Journal of Higher Education 65.4 (July-August 1994) 447-472:449. 61 Glenda E. Gill, ‘The Alabama A. and M. Thespians, 1944-1963. Triumph of the Human Spirit,’ The Drama Review 38.4 (Winter 1994) 48-70:50. 62 Sussex, SxMs19/11/3/18: Rosey Pool, As waves of one sea, 178. 63 Sussex, SxMs19/1/1, Correspondence, 1-220a: Letter Rosey Pool to Virginia Callahan, 3 October 1966. 64 Michael Rothberg, Multidirectional Memory. Remembering the Holocaust in the Age of Decolonization (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press 2009) 21. 65 Lynn Abrams, Oral History Theory (London: Routledge 2016) 123. 66 Erla Hulda Halldórsdóttir, ‘The Narrative of Silence,’ Life Writing 7.1 (May 2010) 37-50:38 67 Eneken Laanes, ‘Unsayable or Merely Unsaid?,’ in: Gabriele Rippl (ed.), Haunted Narratives. Life Writing in an Age of Trauma (Toronto: Buffalo: University of Toronto Press 2013) 123-128; Nora

334

Anna Escherle, ‘Loquacious Silences. Vikram Seth’s Two Lives and the German Language,’ in: Rippl, Haunted Narratives, 107-122. 68 Private archive Anneke Buys. Audrey L. Vinson, ‘Rosey Pool. A Reflection’ (1984), n.p.

NOTES CHAPTER 10: LAGOS & DAKAR

1 Sussex, SxMs19/1/1, Correspondence, 1-178: Letter Rosey Pool to Hoyt Fuller, ca. July 1967. 2 Mark S. Granovetter, ‘The Strength of Weak Ties,’ American Journal of Sociology 78.6 (May 1973) 1360-1380; Stephen P. Borgatti, Martin G. Everett & Jeffrey C. Johnson, Analyzing Social Networks (Los Angeles, CA: SAGE 2013) 8; Alona Labun, Rafael Wittek & Christian Steglich, ‘The Co-Evolution of Power and Friendship Networks in an Organization,’ Network Science 4.3 (September 2016) 364-384. 3 Kristine A. Byron, Women, Revolution and Autobiographical Writing in the Twentieth Century. Writing History, Writing the Self (Lampeter, Wales: Edwin Mellen Press 2007) 10. 4 Winifred Breines, The Trouble Between Us. An Uneasy History of White and Black Women in the Feminist Movement (New York: Oxford University Press 2006) 10. 5 More than once Pool described herself as a ‘grandmother,’ and over time she came to see W.E.B. Du Bois as a ‘grandfather’ (linearity clearly did not matter in this made up family). 6 Sussex, SxMs19/2/1, 3-41: Letter Rosey Pool to Owen Dodson, 29 January 1968. 7 David Chioni Moore, ‘Local Color, Global “Color.” Langston Hughes, the Black Atlantic, and Soviet Central Asia, 1932,’ Research in African Literatures 27.4 (Winter 1996) 49-70; Joy G. Carew, ‘Translating Whose Vision? Claude McKay, Langston Hughes, Paul Robeson and the Soviet Experiment,’ Intercultural Communication Studies 23.2 (2014) 1-16:1. 8 Arnold Rampersad, The Life of Langston Hughes. Volume I, 1902-1941. I, Too, Sing America (Oxford: Oxford University Press [1986] 2002) 344. Quoted from speech Langston Hughes ‘Too Much of Race,’ held at the Second International Writers Congress in Paris, France, 17 July 1937. 9 Yale, JWJ MSS 26, Langston Hughes Papers, Box 224, Folder 3715, Letters Emanuel [Manuel] van Loggem to Langston Hughes, 15 August 1938; Langston Hughes, The Collected Works of Langston Hughes. Essays on Art, Race, Politics, and World Affairs (Columbia, MO: University of Missouri Press 2001) 150. Quoted from radio speech ‘The Alliance of Antifascist Intellectuals, Madrid,’ (Madrid, September 1937); Langston Hughes [translation Jef Last], ‘Goede morgen revolutie!,’ reproduced in: Links richten. Maandblad uitgegeven door Arbeiders-schrijvers-collectief ‘Links Richten’ (Amsterdam: Van Gennep 1973) 217-218. Reproduced from: Links Richten, No. 9 (May 1933), ‘Negernummer.’ 10 Howard, Folder 92, Catherine Leslie: Letter Rosey Pool to Catherine Leslie, 20 June 1967.

335

11 Yale, JWJ MSS 26, Langston Hughes Papers, Box 130, Folder 2429, Letter Rosey Pool to Langston Hughes, 21 October 1945. This letter was forwarded by a Dutch acquaintance living in New York named Griet van Rijn. 12 Yale, JWJ MSS 26, Langston Hughes Papers, Box 130, Folder 2430: Letter Rosey Pool to Langston Hughes, 16 February 1953. Literal translation: ‘Friends of my friends are my friends.’ 13 Gordon Heath, Deep Are the Roots. Memoirs of a Black Expatriate (Amherst, MA: University of Massachusetts Press 1992) 87. 14 Milton Meltzer, Langston Hughes. A Biography (New York: Thomas Y. Crowell Company 1968) 265. 15 Yale, JWJ MSS 26, Langston Hughes Papers, Box 130, Folder 2430, No. 27: Letter Rosey Pool to Langston Hughes, 30 January 1951. 16 Kate A. Baldwin, Beyond the Color Line and the Iron Curtain. Reading Encounters Between Black and Red, 1922-1963 (Durham, NC: Duke University Press 2002), 50, 54; Joyce Moore Turner, Caribbean Crusaders and the Harlem Renaissance (Urbana, IL: University of Illinois Press 2005) 200- 204; Maria Gertrudis van Enckevort, ‘The Life and Work of Otto Huiswoud. Professional Revolutionary and Internationalist (1893-1961).’ Unpublished dissertation, University of the West Indies, Mona, Jamaica 2001, 108. 17 Yale, JWJ MSS 26, Langston Hughes Papers, Box 130, Folder 2430, No. 53: Letter Langston Hughes to Rosey Pool, 1 April 1953. 18 Arnold Rampersad, The Life of Langston Hughes. Volume II, 1941-1967. I Dream a World (New York: Oxford University Press [1988] 2002) 259. 19 Babs Boter & Lonneke Geerlings, ‘Neerkijken en rondzien. Twee reizigers uit Nederland portretteren en presenteren Harlem,’ Tijdschrift voor Geschiedenis 129.3 (August 2016) 393-414. 20 Sussex, SxMs19/13/1, Memorial Volume, Gordon Heath (1972). 21 Laurie Leach, Langston Hughes. A Biography (Westport, CT: Greenwood Press 2004) 151; Arnold Rampersad, The Life of Langston Hughes. Volume II, 1941-1967. I Dream a World (New York: Oxford University Press [1988] 2002) 297. 22 Sussex, SxMs19/2/4, Hughes, 4-125: Letter Langston Hughes to Rosey Pool, 22 November 1961. 23 Sussex, SxMs19/2/4, Hughes, 4-75: Letter Langston Hughes to Rosey Pool, 31 August 1965. 24 Gerald Mollenhorst, Beate Völker & Henk Flap, ‘Social Contexts and Personal Relationships. The Effect of Meeting Opportunities on Similarity for Relationships of Different Strength,’ Social Networks 30.1 (January 2008) 60-68:60.

336

25 Felix Berenskoetter, ‘Friendship, Security, and Power,’ in: Friendship and International Relations (London: Palgrave Macmillan 2014) 51-71:51; Beverley Fehr, Friendship Processes (Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage 1996) 1-20. 26 Daniel Won-gu Kim, ‘”We, Too, Rise with You.” Recovering Langston Hughes’s African (Re)Turn 1954-1960 in “An African Treasury,” the “Chicago Defender,” and ‘Black Orpheus,”’ African American Review 41.3 (Fall 2007) 419-441:421, 422. 27 Rosey E. Pool, ‘Geven en Nemen. Afrikaanse Renaissance,’ Vrij Nederland, 11 October 1952, n.p. See also: Rosey E. Pool, ‘African Renaissance,’ Phylon, 14.1 (1st Quarter 1953) 5-8. 28 James Meriwether, Proudly We Can Be Africans. Black Americans and Africa, 1935-1961 (Chapel Hill, NC: University of North Carolina Press 2002); Penny M. Von Eschen, Race Against Empire. Black Americans and Anticolonialism, 1937-1957 (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press 1997); Hugh Wilford, The Mighty Wurlitzer. How the CIA Played America (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press 2008); Ronald Aminzade, Race, Nation, and Citizenship in Post-Colonial Africa. The Case of Tanzania (New York: Cambridge University Press 2013) especially the chapter ‘Foreigners and Nation-Building’, 60-105; Gerald Horne, ‘Who Lost the Cold War? Africans and African Americans’, Diplomatic History 20.4 (Fall 1996) 613-626; John Munro, ‘Imperial Anticommunism and the African American Freedom Movement in the Early Cold War’, History Workshop Journal 79.1 (Spring 2015) 52-75; Inderjeet Parmar, Foundations of the American Century. The Ford, Carnegie, and Rockefeller Foundations and the Rise of American Power (New York: Columbia University Press 2012), especially the chapter ‘Promoting Americanism, Combating Anti- Americanism, and Developing a Cold War American Studies Network’, 97-179. 29 ‘Opening of AMSAC’s West African Cultural Center in Lagos To Be Marked by International “Gifts of Art” Celebration,’ AMSAC Newsletter, 4.2 (1961) 1-2:1. 30 Howard, AMSAC Collection, Box 35, Folder 5, Langston Hughes: Letter Langston Hughes to John A. Davis, 22 November 1961. 31 Howard University, Moorland-Spingarn Research Center (MSRC), AMSAC Collection, Box 30, Folder 7: Lagos Festival Participants. This delegation included four members from the AMSAC organization: Dr. Horace Mann Bond, Mr. and Mrs. John A. Davis, and Yvonne O. Walker. The other 34 participants were: William B. Branch, Lawrence Burgan, Alex Cambrellan, Martha Flowers, Amella Goodman, Dave Gonzalez, Lionel Hampton, Laline Harris, Natalie Hinderas, Professor Willis James, Geoffrey Holder, Langston Hughes, Booker T. Erwin, Oliver Jackson, Leon James, Virgil Jones, Bruce Langhorne, Ahmed Abdul-Malik, Al Minns, Leo Moore, Michael Olatunji, Odetta, Edward Pazant, Brock Peters, Rosey E. Pool, Al Schackman, John Sellers, Nina Simone, Clarence Stroman, James Wall, Randy Weston, Hale Woodruff, and photographer of Ebony magazine G. Marshall Wilson. 337

32 Yale, JWJ MSS 26, Langston Hughes Papers, Box 130, Folder 2431, No. 112: Letter Rosey Pool to Langston Hughes, 3 November 1961. The other white people at the festival were the German Jewish, Nigerian based Africanist Ulli Beier and the musician Al Schackman, who was part of Nina Simone’s band. 33 Sussex, SxMs19/11/3/18, 16-1: Rosey Pool, As Waves of One Sea [English translation of Lachen om niet te huilen (1968)] 67-68. 34 Howard, AMSAC Collection, Box 1, Folder Pool, Rosey E. Pool: Letter Rosey Pool to Hank Raullerson, 25 November 1963. 35 Sussex, SxMs19/11/3/18, 16-1: Rosey Pool, As Waves of One Sea 67-68. 36 Sussex, SxMs19/11/3/18, 16-1: Rosey Pool, As Waves of One Sea 68. 37 James Campbell, Middle Passage. African American Journeys to Africa, 1787-2005 (New York: The Penguin Press 2006), 222-223; Lonneke Geerlings, ‘Performances in the theatre of the Cold War: the American Society of African Culture and the 1961 Lagos Festival,’ Journal of Transatlantic Studies 16.1 (January 2018) 1-19:3. 38 Sussex, SxMs19/13/1: Rosey E. Pool, ‘Beyond the Blues. Modern Trends in Afro-American Poetry,’ AMSAC Newsletter, Newsletter Supplement, No. 24 (April 1962) 4-5:5. 39 Felix Berenskoetter, ‘Friendship, Security, and Power,’ in: Simon Koschut & Andrea Oelsner (eds.) Friendship and International Relations (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan 2014) 51-71:64; William K. Rawlins & Laura D. Russell, ‘Friendship, Positive Being-with-Others, and the Edifying Practices of Storytelling and Dialogue,’ in: Mahzad Hojjat and Duncan Cramer (eds.), Positive Psychology of Love (Oxford: Oxford University Press 2013) 30-43:39; Anne Dewey & Libbie Rifkin, Among Friends. Engendering the Social Site of Poetry (Iowa City, IA: University of Iowa Press 2013) 5. 40 Sussex, SxMs19/11/3/18, 16-1: Rosey Pool, As Waves of One Sea 68. 41 Sussex, SxMs19/1/2, Correspondence, 2-66: Letter Rosey Pool to Milton Meltzer, 27 September 1967. 42 Sussex, SxMs19/1/2, 2-66: Letter Rosey Pool to Milton Meltzer, 27 September 1967. 43 Shane Vogel, ‘Closing Time. Langston Hughes and the Queer Poetics of Harlem Nightlife,’ Criticism 48.3 (Summer 2006) 397-425:425. 44 Yale, JWJ MSS 26, Box 130, Folder 2432, No. 132/133: Letter Rosey Pool to Langston Hughes, 12 August 1962. 45 Yale, JWJ MSS 26, Box 130, Folder 2433, 191: Letter Langston Hughes [Brussels] to Rosey Pool, 7 November 1965. 46 James Smethurst, ‘”Don’t Say Goodbye to the Porkpie Hat.” Langston Hughes, the Left, and the Black Arts Movement,’ Callaloo 25.4 (Autumn 2002) 1225-1236:1226; James Smethurst, ‘The Black 338

Arts Movement and Historically Black Colleges and Universities,’ in: Lisa Gail Collins & Margo Natalie Crawford (eds.), New Thoughts on the Black Arts Movement (New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press 2006) 75-91:90f13. 47 Kevin Kelly Gaines, American Africans in Ghana. Black Expatriates and the Civil Rights Era (Chapel Hill, NC: University of North Carolina Press 2006) 140. 48 Sussex, SxMs19/11/1/2, Zielen vol soul, ‘Langston Hughes,’ 1. 49 Sussex, SxMs19/11/1/2, Zielen vol soul, ‘Langston Hughes,’ 4-5. 50 Howard, MSRC, AMSAC Collection, Box 1: Letter Rosey Pool to AMSAC, October 1964. 51 Yale, JWJ MSS 26, Langston Hughes Papers, Box 130, Folder 2433, No. 188: Letter Langston Hughes to Rosey Pool, 22 October 1965. Hughes actually meant ‘Hilversum.’ 52 Sussex, SxMs19/10/1/9, Scrapbook: Rosey E. Pool, ‘Onbetwistbaar en luisterrijk zwart! Het Eerste Wereld-Festival van Negerkunst te Dakar,’ AVRO-Bode, 29 May 1966, 11-13:13. 53 Howard, Arthur B. Spingarn: Letter Rosey Pool to Arthur B. Spingarn, 22 February 1966. 54 Howard, Arthur B. Spingarn: Letter Rosey Pool to Arthur B. Spingarn, 22 February 1966. 55 Kevin Kelly Gaines, American Africans in Ghana. Black Expatriates and the Civil Rights Era (Chapel Hill, NC: University of North Carolina Press 2006) 16. 56 Sussex, SxMs19/10/1/9, Scrapbook Dakar: Rosey Pool, ‘Perspectieven van een artistiek Pan- Afrika. Eerste wereldfestival voor negerkunst in Dakar,’ Vrij Nederland, 23 April 1966, n.p. 57 Howard, Rosey Pool Papers, Folder 128 Dorothy B. Porter: Letter Rosey Pool to Dorothy B. Porter, 6 January 1966; Sussex, SxMs19/4/36/8 Dakar, 5-98: Letter Leopold Senghor to Rosey Pool, 12 July 1966. Alioune Diop did the same, see: Sussex, SxMs19/4/36/8 Dakar, 5-93: Letter Alioune Diop to Rosey Pool, 29 April 1966. 58 Elizabeth Harney, In Senghor’s Shadow. Art, Politics, and the Avant-Garde in Senegal, 1960-1995 (Durham, NC: Duke University Press 2004) 38. 59 Rosey E. Pool, ‘Robert Hayden. Poet Laureate. An Assessment,’ Negro Digest 15.8 (June 1966) 39-47:43. 60 Hoyt Fuller, Journey to Africa (Chicago, IL: Third World Press 1971) 92. Many critics found it outrageous that a white woman was appointed as head of the American delegation. Fuller specifically referred to Virginia Inness-Brown, president and chairman of the American corporation for the Dakar Festival. 61 Sussex, SxMs19/11/3/18, 16-5: Introduction I am the new negro, 19. Quote from Elder Robinson (Hope Church, North Carolina). 62 Eric L. Goldstein, The Price of Whiteness. Jews, Race, and American Identity (Princeton: Princeton University Press 2006) 1. Quoted from: James Baldwin, ‘Negroes Are Anti-Semitic Because They’re Anti-White,’ New York Times Magazine (9 April 1967) 26-27. 339

63 Anthony J. Ratcliff, ‘When Négritude Was In Vogue. Critical Reflections of the First World Festival of Negro Arts and Culture in 1966,’ The Journal of Pan African Studies 6.7 (February 2014) 167-186:178. 64 Langston Hughes, ‘Black Writers in a Troubled World,’ in: Colloquium. Function and Significance of African Negro Art in the Life of the People and for the People (March 30 - April 8, 1966) (Paris: Editions Présence Africaine 1968) 505-510:506. 65 Langston Hughes, ‘Black Writers in a Troubled World,’ in: Colloquium. Function and Significance of African Negro Art in the Life of the People and for the People (March 30 - April 8, 1966) (Paris: Editions Présence Africaine 1968) 505-510:508. 66 John Hatcher, From the Auroral Darkness. The Life and Poetry of Robert Hayden (Oxford: Ronald 1984) 35. 67 Rosey E. Pool, ‘Robert Hayden. Poet Laureate. An Assessment,’ Negro Digest 15.8 (June 1966) 39-47:43. 68 Howard, Box 82-2, Folder 69, Jean Blackwell Hutson: Letter Jean Blackwell Hutson to Rosey Pool, 19 October 1965. 69 Eric J. Sundquist, Strangers in the Land. Blacks, Jews, Post-Holocaust America (Cambridge: Harvard University Press [2005] 2009) 226; John Story, ‘What, When, and Where are the Sixties?,’ in: Mirjam Shatanawi & Wayne Modest (eds.), The Sixties. A Worldwide Happening (Eindhoven: Lecturis 2015) 10-23:21. 70 Robert Hayden Papers, National Baha’i Archives, Box 16, Correspondence: Letter Rosey Pool to Robert Hayden, 28 July 1967. 71 Sussex, SxMs19/1/2, Correspondence, 2-78: Letter Rosey Pool to James ‘Jim’ C. Morris, 26 August 1968. 72 Sussex, SxMs19/1/1, Correspondence, 1-190: Letter Rosey Pool to Robert Hayden, 22 April 1969. 73 Sussex, SxMs19/1/1, Correspondence, 1-119: letter Rosey Pool to Margaret Danner, 26 June 1968. 74 Rosey Pool was cremated on 12 October 1971 at Islington Crematorium. Source: Register of Cremations Crematorium at Islington Crematorium (East Finchley, London), no. 13502: 12th October 1971, Rosey Eva Pool, deceased 29th September 1971. Ashes scattered on 14th October 1971. Source: Deceased Online, URL: http://www.deceasedonline.com (accessed 24 April 2019).

NOTES CONCLUSIONS

1 Mary Louise Pratt, ‘Arts of the Contact Zone,’ Profession (1991) 33-40:34.

340 2 Sussex, SxMs19/1/2, Correspondence, 2-66: Letter Rosey Pool to Milton Meltzer, 27 September 1967. The quote refers to Huntsville, Alabama. 3 Private archive Anneke Buys. Audrey L. Vinson, ‘Rosey Pool. A Reflection’ (1984), n.p. 4 Private archive Rudi Wesselius, unpublished material on memorial piece: Cecilia Jefferson, ‘Honey Stop Crying (Dedicated to Rosey Pool Who Understood the Problem),’ including letter [ca. 1971]. 5 Sussex, SxMs19/9/1/10, Poetry readings by Sterling Brown and speech by Rosey Pool at Howard University, Washington DC, 1963. 6 Private archive Anneke Buys. Letter Barbara Johnson to Anneke Buys, 22 November 1986. 7 Sussex, SxMs19/13/1, Memorial volume: Otto Sterman, ‘Rosey Pool’ [ca. 1971]. 8 Sussex, SxMs19/13/1, Memorial Volume: Letter Arthur J. Seymour to Paul Breman, 29 May 1972. 9 Rosey E. Pool, Lachen om niet te huilen (Rotterdam: Lemniscaat 1968) 172. 10 The Rosey Pool Award was given away in the Chicago suburb of Wilmette, Illinois. In the spirit of the Bahá'í Faith but also Pool, the prize was given to people who had fought against discrimination, inequality, and for human rights. It was handed out to five people: Elizabeth Hill (ca. 1917-1996), who fought for women and Blacks in the field of medicine; John H. Johnson (1918-2005) of the African American publishing house Johnson Publishing Company; Rayna Miller (ca. 1928-2001), who set up an interracial religious organization; Renault Robinson (1942-), a police officer who fought against racial profiling; and Addie Wyatt (1924-2012), who represented women's in the meat industry. See: ‘Wilmette Gives Rosey Pool Award For Service to Five Non-Bahá'ís,’ The American Bahá'í, April 1978, 4. 11 Around 1980, Roger White, a Canadian Bahá'í who worked at the Bahá’í’s World Centre in Haifa, Israel, was editing The Bahá’í World, a reference series on the history of the Bahá’í faith, writing numerous short biographies of significant Bahá’ís. It was probably the death of Robert Hayden, an African American poet and Bahá'í friend of Pool's, that stirred his interest in Pool. He asked a Dutch Bahá’í, Anneke Buys, for more information and suggested to write a memorial article. This led to a long-term study on Rosey Pool, spending several years of examining her materials and to talk to people that had known her. Although her 1986 manuscript was never published, Buys donated the manuscript to various libraries from where it made its way towards scholars who stumbled upon Rosey Pool. 12 Howard, Folder 42, Owen Dodson: Letter Rosey Pool to Owen Dodson, 4 September 1963. 13 Valerie Purdie-Vaughns & Richard P. Eibach, ‘Intersectional Invisibility. The Distinctive Advantages and Disadvantages of Multiple Subordinate-Group Identities,’ Sex Roles. A Journal of Research 59.5/6 (September 2008) 377-391:378.

341 NOTES EPILOGUE

14 Max Saunders, Self Impression. Life-Writing, Autobiografiction, and the Forms of Modern Literature (Oxford: Oxford University Press 2010) 445. Quoted from Virginia Woolf, Orlando. A Biography (London 1928) 95-96. 15 Rosemarie Buikema, De Loden Venus. Biografieën van vijf beroemde vrouwen door hun dochters (Kampen: Kok/Agora, 1995) 12. 16 Cora Kaplan, Victoriana. Histories, Fictions, Criticisms (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press 2007) 65.

342 343 Figure 15.1 Rosey E. Pool reads a book next to her bookcase, probably at Paletstraat 14, Amsterdam, ca. 1947. Source: JHM.

344

SOURCES

Justification sources

The research for this dissertation/biography was done in archival materials, through interviews, with

(audio)visual material, digitized sources, contemporary sources like periodicals, and of course secondary literature. One of the most important sources has been The Rosey Pool Collection based at the University of Sussex (Brighton, UK). An enormous archive, it is certainly not ‘badly kept’ as

Pool’s former protégé Paul Breman stated in a postmortem published interview.1 This archive is a mine of information on Rosey Pool, especially on her life and contacts during the 1950s. Over and over the archivists at Sussex have been helpful in exploring this archive that includes correspondence, scrapbooks, books, recordings, and photographs. One source deserves special attention: the memorial pieces on Rosey Pool (SxMs19/13/1) which were unfortunately never published. Again, unlike

Breman suggested, it was not ‘for complete lack of anybody’s interest’ as he put it afterwards.2 With almost sixty contributors, including Otto Sterman, Owen Dodson, Shirley Graham Du Bois, Wim

Ibo, Gordon Heath, Earle Hyman, Nola Hatterman, Albert Mol, Robert Hayden, and many, many others, the entries for the unpublished memorial volume have been a crucial and rich source for this book that were carefully examined. Unfortunately for Pool’s legacy, Paul Breman decided to not publish it, although he could have easily published it himself as he printed many other books.

1 Lauri Ramey, A History of African American Poetry (Cambridge; New York: Cambridge University Press 2019) 233. 2 Chicago Public Library, Heritage Press archive, 6-3, Robert Hayden: Paul Breman, The Heritage Series of Black Poetry - 1962 to 1975. A Memoir (London: private publisher 2006), ‘Rosa Eva Pool,’ n.p. 345

The next major source have been the Rosey Pool Papers at the Moorland Spingarn Center at Howard University (Washington, DC), which is conveniently on microfilm and available at the

Koninklijke Bibliotheek (Royal Library) in The Hague, the Netherlands. With over 650 letters, this archive is absolutely necessary for anyone interested in Rosey Pool, her work, and the people she corresponded with. Another significant source has been the private archive of Anneke Buys, author of the unpublished 1986 biography on Rosey Pool. It was especially her comprehensive correspondence and interviews with eyewitnesses that have been incredibly helpful, or even necessary for this project to succeed. Most of these eyewitnesses had passed away by the time I started my research in 2014, which was 43 years after Pool’s death. Throughout my research I did maintain contact with Rudi Wesselius, a distant cousin of Pool. Additional help came from my supervisor

Susan Legêne, who had briefly done research on Pool back in 2009, and offered me her research materials and unpublished paper on Pool.3

More relevant sources were found in archives of organizations that Pool was affiliated with, including the AJC, AMSAC, and Fulbright. Additionally, I explored archives of persons Pool collaborated with or merely corresponded with, including that of Langston Hughes, Melvin Tolson, and Margaret Burroughs. A complete overview can be found under ‘archives.’ The Hilversum based

Institute for Sound and Vision deserves special attention, as this archive holds audiovisual material of

Rosey Pool, enabling me to see her physically move. My research came to life with that. Also, the

Anne Frank House in Amsterdam holds an audio tape of Rosey Pool, talking about Anne Frank in the 1960s, which gave a final confirmation of many assumptions of speeches I only knew through newspaper reviews. This was important, because although the University of Sussex holds various audio

3 Susan Legêne & Eugène Chateau, ‘Négritude in the Netherlands. Humanism and the cultural programme of Rosey E. Pool,’ Paper presented at NINSEE symposium Trajectories of Emancipation, Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam, 30 June 2009. 346 recordings of Pool, most of them were not accessible due to outdated recording equipment. Perhaps this will be digitized in the future, but there is a possibility they will be lost forever due to aging and deterioration. Some specific archives were restricted, including that of secret services (FBI, CIA, and the Dutch AIVD), which will perhaps be made public in the future.

Additional written sources were a significant portion of the source material. There were almost 150 publications that Pool created herself, mostly in Dutch, but also in English and German

(a full overview can be found under ‘timeline Rosey Pool’). Pool’s own poetry is scarce. She published one poem in 1926 and one largely autobiographical book of poems, Beperkt zicht (1945) immediately after the war. But then it suddenly stopped, and Pool then switched back to promoting the work of others, like she had done before the war as well. Next to these publications, Pool gave many interviews to newspapers, radio, television, and magazines, most of which were derived from the collection at

Sussex. Moreover, there is a lot of secondary literature about the different epochs Pool moved in, including the socialist movement, the Dutch resistance, and of course the Civil Rights Movement.

Despite the copious source material and literature, there are still notable gaps and gray areas. To define those, extensive archival research was required as well. Occassionally I found very little or even nothing, like in archives in Berlin, where I spent over two months scrutinizing various collections.

This is also part of historical research that remains invisible in the end product, although I have reflected on gaps and silences throughout the book.

Although the research has been extensive and exhaustive to my full extent, it is safe to say that the last word is not yet spoken about Rosey Pool. Hopefully this book is the start of a return of

Rosey Pool to many fields of research.

347

ARCHIVES

★ Most significant archives ★ Audiovisual materials

NETHERLANDS Amsterdam City Archives (Amsterdam) × 708, Archief van de Gerrit van der Veen Scholengemeenschap en rechtsvoorgangers. × 1215, Amsterdams Studenten Corps. × Various indexes (including Archiefkaarten, Bevolkingsregisters, Gezinskaarten, Persoonskaarten, Woningkaarten). Atria, Institute on Gender Equality and Women’s History (Amsterdam) × Archive Willemijn Hendrika Posthumus-van der Goot. Anne Frank House (Amsterdam) × Archive Otto Frank × ★ BgetuigenV007B, Audio recording Rosey Pool. Brabants Historisch Informatie Centrum (BHIC) (Den Bosch) × 330, Dietsch Studentenverbond. Centraal Bureau Genealogie (CBG) (The Hague) × Various sources. Erfgoed Leiden en Omstreken (ELO) (Leiden) × 0545, Vereeniging van Vrouwelijke Studenten te Leiden (VVSL). Gemeente Amsterdam, Stadsdeel Centrum (Amsterdam) × Bouwarchief, address Nieuwe Hoogstraat 18. General Intelligence and Security Service (AIVD) (Zoetermeer) × File on Ons Suriname. Institute for War, Holocaust and Genocide Studies (NIOD) (Amsterdam) × 1024, [Rosey Pool], ‘De rit’ [The Ride]. × 1115, [Rosey Pool], ‘De zware gang’ [The Heavy Load]. × 181e, W.S.H. Elte. × 182, Jewish Council. × 189, Vrije Groepen Amsterdam. × 246, Collection resistance poetry. × 250i, Judendurchgangslager Westerbork. International Institute of Social History (IISH) (Amsterdam) × ARCH00141, Archive AJC, Amsterdam department. × ARCH00518, Archive Frank van der Goes.

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× ARCH00619, Archive International Institute for Social History (IISG/IISH). × ARCH00984, Archive Henk Sneevliet. × Digital file with short biographies of the members of the Independent Socialist Party (OSP, 1932-1935), created by Bart de Cort. × ★ Various photographs. Jewish Historical Museum (JHM) (Amsterdam) × ★ Photographs. × D013703, Typescripts German and Dutch poems Rosey E. Pool, written in hiding 1943-1945. × Files on Susanne Heynemann. Literatuurmuseum (The Hague) × Archive Annie M.G. Schmidt. × Archive Jef Last. × Folder Rosey Pool. × Letters to and from Rosey Pool from various collections (including: Ed Hoornik, Mathilda Brugman, Robert Harben Literary Agency, Simon Vinkenoog, Uitgeverij Querido, Van Loghum Slaterus’ Uitgeversmaatschappij, Arnhem). Memorial Center Camp Westerbork (Hooghalen) × Archive Werner Stertzenbach. × Carthotheek Jewish Council, personal cards. × Transcript interview Gert Laske and Paul Schwarzschild, undated. × RA1500, Transcript interview Johanna V. Ladee-Levy by Guido Abuys, 23 October 2003 Museum Meermanno, House of the Book (The Hague) × Archive Susanne Heynemann. National Archives of the Netherlands (NA) (The Hague) × Archive Dutch Red Cross, Information bureau The Hague, 2.19.288, European personal files, inv.no. EU 139.751 (S.O. A19 764/84): Louis Pool and Jacoba Jessurun Pool. × 2.04.58, BiZa / Vluchtelingen Duitsland, IV (139-146), Archive of Vluchtelingenkamp Lloyd Hotel, later Oostelijke Handelskade in Amsterdam 1939-1940. × 2.09.34.01, Popgids transporten Westerbork. × 20, Ministerie van Justitie, Commissie tot het doen van aangifte van Overlijden van Vermisten. National Library of the Netherlands (KB) (The Hague) × ★ Rosey Pool Papers (microfilm copy from Howard University) Netherlands Institute for Sound and Vision (Hilversum) × ★ FTA001052164, Gesprek aan de schrijftafel [with Gordon Heath and Lee Payant] (VPRO Television, 1 September 1956), photographs.

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× ★ 44403, Video excerpt from Advocaat pro deo (VPRO Television, 10 September 1958), television recording [features Erik Plooyer and Marius Monkau, amongst others]. × ★ FTA001052375, Spotlight On (VPRO Television, 1 June 1957), photographs. × ★ 47606, Op bezoek bij Eric Bramall (VPRO Television, 2 July 1962), television recording [presented by Rosey Pool, directed by Joes Odufré]. × ★ HAC3341, Operatie Mallemolen (KRO Radio, 18 December 1966), audio recording. × ★ 46969, God Bless Queen Victoria (VPRO Television, 18 February 1962), television recording [presented by Rosey Pool, produced by Wim Ibo and directed by Joes Odufré]. × ★ FTA001020499, Advocaat pro deo (VPRO Television, 19 September 1958), photographs. × LA1550-1-01, Script ‘Advocaat pro deo’ (VPRO, 10 September 1958). National Museum Scouting Netherlands (Baarn) × Scouting archive. Private archives × Personal archive Anneke Buys. See also: Oral history interviews × Personal archive Rudi Wesselius. Regionaal Historisch Centrum Rijnstreek en Lopikerwaard (RHC) (Woerden) × Civil registry. Roosevelt Institute for American Studies (Middelburg) × Fulbright Archives. Rotterdam City Archives (Rotterdam) × Civil registry. Stichting 1940-1945 (The Hague) × 29750, File G.M. van Wees. University of Amsterdam (UvA), Special Collections (Amsterdam) × Archive A.J.N. (Arie) den Hollander.

USA Atlanta University Center (AUC), Robert W. Woodruff Library (Atlanta, GA) × United Negro College Fund (UNCF) Papers (microfilm). Auburn Avenue Research Library on African American Culture and History (Atlanta, GA) × Oral History Collection - ★ Cassette 24: William Fowlkes Boston University, Howard Gotlieb Archival Research Center (Boston, MA) × Meyer Levin Collection Chicago Public Library (Chicago, IL) × Heritage Press Archives. 350

DuSable Museum of African American History (Chicago, IL) × Margaret Burroughs Papers. Emory University, Stuart A. Rose Manuscript, Archives, and Rare Book Library (Atlanta, GA) × 957, John Oliver Killens Papers. × 1284, Mari Evans Papers. ★ AV1 / s723w, ‘Alabama A&M University Writer’s Conference’ [1966], open reel tape. Harvard University, Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study, Arthur and Elizabeth Schlesinger Library on the History of Women in America (Cambridge, MA) × MC 476, Shirley Graham Du Bois Papers. Howard University, Moorland-Spingarn Research Center (Washington, DC) × ★ Rosey Pool Papers (also available on microfilm in The Hague). × American Society of African Culture (AMSAC) Records. Library of Congress (Washington, DC) × Civil Rights History Project Collection (digitized). × MSS40949, Arthur B. Spingarn Papers. × MSS55798, Melvin B. Tolson Papers. National Bahá’í Archives (Wilmette, IL) × Magdalene Carney Papers. × Margaret Danner Papers. × Robert Hayden Papers. New York Public Library (NYPL) (New York, NY) × MssCol 17819, Marion Edman Letters. Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture (New York, NY) × 2104247, Countee Cullen Papers (microfilm). × Sc MG 162, Phelps-Stokes Fund Records. Tamiment Library & Robert F. Wagner Labor Archives (New York, NY) × TAM.132, Communist Party of the United States of America Records. × TAM.354, Hermina Dumont Huiswoud Papers and Photographs. University of Massachusetts Amherst Libraries, Special Collections and University Archives, (Amherst, MA) × MS 312, W.E.B. Du Bois Papers. × MS 372, Gordon Heath Papers. USC Shoah Foundation (Los Angeles, CA) × Visual History Archive (digitized). × ★ 2004.585 / RG-50.570.0004, Oral history interview with Trudel van Reemst. × ★ 38487, Oral history interview with Werner Stertzenbach. × ★ 5715, Interview with Hajo Meyer, 9 November 1995.

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University of Chicago (Chicago, IL) × Margaret Danner Papers. Yale University, Beinecke Rare Book & Manuscript Library (New Haven, CT) × JWJ MSS 26, Langston Hughes Papers. × JWJ MSS 3, Richard Wright Papers. × JWJ MSS 93, Dorothy Porter Wesley Papers. Wisconsin Historical Society (Madison, Wisconsin) × Freedom Summer Digital Collection.

GERMANY Akademie der Künste (Berlin) × Archive Kurt Singer. × Archive Paul Robeson. Archiv der Bibliothek für Bildungsgeschichtliche Forschung (BBF), Berlin × Karl-Marx-Schule (microfilm). Bundesarchiv (Berlin) × DY 30/IV 2/4/137 Emigration in Holland. × Kommunistische Partei Deutschlands (KPD) - RY 1/i 2/3/362: Emigration Holland. Kaderüberprüfungs-Protokolle der Emi-Leitung A-E. - RY 1/i 2/3/363: Emigration Holland. Kaderüberprüfungs-Protokolle der Emi-Leitung F-J. - RY 1/I 2/3/364: Emigration Holland. Kaderüberprüfungs-Protokolle der Emi-Leitung K-M. - RY 1/75: Trotskisten, Emigration Holland. × NY 4652, Walter Sack. × R55/24039, Gerhard Kramer. × SgY 30/1213/1, Maria Rentmeister-Rettmann (1905-1996). × SgY 30/1400/3, Collection recollections Herbert Baum. × SgY 30/1567, Recollections Cilly Hansmann-Knopp (b. 15 June 1908). × SgY 30/2170, Günter Prager. × SgY 30/2194, Gertrud Lemnitz (b. 30 October 1912) Deutsches Exilarchiv 1933-1945, Deutsche Nationalbibliotheek (Frankfurt am Main) × EB 88/120 I.A. 729, Bequest Gertrud Isolani. Hamburg City Archives (Hamburg) × Archive Gerhard Kramer. Landesarchiv (Berlin) × Civil registry. University archive of the Humboldt-Universität (Berlin) × Student directories. 352

Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität (Munich) × Student directories (digitized).

UNITED KINGDOM BBC Written Archives Centre (Reading) × Dr Rosey Pool. Contributors - Speaker. File II 1963-67. × E1.829 Countries. Holland. Dutch Service. File 1. 1940-1957. × E12.137 Publicity OS Dutch Service 1952-1960. × E3.292.1 Dutch Service. Audience Research Reports 1952-1956. × Film 41.42, Woman’s Hour 13 July 1956 Rosey Pool Amsterdam Hagedorn. × Pool Dr Rosey - TVART 2. × Pool Dr Rosey - TVART 4. × Pool, Dr. Rosey. Talks File 1. 1948, 1962. × Radio Talks Scripts FILM T410 Pool. × TELI-D421-157, 06639A, TV program Perspective, episode no. 19, ‘How Should We Face Death?’ [recorded 8 February 1962]. British Library (London) × ★ Sound and Moving Image Catalogue, T3921: John Carroll, ‘There was a publisher,’ [Portrait of the poet and publisher Erica Marx] for BBC Radio 3, 4 April 1981. University of Sussex Special Collections, The Keep (Brighton) × ★ Rosey Pool Papers × ★ SxMs19/9/1/9: Audio recording of Reader’s Corner: Rosey E. Pool talks to P. Kenney (North Carolina), 1963, 7” (digitized). × ★ SxMs19/9/1/10: Sterling Brown reading poetry, Rosey E. Pool, Howard University, Washington DC, 1963, 7” (digitized).

FRANCE Unesco (Paris) × Central Registry Collection - Art - Negro - Festival, 1966 - Senegal - 7 (=96) A 066 (663) “66,” Boxes 1563 & 1564. - Official relations with Senegal files circa 1966 - X07.21 (663), Box 2342. × Secretariat documents coded “CLT/FAN” (digitized).

353

ORAL HISTORY INTERVIEWS

Conducted by author William Alexander (3 June 2015, Amsterdam); Jerry Ward, Jr. (September 2017, via e-mail); Oekie Jansma together with Benita Jansma and Gaia Goor (13 February 2018); Priscilla Koestner (29 November 2018, via e-mail); and Rudi Wesselius (various dates, Landsmeer). Conducted by Anneke Buys (notes and occasionally tapes located in her private archive) Dorothy Abrahams (17 May 1985); J. Daniels Benjamins (4 April 1985); Hans Blom (9 August 1984); Ben Braber (25 January 1985, June 1985); Paul Breman (17 May 1985); Ineke Brinkman (27 February 1985); Magda Bruno-Bon (19 August 1985); F. van Dam (29 April 1985); Bernard Diamant (26 June 1985); Pim Eldering (24 April 1985); Niek Engelschman (undated); Henry Giersthove (21 March 1985); Nico Gorlée (19 September 1985); Harry Hagedorn (27 February 1985); Ina van de Hagen (18 July 1985); Susanne Heynemann-Gruber (11 April 1985); Marion Hofman (19 November 1984); J.W. Hofstra (17 December 1985); Wim Ibo (1 March 1985); Joost Jessurun (13 May 1985, 19 June 1985); Ben de Jong (undated); Jeanne Kramer (undated); Melita de Leeuw-Littman (27 April, no year); Masuid Margani (4 August 1985); Beth McKenty (17 November 1984); Albert Mol (18 February 1985); Professor Musaph (16 April 1985); Riek Musaph-Kleerekoper (23 November 1985); Joes Odufré (6 May 1985); Bea Polak (24 September 1985, 6 November 1985); Herman Rabbie (8 May 1985); Jaap Reens (22 January 1985); A.S. (Wim) Rijxman (14 December 1984); Betty Ritmeester (undated); David Ruke (15 November 1984); Dick Scheffer (15 May 1985); Meyer (van der Sluijs?) (20 September 1985); Pastoor Smelder from Baarn (29 April 1985); Hennie de Swaan (19 December 1984); Bernard van Tijn (undated); Henk Vermeyden (undated); Hilda Verwey-Jonker (19 February 1985); Willy Vroom (18 May 1985); An Wardenier (17 September 1985); Herman Waslander (31 March 1985); Liesbeth van Weezel (28 January 1985); H. Weggelaar (25 September 1985); Mrs. (Eva?) Wesselius (30 January 1985); and Rudi Wesselius (27 September 1984).

DIGITIZED SOURCES

× Digitized newspapers accessed via: Delpher.nl, LexisNexis, Newspapers.com, Noord-Hollands Archief newspapers, ProQuest historical newspapers, Regionaal Archief Alkmaar newspapers, The Times Digital Archive (via KB), Historische Presse der deutschen Sozialdemokratie online, Friedrich Ebert Stiftung, URL: http://fes.imageware.de/fes/web/; Radio Times, Website BBC Genome, URL: https://genome.ch.bbc.co.uk. × Digitale Landesbibliothek Berlin (ZLB), Berlin address and telephone books.

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× International Biographical Dictionary of Central European Émigrés, 1933-1945. Online database, De Gruyter.

PERIODICALS

× De fakkel. Orgaan van de Onafhankelijke Socialistische Partij [OSP] (1932-1935). IISG, microfilm. × De Groene Amsterdammer. Weekblad voor Nederland (1925-1930). University of Amsterdam [IWO], Print. × De nieuwe fakkel. Orgaan van de Revolutionair-Socialistische Arbeiderspartij [RSAP] (1935- 1940). IISG, Microfilm. × De nieuwe weg. Onafhankelijk, revolutionair socialistisch maandschrift (1929 -1933) [Journal Revolutionair Socialistische Partij (RSP) and Nationaal Arbeids-Secretariaat (NAS)]. University of Amsterdam, print. × Freedomways (1962-1971). Leiden University, print. × Helikon. Maandschrift voor poëzie (1931-1939). Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam, print. × Kentering. maandblad van den Bond van Sociaal-Democratische Studentenclubs (1924-1935). Leiden University, print. × Links Richten (1932-1933) DBNL, online resource. × Militia Christi. Orgaan van Kerk en Vrede (1952-1956). Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam, print. × Rode jeugd. Orgaan van het socialistisch jeugd verbond (1932-1935). IISG and Leiden University, print. × Vriendschap (1949-1964). Homomuseum, online resource.

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Figure 14.1 Rosey Pool, together with director Joes Odufré (right) and Wim Smits (behind camera), during a television recording for VPRO/BBC Dutch Television on Eric Bramall's puppet theater, Spring 1962. Source: Sussex.

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ABOUT ROSEY E. POOL

List of publications

1920s . R.P. [Rosey Pool], ‘Ça Ira,’ Kentering. Maandblad van den Bond van Sociaal-Democratische Studentenclubs, Vol. 2, No. 4 (1925), pp. 56-57. . Rosey Pool, ‘Feest’ [poem], Kentering. Maandblad van den Bond van Sociaal-Democratische Studentenclubs, Vol. 2, No. 8 (1926), p. 117. . R.E.P. [Rosey E. Pool], ‘De Diets-Akademiese Leergang te Amsterdam,’ Kentering. Maandblad van den Bond van Sociaal-Democratische Studentenclubs, Vol. 3, No. 7 (1926), pp. 110-111. . R.E.P. [Rosey E. Pool], Book review of Frits Tingen, Stemmingen en Strevingen (Amsterdam: Querido, 1927), Kentering, Vol. 4, No. 1 (October 1927), pp. 11-12. . R.E.P. [Rosey E. Pool], ‘Arbeiderstooneel en film te Berlijn,’ De nieuwe weg, Vol. 4 (1929) pp. 125-127.

1930s . Theobald Figer, ‘Vragen aan een arbeidersvrouw’ [poem, translated by Rosey Pool], De proletarische vrouw. Blad voor arbeidsters en arbeidersvrouwen, Vol. 25-26, 1930, No. 767 (7 May 1930), p. 1. . Henk Sneevliet, ‘Die jüngste Explosion kolonialen Machtsübergriffes in Indonesien’ [translation by Rosey Pool of: ‘De nieuwste explosie van koloniaal machtsmisbruik in Indonesië,’ De Nieuwe Weg. Revolutionnair-socialistisch maandblad, Vol. 5[2], No. 1 (January 1930)]. . Rosey Pool, ‘First Collection’ [unpublished anthology of African American poetry, compiled 1939-1940].

1940s . Emily Dickinson, Ten Poems [translation by Rosey E. Pool to the English and German] (Amsterdam: Vijf Ponden Pers 1944). . William Shakespeare, Three Sonnets [translation by Rosey E. Pool of Shakespeare’s sonnets XX, XCVI en CXXIX] (Utrecht: G.M. van Wees 1944).

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. Joost van den Vondel, ‘Yon good old times, some topical lines’ [translation by Rosey Pool from the Dutch] (Amsterdam: unidentified publisher 1944). . Rosey E. Pool, In Memoriam Matris [unpublished poems, 1944-1945]. . Voltaire, 1982. Sur la moderation.́ Fragment [translation by Rosey Pool] ([Utrecht]: G.M. van Wees 1944). . Rosey E. Pool, Beperkt zicht [book of poetry, cover design by Susanne Heynemann] (Amsterdam: Querido 1945). . Frans Schubert [sic.], Drie Meisjes Huis [translation by Rosey Pool of operette Drei Mäderl Haus] (1945). The play was performed on 15 & 16 October 1945 in Monopole Theater, Zandvoort, directed by Meijer Hamel. . Emily Dickinson, ‘Three Poems’ [translation by Rosey E. Pool] (private publisher 1945). . Joost van den Vondel, ‘O yule-night fairer than the days!’ [translation by Rosey E. Pool, excerpt from Gijsbrecht van Aemstel] (1945). . Rosey Pool, ‘De kunst van den neger,’ Vrij Nederland, Vol. 6, No. 49 (3 August 1946), p. 7. Illustration by Nola Hatterman. . Rosie Pool [sic.], ‘3. De sociale positie van de negers in de U.S.A. De negers vormen 10% van 130.000.000 inwoners der U.S.A.,’ 1 [youth magazine Algemeen Nederlands Jeugd Verbond, ANJV], No. 18 (25 May 1946), n.p. . Rosey Pool, ‘4. De culturele ontwikkeling van de negers in de U.S.A.,’ 1 [youth magazine Algemeen Nederlands Jeugd Verbond, ANJV], (8 June 1946), p. 12. . ‘Frik’ [alias Rosey Pool], ‘Zeg ik het nu goed?,’ VDSA [magazine Vereniging van Duitse en Statenloze Antifascisten], (28 October 1946), n.p. . ‘Frik’ [alias Rosey Pool], ‘Zeg ik het nu goed?,’ VDSA [magazine Vereniging van Duitse en Statenloze Antifascisten], (November 1946), n.p. . ‘Frik’ [alias Rosey Pool], ‘Zeg ik het nu goed?,’ VDSA [magazine Vereniging van Duitse en Statenloze Antifascisten], (December 1946), n.p. . ‘Frik’ [alias Rosey Pool], ‘Zeg ik het nu goed?,’ VDSA [magazine Vereniging van Duitse en Statenloze Antifascisten], (30 December 1946), n.p. . Rosey E. Pool, ‘Het grootste ghetto ter wereld’ [review of The Street by Ann Petry], Vrije Katheder (22 August 1947), n.p. . [Rosey Pool, uncredited], ‘Kinderen en vacantie,’ J.M. [‘Je maintiendrai,’ journal of the Nederlandse Volksbeweging, made Dutch resistance fighters] (23 May 1947), n.p. . Rosey Pool, ‘Ploeg van de vrijheid’ [short review of Langston Hughes’s Shakespeare in Harlem and Fields of Wonder], Vrije Katheder, (1947), p. 1. . R.P. [Rosey Pool], ‘Negerinnetjes en hun probleem,’ Je Maintiendrai (1 August 1947), p. 13.

380

. Rosey E. Pool, ‘Van ander ras (Deep are the roots),’ unidentified journal, n.d., n.p. [ca. 1947]. . Rosey E. Pool, ‘Schril licht op zwarte zijde der democratie in Amerika, het land van de zeven vrijheden. Dertien millioen negers vernederd door geschreven en ongeschreven wetten,’ Haarlems dagblad, Vol. 61, No. 18614 (22 April 1947), p. 2. . R.E.P. [Rosey E. Pool], ‘Blumenland Holland,’ Blick in die welt [Central office of information], (1947), n.p. . Rosey Pool, ‘Studentenkino in Amsterdam,’ Blick in die welt [Central office of information], 1947, n.p. . [Rosey Pool, uncredited], ‘Van vrouw tot vrouw. Hoe zijn wij nu eigenlijk?,’ Familiekring, (1948), n.p. . R.E.P. [Rosey E. Pool], ‘Ik herzag “VAN ANDER RAS,”’ [review Dutch version of Deep Are the Roots, featuring Otto Sterman], Vrije Katheder, (9 April 1948), n.p. . Rosey E. Pool, ‘Ann Petry en haar boek De straat,’ De Boekenmolen. Een tweemaandelijks tijdschrift voor de arbonné’s, Vol. 1, No. 5 (15 December 1948), pp. 1-5. . James Weldon Johnson, ‘Noah heeft een ark gebouwd’ [translation Rosey Pool], De Boekenmolen. Een tweemaandelijks tijdschrift voor de arbonné’s, Vol. 1, No. 5 (15 December 1948), pp. 6-7. With illlustrations of Nola Hatterman. . Countee Cullen, ‘Incident in Baltimore’ [translation of ‘Incident’ by Rosey Pool], De Boekenmolen. Een tweemaandelijks tijdschrift voor de arbonné’s, Vol. 1, No. 5 (15 December 1948), pp. 24-25. With illlustrations of Nola Hatterman. . Erich Schönlank & Fritz Rothgiesser, ‘De uitvinder en de Keizer’ [‘radio film,’ translation by Rosey E. Pool], (1948). Broadcasted on radio Hilversum II on 16 February 1948, directed by Kommer Kleyn. . Rosey E. Pool, ‘”Trompetten schallen in mijn hart.” Kerstmis bij de negers in Amerika,’ Haarlems dagblad, (22 December 1948), n.p. . Rosey Pool, ‘Nachgeholte Shulzeit,’ Blick in die welt [Central office of information], (1948), n.p. . Charles Dickens, ‘Grote verwachtingen’ [translation of Great Expectations, edited by Rosey E. Pool], (1948). Radio play, broadcasted on KRO radio on 11 July 1948. . Erich Schönlank & Frits Rothgiesser, ‘Johann August Suter,’ [translation by Rosey E. Pool], (1948). Radio play, broadcasted on AVRO radio on 4 November 1948. . Erich Schönlank & Frits Rothgiesser, ‘Techniek en noodlot,’ [play about I. Goodyear, translation by Rosey E. Pool], (1948). Radio play, broadcasted on 4 June 1948. . Erich Schönlank & Frits Rothgiesser, ‘De liefde gaat langs zonderlinge wegen,’ [translation by Rosey E. Pool], (1948). Radio broadcast on 15 October 1948.

381

. [Rosey Pool, uncredited], ‘Wereld zonder grenzen,’ Familiekring, (1948/1949), n.p. . [Rosey Pool, uncredited], ‘Een vrouw is duizend mannen te erg….,’ Familiekring, (1949), n.p. . [Rosey Pool, uncredited], ‘Onze mooie, moeilijke taak,’ Familiekring, (1949), n.p. . [Rosey Pool, uncredited], ‘Van vrouw tot vrouw. “‘s Kinds herte is als was,”’ Familiekring, (1949), n.p. . [Rosey Pool, uncredited], ‘Van spel komt ernst,’ Familiekring, (1949), n.p. . Rosey Pool, ‘Een roman uit Haïti,’ Eldorado, Vol. 1, No. 5 (May 1949), pp. 217-218. . Rosey E. Pool, ‘Negers in de Franse literatuur,’ Eldorado, Vol. 1, No. 7 (July 1949), n.p. . Erich Schönlank, Tekens aan de wand [translation by Rosey Pool] (Amsterdam: Andries Blitz, 1949). . Rosey E. Pool, ‘De slechte rechter. Een verhaal uit Afrika,’ in: Annie Winkler-Vonk (ed.), Omnibus voor de jeugd (Amsterdamsche boek- en Courantmaatschappij 1949). Illustration by Nola Hatterman.

1950s . Rosey E. Pool, Een handvol Poolse aarde. Het leven van Frédéric Chopin (1810-1849) (Tilburg: Nederland’s Boekhuis, 1st print: 1950, 3rd print: 1958). Illustrations by Frans Lammers. . Robert E. Hayden, ‘Toespraak’ [translation by Rosey Pool of ‘Speech’], in: Eduard Jan Dijksterhuis (ed.), Amerika. Aspecten van leven en cultuur (Utrecht: Uitgeversmaatschappij W. de Haan N.V. 1950), p. 105. . Zack Gilbert, ‘Schietgebed van Ouwe Joe’ [translation by Rosey Pool of ‘Secret Prayers of an Ol’ Black Joe’], in: Eduard Jan Dijksterhuis (ed.), Amerika. Aspecten van leven en cultuur (Utrecht: Uitgeversmaatschappij W. de Haan N.V. 1950), p. 106. . Zack Gilbert, ‘Schietgebed van Ouwe Joe’ [translation by Rosey Pool of ‘Secret Prayers of an Ol’ Black Joe’], De Gids, Vol. 113 (1950), p. 186. . Zack Gilbert, ‘Schietgebed van Ouwe Joe’ [translation by Rosey Pool of ‘Secret Prayers of an Ol’ Black Joe’], De Groene Amsterdammer, September 1958. . Robert E. Hayden, ‘Toespraak’ [translation by Rosey Pool of ‘Speech’], De Gids, Vol. 113 (1950), p. 185. . Rosey E. Pool, ‘Lekker weertje [Brief uit Londen],’ Vrij Nederland, 1950, n.p. . Rosey E. Pool, ‘Straatschilderes in Londen,’ Vrij Nederland, 11 November 1950, n.p. Includes photograph of Nola Hatterman. . Rosey E. Pool, ‘Zeg niet te gauw: “Spreekt u maar Engels,”’ Vrij Nederland, 22 July 1950, n.p. . Rosey E. Pool, ‘UNO in Croydon,’ Vrij Nederland, 17 February 1951, p. 8. . Rosey E. Pool, ‘Londen is een rustige stad,’ Vrij Nederland, 31 March 1951, n.p.

382

. Rosey E. Pool, ‘Een wagen volgeladen… Per bus van Londen naar Rome (en terug) met tweeëndertig vrouwen,’ Vrij Nederland, 17 November 1951, n.p. . Rosey E. Pool, ‘”Wij eigen warmwaterzakken!” Tweeëndertig vrouwen van Londen naar Rome (II),’ Vrij Nederland, 24 November 1951, n.p. . Rosey E. Pool, ‘Alweer geen boter op m’n brood. 32 vrouwen van Londen naar Rome (slot),’ Vrij Nederland, 1 December 1951, n.p. . Rosey E. Pool, Een nieuw lied voor Amerika. Het leven van George Gershwin (1898-1937) [series: Sonatine-reeks, part 8] (Tilburg: Nederland’s Boekhuis 1951). Illustrations by Nola Hatterman. . Rosey E. Pool, ‘Geven en Nemen. Afrikaanse Renaissance,’ Vrij Nederland, 11 October 1952, n.p. . Rosey E. Pool, ‘Gedachten in hout en brons,’ Vrij Nederland, 18 October 1952, n.p. . Rosey E. Pool, ‘Een slang kan lopen en hij heeft geen poten?!,’ Vrij Nederland, 25 October 1952, n.p. . Rosey E. Pool, ‘In den beginne,’ Vrij Nederland, 1 November 1952, n.p. . Rosey E. Pool, ‘Eerst kwam de trommel,’ Vrij Nederland, 6 December 1952, n.p. . Rosey E. Pool, ‘Lasibekan is naar huis terug,’ Vrij Nederland, 17 January 1953, n.p. . Mies Bouhuys & Walter Kous, One Foot Off the Ground [translation by Rosey Pool of Voetje van de vloer (1953)] (Amsterdam: Internationaal Bureau voor Auteursrecht N.V. n.d. [ca. 1953]) . Catherine Drinker Bowen & Barbara von Meck, Dierbare vriendin. De roman van Peter Tsjaikowsky en Nadesjda von Meck [translation by Rosey Pool of Beloved Friend. The Story of Tchaikowsky and Nadejda von Meck] (Amsterdam: N.V. E.M. Querido’s Uitgeverij 1953). . Mies Bouhuys, Ein Fuss auf der Erde [translation by Rosey Pool of Voetje van de vloer (1953)] (Amsterdam: Internationaal Bureau voor Auteursrecht [ca. 1953] . Rosey E. Pool, ‘African Renaissance,’ Phylon, Vol. 14, No. 1 (1st Quarter 1953), pp. 5-8. . Rosey E. Pool, ‘The Negro Actor in Europe,’ Phylon, Vol. 14, No. 3 (3rd Quarter 1953), pp. 258-267. . Katherine Dunham, ‘Audrey’ [translation to the Dutch by Rosey E. Pool], Vriendschap [journal COC], Vol. 9 (December 1954), pp. 176-179. . Zack Gilbert, ‘Gebed van een neger’ [translation poem by Rosey Pool], Militia Christi. Orgaan van de Geloofsgemeenschap van Christen anti-militaristen, Nederlandse afdeling van de International Fellowship of Reconciliation, Vol. 10, No. 21 (3 December 1955), p. 4. . Rosey E. Pool, ‘Drie-en-zestig “Dutch days” in Cornwall,’ Neerlandia Nieuws [December 1955], n.p. . Rosey E. Pool, ‘750 millioen Kerstkaarten,’ unidentified journal, 12 December 1955, n.p.

383

. Rosey E. Pool, ‘De ontzettende drukte valt toch eigenlijk wel mee. Vrouwelijk personeel in de bussen en stations voldoet. Brief uit Londen,’ Het Nieuwsblad voor Sumatra, Vol. 8, No. 2035 (7 September 1955), p. 3. . Rosey E. Pool, ‘Londense “Nozems.” Teddy-boys (en girls) doen van zich spreken,’ Vrij Nederland, 1 October 1955, n.p. . Rosey E. Pool, review of Africa Today, edited by C. Grove Haines, African Affairs, Vol. 54, No. 217 (October 1955), n.p. . Rosey E. Pool, ‘Ben Enwonwu,’ Wikor. Algemeen kunsttijdschrift voor jonge mensen, October 1956, pp. 305-306. . Rosey E. Pool, ‘De miljoenendans van de Dockers,’ Vrij Nederland, 11 August 1956, p. 12. . Rosey Pool, ‘Australian ‘Pearly,’ Sydney Morning Herald [Australia], 24 March 1956, n.p. . [Rosey Pool, uncredited], ‘Brief uit Londen,’ Aurora. Het Eerste Surinaamse Maandblad voor de Vrouw, September/October or November/December 1955, n.p. . Rosey E. Pool, ‘Engelse gezondheidsdienst geeft veilig gevoel. Ziek zijn zonder geldzorgen,’ Vrij Nederland, 8 September 1956, n.p. . Rosey E. Pool, ‘Ein Fu auf der Erde…’ Ein holländisches Musical für Kinder,’ Tages-Anzeiger für Stadt und Kanton Zürich,β 15 July 1957, n.p. . Rosey E. Pool, ‘Eerst kwam de trommelaar,’ unidentified newspaper, n.d., n.p. [ca. 1957] . Rosey E. Pool, ‘n Engelse sleutel. Een ABC over het “Perfide Albion” (Amsterdam: De Boer, 1957). Illustrations by Georges Mazure. . Eric Walrond en Rosey E. Pool (eds.), Black and Unknown Bards. A Collection of Negro Poetry (Aldington, Kent, UK: Hand & Flower Press, 1958). . Rosey E. Pool & Paul Breman (eds.), Ik zag hoe zwart ik was. Poëzie van Noordamerikaanse negers. Een tweetalige bloemlezing van Rosey E. Pool en Paul Breman (The Hague: Bert Bakker / Daamen N.V. 1958). . Countee Cullen, ‘Incident in Baltimore’ [translation by Rosey Pool of ‘Incident’, previously published in De Boekenmolen, December 15, 1948], p. 35; Langston Hughes, ‘De Ploeg’ [translation by Rosey Pool, previously published in De vrije katheder, August 1, 1947], p. 53; in: J.J.Buskes (ed.), Zwart ben ik. Negerliederen (Amsterdam: J.J. Buskes, 1958). . Bernard Kops, De Hamlet van Stepney Green [translation of The Hamlet of Stepney Green (1957) by Rosey E. Pool], performed: 6 September 1958: Stadsschouwburg Utrecht; 29 November 1958, Stadsschouwburg Haarlem. Directed by Egbert van Paridon. . Rosey E. Pool, ‘De Hamlet van Stephney Green. Stuk Joods leven uit Londense buurt in,’ unidentified magazine, n.p. [ca. 1958]

384

. Rosey E. Pool, ‘Neger op Brits toneel wil als acteur beoordeeld worden,’ unidentified newspaper, n.p. [ca. September 1958] . Stanley Mann [translated by Rosey Pool0, Script Advocaat pro Deo, 1958. . Rosey E. Pool, ‘”Advocaat Pro Deo” pleit voor allen,’ Vrije Geluiden. Radio- en Televisieprogrammablad van de V.P.R.O., Vol. 28, No. 36 (6 September 1958), p. 6. . V.S. Reid, Het Luipaard. Roman [novel, translation of The Leopard by Rosey E. Pool] (Amsterdam: Wereld-Bibliotheek 1959). . Rosey E. Pool (ed.), Willly Haas (introduction) & Nico Jesse (photography), Menschen in London (Mohn: Gütersloh 1959). . Rosey E. Pool, ‘Koffie met skiffle in Londen. Er horen wilde hardossen, gekleurde kousen en oersterke trommelvliezen bij,’ Vrij Nederland, 18 July 1959, n.p. . Rosey E. Pool, Vom Darling zum Plumpudding Ein amusantes̈ ABC britischen Lebens [translation of ‘n Engelse sleutel. Een ABC over het “Perfide Albion” (Amsterdam, De Boer, 1957)] (Josef Keller, Starnberg, 1960). Illlustrations by Georges Mazure. . Rosey E. Pool, ‘Ik zie, ik zie, wat jij niet ziet…. Namelijk: toneel in Londen,’ Vox Guyanae, Vol. 3, No. 6 (October 1959), pp. 32-36.

1960s . Poetry included in: H. Doedens & P. Maassen (eds.), Het klein heelal: Een bundel moderne gedichten voor het voortgezet onderwijs (Amsterdam: Meulenhoff 1960). . Rosey E. Pool & Paul Breman, Black All Day. American Negro Poetry (Amsterdam: Instituut voor Kunstnijverheidsonderwijs, 1960). Illustrations by Guillaume Le Roy. . Annie M.G. Schmidt [translated by Rosey E. Pool], Love from Mick and Mandy, by Annie M.G. Schmidt (London: Odhams Press, 1961) . Annie M.G. Schmidt [translated by Rosey E. Pool], Good Luck Mick and Mandy, by Annie M.G. Schmidt (London: Odhams Press, 1961). . Annie M.G. Schmidt [translated by Rosey E. Pool], Take Care, Mick and Mandy, by Annie M.G. Schmidt (London: Odhams Press, 1961). . Langston Hughes, ‘Zalige zekerheid’ [translation by Rosey Pool of poem ‘Blessed Assurance’], Vriendschap [journal COC], Vol. 17 (June 1962), pp. 122-125. . Rosey E. Pool, ‘Beyond the Blues. Modern Trends in Afro-American Poetry,’ AMSAC Newsletter, Newsletter Supplement, No. 24 (April 1962), pp. 4-5. . Rosey E. Pool, ‘In the Land of “Whites” and “Coloured,”’ Soviet Woman, no. 2 (1962), pp. 28- 29. . Rosey E. Pool (ed.), Beyond the Blues: New Poems by American Negroes (Lympne, Kent: Hand and Flower Press, 1962). 385

. Rosey E. Pool, ‘The Discovery of American Negro Poetry,’ Freedomways. A Quarterly Review of the Negro Freedom Movement, Vol. 3, No. 4 (Fall 1963), pp. 511-517. [Paper read at AMSAC- sponsored festival in Lagos, Nigeria, in December 1961] . [Rosey Pool, uncredited], ‚Pall Mall – nur für Herren,‘ ER [Düsseldorf], January 1964, n.p. . Rosey Pool, ‘Simpel in de Verenigde Naties’ [translation of piece on Simple by Langston Hughes], Vrij Nederland, 18 January 1964, n.p. . Rosey E. Pool (ed.) [introduction by Jan Willem Schulte Nordholt], Ik ben de Nieuwe Neger. Gedichten, rijmen, liedjes en dokumenten uit 300 jaar verzet van de Amerikaanse neger (The Hague: Bert Bakker 1965). . Rosey E. Pool, ‘Wat is “normal” in Albabama? Dagelijks leven in het zuiden,’ Vrij Nederland, 17 April 1965, 15. . Rosey E. Pool, ‘Kleurbekentenissen [1],’ Vrij Nederland, 25 September 1965, n.p. . Rosey E. Pool, ‘Kleurbekentenissen [2],’ Vrij Nederland, 16 October 1965, n.p. . Rosey E. Pool, ‘Kleurbekentenissen [3],’ Vrij Nederland, 6 November 1965, n.p. . Rosey E. Pool, ‘Kleurbekentenissen [4],’ Vrij Nederland, 13 November 1965, n.p. . Rosey E. Pool, ‘Kleurbekentenissen [5],’ Vrij Nederland, 18 December 1965, n.p. . Rosey E. Pool, ‘Fling Me Your Challenge. Commentary On The Literary Scene,’ Negro Digest, Vol. 15, No.2 (December 1965), pp. 54-60. . Rosey E. Pool, ‘Sergej mocht een feest geven,’ [Kleurbekentenissen], Vrij Nederland, 5 March 1966, n.p. . Rosey E. Pool, ‘Vijfentwintig minuten “Damnyankee.” [Kleurbekentenissen], Vrij Nederland, 12 March 1966, n.p. . Rosey E. Pool, ‘Sergej was helemaal niks’ [Kleurbekentenissen], Vrij Nederland, 7 May 1966, n.p. . Rosey E. Pool, ‘Onbetwistbaar en luisterrijk zwart! Het Eerste Wereld-Festival van Negerkunst te Dakar,’ AVRO-Bode, 29 May 1966, pp. 11-13. . Rosey Pool, ‘Perspectieven van een artistiek Pan-Afrika. Eerste wereldfestival voor negerkunst in Dakar,’ Vrij Nederland, 23 April 1966, n.p. . Rosey E. Pool, ‘Balans van Dakar,’ Opinie II, 5 May 1966, n.p. . Rosey E. Pool, ‘Mijn Harlem, het donkere ghetto voor de ochtendstond,’ Opinie, 24 June 1966. . Rosey E. Pool, ‘Typisch…’ [Kleurbekentenissen], Vrij Nederland, 27 August 1966, n.p. . Claude Brown, Mijn Harlem [novel, translation by Rosey Pool of Manchild in the Promised Land] (Rotterdam, Lemniscaat, 1966). . Rosey E. Pool, ‘Robert Hayden: Poet Laureate. An Assessment,’ Negro Digest, Vol. XV, No. 8 (June 1966), pp. 39-47.

386

. Lawrence Ferlinghetti, ‘Ergens in de eeuwigheid’ [Translation from ‘Pictures of the Gone World’ by Rosey Pool and Rudi Wesselius], Randstad, Vol. 10 (1966), pp. 80-81. . Eduard Hoornik, The Water [theater play, English translation by Rosey Pool of ‘Het water’], broadcasted on 11 April 1966. Produced by H.B. Fortuin. . Leo Goldman, Operatie Mallemolen [radio play, Dutch translation of The Enemy-Go-Round by Rosey Pool], broadcasted on 18 December 1966 and 4 July 1967 by KRO radio. Directed by Léon Povel. . [Rosey Pool], ‘A Conversation with Leopold Senghor. Negritude and the Black American’ [Leopold Senghor interviewed in Washington DC, November 1967, by Rosey Pool, Samuel Allen, Paul Vesey, and Wilfred Cartey; translated from the French by Rosey E. Pool], Negro Digest, Vol. 16, No. 7 (May 1967) pp. 26-36. Reprinted in: William Henry Robinson (ed.), Nommo. An Anthology of Modern Black African and Black American Literature (New York: Macmillan, c. 1972). . Rosey E. Pool, The Valentine Club [English textbook for Dutch high school students] (Groningen: Wolters 1967). . Rosey E. Pool, ‘A Tribute to Langston,’ Negro Digest, Vol. 16, No. 11 (September 1967), p. 65. . Rosey E. Pool, Lachen om niet te huilen (Rotterdam: Lemniscaat, 1968).4 . Rosey E. Pool, ‘Martin Luther King. Door een kogel zwijgt de stem van verzet en droom; voor hem een eeuwigdurend requiem,’ Het schakelblad, May 1968, pp. 3, 10.

1970s . Leszek Kolakowski, Het systeem van pater Jensen [radio play, translation by Rosey Pool], broadcasted by KRO on March 3, 1970, (KRO, directed by: Léon Povel). . Rosey E. Pool [post mortem], ‘Anne Frank: The Child and the Legend,’ World Order, Vol. 6, No. 3 (Spring 1972), pp. 51-56. . Rosey E. Pool [post mortem], ‘”Grand Prix de la Poesie” for Robert Hayden,’ World Order, Vol. 17, No. 4 (Summer 1983), pp. 19-22.

4 Autobiographical book of essays. An unpublished English translation of this can be found at: Sussex, SxMs19/11/3/18: Rosey Pool, ‘As Waves of One Sea.’ 387

Selection of poems

Thuiskomst Homecoming

Nu ben ik toch bij je teruggekomen. Now I have come back to you. Zoals je weerkeert tot je beste vriend; As you return to your best friend; Tussen ruïnes zoek ik kinderdromen I look for childhood dreams between ruins En voor de bouwval van een huis heb ik gegriend And for the ruin of a house, I have been friends

Nu moet je ook mijn oude vriend weer wezen Now you also have to be my old friend again Zonder die droefheid in ’t bezorgd gezicht. Without that sadness in the worried face. En als mijn wonden zullen genezen And when my wounds will heal Sta jij ook stralende weer opgericht. Are you also radiantly re-established.

Dan zal ik van mijn toren kunnen zingen Then I will be able to sing from my tower En van een schip, dat in je haven rust And from a ship that rests in your harbor Zonder te denken aan de droeve dingen, Without thinking of the sad things, Aan al de levens, die zijn uitgeblust. To all the lives that have been extinguished.

Je hebt me weer gevangen, Amsterdam, You caught me again, Amsterdam, Trots wrakke straten en gewonde grachten. Proudly wrecked streets and injured canals. Je wist voor ik schoorvoetend bij je kwam You knew before I reluctantly came to you Dat je niet vruchtloos op je kind zou wachten. That you would not wait fruitlessly for your child.

Source: Rosey Pool, Beperkt zicht (Amsterdam: Querido 1945) 27. Translation: Lonneke Geerlings.

388

Aan mijn moeder To my mother

Ik denk aan U en mijn schreivochtige ogen I think of you and my scaly eyes Zien U weer gaan dien duister-zwaren gang. See You go again that dark-heavy course. Ik denk aan U; geen mildheid, mededogen, I think of you; no mildness, compassion, Geen zoete zegen, vredezielezang. No sweet blessing, peace soul singing. Geen zachte regen zo de dichters zongen, No soft rain as the poets sang, Geen tedere schade als aan bloem in Mei, No tender damage as to flower in May, Geen vrome zangen. Oud en smartverwrongen…. No pious singing. Old and smartly twisted…. Geen stil herdenken is voor U in mij. No silent commemoration is for you in me.

Ik denk aan U, waar moet ik U gaan zoeken? I think of you, where should I look for you? Ik denk aan wrede, zware martelgang; I think of cruel, heavy torture; Ik denk aan honger, kou, soldatenvloeken, I think of hunger, cold, soldier curses, Ik denk aan harde wegen, urenlang. I think of hard roads for hours. Geen rust, geen vrede, geen geliefde ogen, No peace, no peace, no beloved eyes, Geen stem, die U vertrouwd een troostwoord No voice that you say comfortably to you, zegt, No hands drying your hot tears Geen handen, die Uw hete tranen drogen, No head that lays down to rest beside you. Geen hoofd, dat zich tot rusten naast U legt.

O wist ik, dat de tijd zou zijn gekomen, I knew that the time would have come, Dat in Uw moedig hart de moed verzonk, That courage sank into your brave heart, Wist ik U rusten onder koele bomen Did I know You rest under cool trees Ik zou ze laven met een zoeten dronk! I'd drink them with a sweet drink!

Ik zie U, dapper hart, Uw slavenleven, I see You, brave heart, Your slave life, Ik voel Uw pijnen, weet hoe zwaar Gij gaat. I feel Your pains, know how hard You are going. Mijn handen kunnen slechts onmachtig beven, My hands can only shake powerlessly, Mijn hart kent slechts een schroeiend hete haat. My heart knows only a searingly hot hatred. Ik denk aan U, Gij lief, gebogen wezen, I think of you, you dear, bent being, Gebogen onder al te matte smart; Bent under too bad a grief; Ik denk aan U; kon ik Uw ogen lezen, I think of you; could i read your eyes, Kon ik weer rusten aan Uw moede hart. Could I rest on your heart again.

Source: Rosey Pool, Beperkt zicht (Amsterdam: Querido 1945) 9. Translation: Lonneke Geerlings.

389

Aan mijn vrienden To my friends

O vrienden, die ik op mijn weg gevonden, O friends, whom I found on my way, Gij vrienden, die het leven mij gezonden, You friends, who sent me life, Gij deelgenoot van grote en kleine vreugden, You share great and small joys, Die kent mijn zwakheid en die kent mijn He knows my weakness and he knows my virtues, deugden, O friends, who hold Your hands around me, O vrienden, die Uw handen om mij houdt, Who builds a resting place in your hearts for me Die in Uw harten mij een rustplaats bouwt, Who offers me refuge in your houses, Die in Uw huizen mij een toevlucht biedt, The one with your eyes eases my sorrow; Die met Uw ogen lenigt mijn verdriet; O you who know what was torn from me, O gij, die weet wat van mij werd gescheurd, How I got dragged out of the job of life Hoe ‘k uit de baan des levens ben gesleurd, And how much more than mother tires could En hoe veel meer dan moederbanden konden I was deeply committed to Her in friendship, Ik was aan Haar in vriendschap diep verbonden, O friends, who realize loneliness O vrienden, die de eenzaamheid beseft From whom a fierce, so cruel divorce occurs, Van wie zo fel, zo wreed een scheiding treft, You friends who hold me in your line Gij vrienden, die mij vast in Uwe rij Save a place, stored at Your side, Een plaats bewaart, geborgen aan Uw zij, Who leads me the way back to life, Die mij de weg weer naar het leven leidt, Who prepares me for a new task; Die mij weer maakt voor een nieuwe taak bereid; You make eyes blind with tears, seeing: Gij maaktet ogen, blind van tranen, ziende: Reach me your hands, friends, friends, friends…. Reikt mij Uw handen, vrienden, vrienden, vrienden….

Source: Rosey Pool, Beperkt zicht (Amsterdam: Querido 1945) 19. Translation: Lonneke Geerlings.

Kwatrijn voor L.F. Quatrain for L.F.

Nu laait de dood verzengend op haar wegen, Now death is blazing on its ways, Ik weet niet of ze dezen morgen zag; I don't know if she saw this morning; De nachten dat ze in mijn armen lag The nights she was in my arms Hield angst, om wat nu kwam, de slaap vaak Often, because of what came next, stopped sleep tegen

Source: Jewish Historical Museum Amsterdam, D013703, Typescript poems by Rosey Pool (1943). Translation: Lonneke Geerlings. 390

Bobby N. Bobby N.

In leren jas of blauwen overall, In leather jacket or blue overall, Niet in het kleed, dat ijdele vrouwen siert, Not in the robe that adorns vain women, Kort, donker haar in golvenloze val, Short, dark hair in waveless fall,

Op motor, die als ondier trilt en giert, On a motorcycle that vibrates and yaws like a beast, Door felle branding van de wereldstad By bright branding of the metropolis Heb je je leven roekeloos bestierd. Have you run your life recklessly?

Het leven heeft je als in een vlam gevat; Life has caught you like a flame; Te fel, te hevig; wist misschien je hart Too fierce, too fierce; maybe your heart knew Dat zulk een laaien langen duur niet had, That such a blast did not last long,

Dat al zijn felheid sindt [sic] in stille smart, That all his ferocity is in silent sorrow, In eenzaamheid van sanatoriumshal? In solitude of sanatorium hall? Heb je daarom zoveel gevaar gestart? Is that why you started so much danger?

Ik hoor metaalklank en de hamerval I hear metal sound and the hammer trap Waar het naar gummi en benzine rook; Where it smelled of rubber and gasoline; Je schat een schade, rekent, noemt getal, You estimate a damage, you calculate, you call number,

Totdat je weer onder een wagen dook Until you went under a car again En roept naar den monteur, je kameraad, And calls to the mechanic, your comrade, Die met je werkt en schertst, met wie je ook Who works and jokes with you, whoever you are with

Je biertje drinkt en aan de schroefbank staat, Your beer drinks and is on the screw bench, Die met je kaart; je kracht en werken roemt The one with your card; your strength and work praise Als hij vertelt van Bobby, van zijn maat. If he tells about Bobby, his mate.

Source: Jewish Historical Museum Amsterdam, D013703, Typescript poems by Rosey Pool (1943). Translation: Lonneke Geerlings.

391

Sapphische Ode voor Emily Dickinson Sapphic Ode for Emily Dickinson

Sappho, meer dan twee duizend jaren rust Gij. Sappho, you rest for more than two thousand Tot mij heeft Uw lokkende stem gesproken; years. Bloemen, vrouwen, vogels en vers beminnen Your provoking voice has spoken to me; Leerde Uw woord mij. Flowers, women, birds and fresh love Your word taught me. Roem heeft lang reeds heilig Uw naam geprezen; Arignoto, die U de zang ontlokte, Fame has long blessed Your name; Anaktoria, Atthis, door U gekusten, Arignoto, who provoked you to sing, Zusterlijk groet ik. Anaktoria, Atthis, kissed by you, Sisterly I greet. Dichter zijt Gij bij mij in tijd en wezen Die voor honderd jaren geen naam nog sierde; You are closer to me in time and being Bloemen schonkt Ge en verzen de kleine zuster Who adorned no name for a hundred years; Die Gij bemindet. Ge gives flowers and the little sister verses Whom you loved. Vogelstem heeft zoet in Uw droom geklonken, Die de stem van Susan verlangend wekte; Vogelstem has sounded sweet in your dream, Innig fluist’ren wij beide dezelfde klank van Who awakened Susan's voice; Liefste der namen. We both whisper the same sound Dearest of names.

Source: Jewish Historical Museum Amsterdam, D013703, Typescript poems by Rosey Pool (1943). Translation: Lonneke Geerlings.

392

Stacheldraht Barbed Wire 111 111 Lager.... in .... Stock .... in ....

Der hohe Himmel und die hohen Bäume The high sky and tall trees Und nur drei-Meter-hoher Stacheldraht; And only three-meter-high barbed wire; Die weite Heide, weite Erdenräume The wide heathland, wide earthly spaces Und nur ein Wachturm darin ein Soldat. And only a watchtower in it a soldier.

Die Tausenden von sehnsuchtvollen Wesen, The thousands of longing beings, Die leben singepfercht in engen Raum; The live songbird in a narrow space; Und Millionen atmen, essen, lesen And millions breathe, eat, read Und wissen nichts von einem Stachelzaun. And do not know anything about a spiked fence.

Der trennt auch sie von dieser Herde - Andern - He also separates them from this flock - others - Der hält auch sie zurück von einer Tat; He also holds her back from an act; Und wenn die Tausenden ins Elend wandern And when the thousands wander into misery Steht in dem Wachturm immer ein Soldat. Is there always a soldier in the watchtower?

Er ist nicht ein Soldat, ist Battalionen, He is not a soldier, is battalions, Ist Kugeln, Bomben, Tanks und sein Gewehr Is bullets, bombs, tanks and his rifle Ist für die -Freien- so wie für die -Andern- Is for the -Freien- as well as for the- Millionen Waffen und ein grosses Heer. Millions of weapons and a big army.

Ich schrei es Euch entgegen, Millionen, I scream at you, millions, Ein Wachturm nur und darin ein Soldat; Dort A watchtower only and in it a soldier; Where the wo die Others singekerkert live Andern singekerkert wohnen Is only three - meter - high barbed wire! Ist nur drei - Meter - hoher Stacheldraht!

Source: Jewish Historical Museum Amsterdam, D013703, Typescript poems by Rosey Pool (1943). Translation: Lonneke Geerlings.

393

Her private library

This is a complete list of Rosey Pool’s private library, which is currently incorporated into the library of the University of Sussex (Brighton, UK). This list contains information about handwritten notes in these books from Langston Hughes, Carl Van Vechten, George Padmore, W.E.B. Du Bois, and others. This list was provided to the author by Diarmuid Hester. The information about the notes was created by staff members of the University of Sussex library.

. A Narrative of the Adventures and Escape of Moses Roper from American Slavery (London: Harvey and Darton 1840). Handwritten additions to title page; it looks like some of the title page has been erased. . Abrahams, Peter, Mine Boy (London: Dorothy Crisp & Co. 1963). . Abrahams, Peter, Tell Freedom (London: Faber and Faber 1954). . Abrahams, Peter, Wild Conquest (Harmondsworth, Middlesex: Penguin Books 1966). . Achebe, Chinua, Things Fall Apart (London: Heinemann Educational Books Ltd. 1963). . Adam, Leonhard, Primitive Art (Melbourne, Australia: Penguin Books 1949). . Adams, Elizabeth Laura, Dark Symphony (London: Sheed & Ward 1944). . Ademola, Frances (ed.) Reflections. Nigerian Prose & Verse (Lagos: African Universities Press 1962). . Africa From the Point of View of American Negro Scholars (Paris: Préscence Africain 1958). . African Cinema (London: British Film Institute 1973). . Agoha, Raphael, De eenzaamheid van Zwarte Piet (Hilversum: Uitgeverij C. De Boer Jr. 1966). . Aheart, Andrew Norwood, Figures of Fantasy (New York: Exposition Press 1949). . Ahmann, Mathew H. (ed.), The New Negro (Indiana, SC: Fides Publishers, Notre Dame 1961). Handwritten dedication to Rosey Pool from Langston [Hughes]. . Al-Hakim, Tewfik, The Tree Climber. A Play (London: Oxford University Press 1966). . Altena, Ernst Can, Randfiguren, Vol. 1: Joachim Ringelmatz, Kurt Tucholsky, Langston Huges, Brederode, Georges Brassens, Jacques Prévert, Boris Vian (Amsterdam: Van Ditmar 1967). . Altman, Phyllis, The Law of the Vultures (London: Jonathan Cape 1952). . American Society of African Culture, The American Negro Writer and his Roots. Selected papers from the First Conference of Negro Writers, March, 1959 (New York: American Society of African Culture 1960). Handwritten dedication to Rosey Pool from Langston [Hughes], dated 19.05.1960. 394

. Anderson, Charles L., Frustration. A Negro Poet Looks at America (Puebla, Mexico: El Grupo Literario of the “United Nations” School 1960). . Anderson, Sherwood, Dark Laughter (London: Jarrolds Publishers 1926). . Anderson, Sherwood, Poor White (New York: B.W. Huebsch Inc. 1920). . Andrade, Mario de, Antologia da poesia negra de expressão portuguesa (Paris: Pierre Jean Oswald 1958). . Andrade, Mario de, La poésie africaine d’expression portugaise (Paris: Pierre Jean Oswald 1969). . Angle, Paul M., We Asked Gwendolyn Brooks About the Creative Environment in Illinois (Chicago: Illinois Bell Telephone ca. 1965). Signed ‘From Dudley Randall.’ . Anonymous, The Soul Delight (Boston: The Christopher Publishing House 1961). Handwritten dedication to Rosey E. Pool. . Armstrong, Louis, Satchmo. My Life in New Orleans (London: The Jazz Book Club 1957). . Armstrong, M.F. & Helen W. Ludlow, Hampton and Its Students (New York: G.P. Putnam’s Sons 1874). . Arnott, Kathleen & Ken Symonds, Titi Goes Fishing (London: Longmans, Green and Co. 1960). . Arnott, Kathleen & Ken Symonds, Titi Goes to a Party (London: Longmans, Green and Co. 1960). . Arts Council of Great Britain, Nigerian Tribal Art (Slough, England: Kenion Press 1960). . Arts Council of Great Britain, The Epstein Collection of Tribal and Exotic Sculpture (Great Britain: Arts Council 1960). . Augustin, Elisabeth, Het onvoltooide leven van Malcolm X (Bruges: Verbeke-Loys 1967). Handwritten dedication to Rosey Pool from the author, December 1967. . Avedon, Richard & James Baldwin, Nothing Personal (Harmondsworth, Middlesex: Penguin Books 1964). . Baaren, T.P. van, Bezieland Beelden (Amsterdam: Querido 1962). . Bahá’u’lláh, Gebete und Meditationen (Frankfurt am Main: Bahá'í-Verlag GmbH 1963). . Baldwin, James, Blues for Mister Charlie (New York: The Dial Press 1964). Handwritten note to Rosey Pool from ‘Owen’ [Dodson], Christmas 1965. . Baldwin, James, Going To Meet the Man (New York: The Dial Press 1965). . Baldwin, James, Tell Me How Long the Train’s Been Gone (London: Michael Joseph 1968). . Baldwin, James, The Amen Corner (London: Corgi Books 1970). . Baldwin, James, The Fire Next Time (London: Michael Joseph 1963). . Banham, Martin (ed.), Nigerian Student Verse 1959 (Ibadan: Ibadan University Press 1960). . Banks Henries, A.D., Poems of Liberia 1836-1961 (London: Macmillian 1963)

395

. Baptist, R. Hernekin, Four Handsome Negresses. The Record of a Voyage (New York: Jonathan Cape & Harrison Smith 1931). . Barbour, Floyd B. (ed.), The Black Power Revolt (Boston: Extending Horizons Books; Porter Sargent Publisher 1968). . Barbour, Floyd B., The Black Seventies (Boston: Porter Sargent Publisher 1970). . Bascom, William R. & Melville J. Herskovits (eds.), Continuity and Change in African Cultures (Chicago; London: University of Chicago Press, 1962). . Bassir, Olumbe, An Anthology of West African Verse (Ibadan: Ibadan University Press 1957). . Bates, Daisy, The Long Shadow of Little Rock (New York: David McKay Company, Inc. 1962). Handwritten dedication from the author. . Baume, Eric, Half-Caste (London: The Falcon Press 1950). . Beauge, Jacqueline, Climats en Marche (Port-au-Prince, Haiti: Imprimerie des Antilles 1962). . Bedel, Maurice, Le mariage des couleurs. Roman (Paris: Gallimard 1951). . Beecher, John, Hear the Wind Blow! Poems of Protest and Prophecy (New York: International Publishers 1968). . Beier, Ulli (ed.), Black Orpheus. An Anthology of New African and Afro-American stories (New York: McGraw-Hill Book Company 1965). . Beier, Ulli, African Mud Sculpture (London: Cambridge University Press 1963). . Beier, Ulli, Art in Nigeria (London: Cambridge University Press 1960). . Beier, Ulli, The Origin of Life and Death (London: Heinemann Educational Books Ltd. 1966). . Benjamin, Joseph Louis & Anita Honis, And the Truth Shall Make Us Free (New York: Carlton Press 1964). . Bennett, Lerone, Jr., Before the Mayflower: A History of the Negro in America 1619-1962 (Chicago: Johnson Publishing Company, Inc. 1962). . Bennett, Lerone, Jr., What Manner of Man (Chicago: Johnson Publishing Company, Inc. 1964). . Bennett, Louise, Anancy Stories and Dialect Verse (Kingston, Jamaica: Pioneer Press 1957). . Bennett, Louise, Jamaica Labrish (Jamaica: Sangster’s Book Stores 1966). . Berendt, J.E., Das Jazzbuch (Frankfurt: Fischer Bücherei 1953). . Berendt, Joachim Ernst, Schwarzer Gesang II: Blues, Englisch-Deutsch (München: Nymphenburger Verlagshandlung 1962). . Berendt, Joachim Ernst, Spirituals (München: Nymphenburger Verlagshandlung 1961). . Bernhard, Edmond, Jacques de Vergnies, Apologie du Jazz (Brussels: Les Presses de Belgique 1945).

396

. Beronicius, Petrus Johannes, Georgarchontomachia, Caeterorumque ejus carminum sylvula; quorum prius carmine belgico secutum (Middelburg: Huysman 1766). Photocopied book, perhaps by Ursel ‘Isa’ Isenburg. . Berry, J., Spoken Art in West Africa (London: School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London 1961). . Bethune, Lebert, Juju of My Own (Paris: Imprimerie Union 1965). . Biddende Negerknaap (ca. 1847). . Billington, Ray Allen (ed.), A Free Negro in the Slave Era. The Journal of Charlotte L. Forten (New York: Collier Books 1961). . Birch, McLane, The Kandi Man (Detroit: Broadside Press 1970). . Blesh, Rudy, Shining Trumpets. A History of Jazz (London: Cassell 1949). . Bone, Robert A., The Negro Novel in America (New Haven: Yale University Press 1958). . Bontemps, Arna, American Negro Poetry (New York: Hill and Wang 1963). . Bontemps, Arna, Black Thunder (Berlin: Seven Seas Books 1965). . Bontemps, Arna, Chariot in the Sky. A Story of the Jubilee Singers (USA: The John C. Winston Company 1951). . Bontemps, Arna, Lonesome Boy (Boston: Houghton Mifflin Company 1955). . Bosch, Jack & C.J. Dollé, Jazzlexicon (Utrecht: Het Spectrum 1964). . Botkin, B.A. (ed.), Sidewalks of America (Indianapolis/New York: The Bobbs-Merrill Company, Inc. 1954). Signed. . Botkin, B.A. (ed.), The Pocket Treasury of American Folklore (New York: Pocket Books, Inc. 1950). . Braden, Anne, The Wall Between (New York: Monthly Review Press 1958). . Brathwaite, Edward, Masks (London: Oxford University Press 1968). . Brathwaite, Edward, Rights of Passage (London: Oxford University Press 1967). . Brawley, Benjamin, Negro Builders and Heroes (Chapel Hill: The University of North Carolina Press 1937). Handwritten dedication to Rosey E. Pool. . Breman, Paul (ed.), You’d Better Believe It. Black Verse in English (Harmondsworth, Middlesex: Penguin Books 1973). . Breman, Paul, Blues (The Hague: Servire 1961). . Breman, Paul, Spirituals (The Hague: Servire 1958). . Brench, C., The Novelists’ Inheritance in French Africa (London: Oxford University Press, London 1967). . Brew, Kwesi, The Shadows of Laughter (London: Longmans, Green and Co. 1968).

397

. Brewer, J. Mason, Dog Ghosts and Other Texas Negro Folk Tales (Austin: University of Texas Press 1957). . Bronkhurst, H.V.P., Among the Hindus and Creoles of British Guyana (London: T. Woolmer 1888). . Brookes, Stella Brewer, Joel Chandler Harris. Folklorist (Athens, Georgia: University of Georgia Press 1950). Handwritten dedication to Rosey Pool from the author, 11/02/1950. . Brooks, Gwendolyn, A Street in Bronzeville (New York: Harper & Brothers 1945). Handwritten dedication to Rosey from ‘Annabelle,’ Christmas 1954. . Brooks, Gwendolyn, Annie Allen (New York: Harper & Brothers 1949). . Brooks, Gwendolyn, Family Pictures (Detroit: Broadside Press 1970). . Brooks, Gwendolyn, In the Mecca (New York: Harper & Row Publishers 1968). . Brooks, Gwendolyn, Riot (Detroit: Broadside Press 1969). . Brooks, Gwendolyn, Selected Poems (New York: Harper & Row Publishers 1963). . Brooks, Gwendolyn, The Bean Eaters (New York: Harper & Brothers 1960). . Brown, Calvin S. (ed.), The Reader’s Companion to World Literature (USA: Holt, Rinehart and Winston 1956). Handwritten dedication to Rosey Pool from Sterling Brown (one of the editors), 04/1963. . Brown, Charlotte Hawkins, The Correct Thing To Do - To Say - To Wear (Boston: The Christopher Publishing House 1948). Handwritten: Palmer Memorial Institute, Sedalia, North Carolina. . Brown, Robert R., Bigger Than Little Rock (London: S.P.C.K. and Seabury Press 1958). . Brown, Roscoe C., ‘Little Charlie Browne’ (Washington, DC: Roscoe C. Brown 1957). Handwritten dedication to Rosey Pool from the author. . Brown, Sterling A., Arthur P. Davis & Ulysses Lee, The Negro Caravan. Writings by American Negroes (New York: The Citadel Press 1941). . Brown, Sterling A., The Negro in American Fiction (Washington, DC: Associates in Negro Folk Education 1937). . Brutus, Dennis, Sirens Knuckles Boots (Ibadan: Mbari 1963). . Burroughs, Margaret Taylor, Whip Me Whop Me Pudding and Other Stories of Riley Rabbit and His Fabulous Friends (Chicago: Praga Press 1966). Handwritten dedication from the author. . Buskes, J.J. Jr., Zuid-Afrika’s Apartheidsbeleid. Onaanvaardbaar (The Hague: Bert Bakker, Daamen N.V. 1955). . Capecia, Mayotte, Je suis martiniquaise (Paris: Editions Corrêa 1948). . Carawan, Guy & Candie Carawan, We Shall Overcome! (New York: Oak Publications 1963). . Carew, Jan, Black Midas (London: Secker & Warburg 1960).

398

. Carew, Jan, Moscow Is Not My Mecca (London: Secker & Warburg 1964). . Carew, Jan, The Wild Coast (London: Ace Books 1961). . Carmichael, Omer & Weldon Jones, The Louisville Story (New York: Simon and Schuster 1957). . Carpentier, Alejo, The Kingdom of This World (London: Victor Gollancz 1967). . Carter, Martin, Poems of Resistance from British Guiana (Georgetown: University of Guiana 1964). . Carter, Martin, Poems of Resistance from British Guiana (Slough, England: Kenion Press 1953). . Cash, W.J., The Mind of The South (New York: Vintage Books 1960). . Cendrars, Blaise, Anthologie nègre (Paris: Corréa 1947). . Cendrars, Blaise, Petits contes negres pour les enfants des blancs (Paris: Jean Vigneau 1946). . Césaire, Aimé, Aimé Césaire. Choix de textes, bibliographie, portraits, facsimiles (Paris: Pierre Seghers 1962). . Césaire, Aimé, Cahier d’un retour au pays natal (Paris: Présence Africaine 1956). . Césaire, Aimé, La Tragédie du roi Christophe (Paris: Présence Africaine 1963). . Césaire, Aimé, Les armes mirauleuses (Paris: Gallimard 1946). . Césaire, Aimé, Return to My Native Land (Harmondsworth, Middlesex: Penguin Books 1969). . Césaire, Aimé, Sonnendolche (Heidelburg: Wolfgang Rothe Verlag 1956). . Césaire, Aimé, Zurück ins Land der Geburt (Frankfurt: Suhrkamp Verlag 1967). . Chalupt, René, George Gershwin. La musicien de la “Rhapsody in Blue” (Paris: Amiot Dumont 1948). . Charters, Samuel B., Jazz New Orleans 1885-1963. An Index to the Negro Musicians of New Orleans (New York: Oak Publications 1963). . Chéry, Christian, La grande fauve (Paris: Editions Domat 1955). . Chinapen, J.W., Albion Wilds (Georgetown, British Guiana: 1961). Handwritten ‘with compliments’ note. . Christensen, Erwin O., Popular Art in the United States (Harmondsworth, Middlesex: Penguin Books 1948). . Clarac, René, Bagamba, negre marron. Roman (Paris: Les Editions de la Nouvelle France 1947). Handwritten dedication on half title page but some of it has been - looks like deliberately - cut out. . Clark, John Pepper, A Reed in the Tide (London: Longmans, Green and Co. 1965). . Clark, John Pepper, Poems (Ibadan: Mbari 1962). . Clark, John Pepper, Song of a Goat (Ibadan: Mbari 1961).

399

. Clark, Kenneth B., Dark Ghetto (New York, Evanston and London: Harper & Row Publishers 1965). . Clark, Kenneth B., Nous, les nègres (Paris: François Maspero 1965). . Clark, Kenneth S. (ed.), The Happy Cowboy and His Songs of Pioneer Days (New York: Paull- Pioneer Music Corp 1934). . Clarke, A.M., Green Magic. A Folk Tale in Verse (Port-of-Spain, Trinidad & Tobago: [unidentified publisher] ca. 1960s). . Clarke, John Henrik, (ed.), American Negro Short Stories (New York: Hill and Wang 1966). . Clarke, John Henrik, Harlem, U.S.A. (Berlin: Seven Seas Books 1964). . Clarke, Sebastian, Talking about Black Art (London: Frank John [ca. 1967]). . Cleaver, Eldridge, Soul on Ice (New York: McGraw-Hill Book Company 1968). . Cohen, Robert, The Color of Man (New York: Random House 1968). . Coleman, Edward Maceo, Creole Voices. Poems in French by Free Men of Color (Washington DC: The Associated Publishers, Inc. 1945). . Conroy, Jack, The Disinherited (New York: Hill and Wang 1963). Handwritten dedication to Rosey Pool from the author on the half title (06/07/1964). . Conton, William, The African (New York: The New American Library 1961). . Cook, Mercer & Stephen E. Henderson, The Militant Black Writer in Africa and the United States (Madison, Milwaukee: The University of Wisconsin Press 1969). . Cooper, Clarence, The Farm (London: New English Library, Anthony Blond 1969). . Cooper, N. (ed.), foreword by Langston Hughes, Freedom School Poetry (Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee 1965). Rosey Pool’s name is written on the front cover in what looks like Langston Hughes’ handwriting. . Courlander, Harold, Negro Folk Music, U.S.A. (New York and London: Columbia University Press 1963). . Crane, Stephen, The Red Badge of Courage and Four Great Stories (New York: Red, Laurel / Dell Publishing 1960). . Cullen, Countee (ed.), Caroling Dusk. An Anthology of Verse by Negro Poets (New York: Harper & Brothers 1927). . Cullen, Countee, Color (New York: Harper & Brothers 1925). . Cullen, Countee, My Lives and How I Lost Them, by Christopher Cat (New York: Harper & Brothers 1942). . Cullen, Countee, The Ballad of the Brown Girl. An Old Ballad Retold (New York: Harper & Brothers 1927). Special edition of 500 Copies issued by ‘Opportunity’ Journal, NYC; no.2/500. . Cullen, Countee, The Black Christ and Other Poems (New York: G.P. Putnam’s Sons 1929).

400

. Culver, Eloise Crosby, Great American Negroes in Verse 1723-1965 (Washington DC: Associated Publishers, Inc. 1966). Handwritten dedication to Rosey Pool from the author. . Dalin, Ebba, (ed.) The Zephyr Book of American Verse (Stockholm: The Continental Books Company 1945). . Damas, L.G., Black-Label. Poèmes (Paris: Gallimard 1956). . Damas, L.G., Pigments (Paris: Présence Africaine 1962). Handwritten dedication to Rosey Pool from the author, 02/1966 . Damas, L.G., Poèmes nègres sur des airs africains (Paris: GLM 1948). Handwritten dedication to Rosey Pool from the author, 27/02/1966 . Damas, L.G., Poètes d’expression française, 1900 – 1945 (Paris: Éditions du Seuil 1947). . Damas, Leon, African Songs of Love, War, Grief and Abuse (Ibadan: Mbari Publication 1961). . Danner, Margaret & Dudley Randall, Poem Counterpoem (Detroit: Broadside Press 1966). Handwritten dedication to Rosey Pool from the authors, 1967. Limited 500 copy run; no 77. . Danner, Margaret, Iron Lace (New York: Poets Press/Kriya Press 1968). Edition of 200 copies. . Dathorne, O.R. & Willfried Feuser (eds.), Africa in Prose (Harmondsworth, Middlesex: Penguin Books 1969). . Dathorne, O.R. (ed.), African Poetry for Schools and Colleges (London: Macmillian 1969). . Davidson, Basil, The Growth of African Civilisation. West Africa 1000-1800 (London: Longmans, Green and Co 1965). . Davie, Emily, Profile of America (New York: Grosset & Dunlap 1960). . Davis, Charles T. & Daniel Walden (eds.), On Being Black. Writings by Afro-Americans from Frederick Douglass to the Present (Greenwich, Connecticut: Fawcett Publications 1970). Handwritten note to Rosey Pool from ‘Owen’ [Dodson], dated 13.05.1970, on inside cover. . Davis, John P. (ed.), The American Negro Reference Book (Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall, Inc. 1966). . Dei-Anang, Michael & Yaw Warren, Ghana Glory. Poems on Ghana and Ghanaian Life (London: Thomas Nelson 1965). . Delafosse, Maurice, L’ame nègre (Paris: Payot 1922). . Delavignette, Robert, Les paysans noirs (Paris: New Editions Stock 1946). . Der amerikanische Neger über sich selbst (Vienna: Verlag Neue Welt 1952). . Dett, R. Nathaniel, Negro Spirituals (London: Blandford Press 1959). . Deutsche Afrika-Gesellschaft, Le Dialogue (Bonn: ca. 1960s). . Dick Gregory. An Interview (Berkeley, California: Academic Publishing 1966). . Dickens, Charles, All The Year Round (1866, 29/07/1865 - 06/01/1866 14 (327 – 350)). Paper glued into upper board: ‘Charles Ratcliffe, Printer, Stationer, Bookseller, Bookbinder. 74 South

401

Castle Street, Liverpool, London: No. 26, Wellington Street; Messrs Chapman and Hall With which is incorporated Household Words.’ . Die Indios steigen von Mixco nieder. Südamerikanische Freiheitsdichtungen (Berlin: Verlag Volk Und Welt 1951). . Diop, David, Coups de pilon. Poèmes (Paris: Présence Africaine 1961). . Dipoko, Mbella Sonne, A Few Nights and Days (London: Longmans, Green and Co. 1966). . Dodson, Owen, When Trees Were Green (New York: Popular Library 1951). Blurred dedication ‘To Rosey’ on first pages. . Dorman, Michael, We Shall Overcome (New York: Dell Publishing 1964). . Doughtry Long, Black Love Black Hope (Detroit: Broadside Press 1971). . Dover, Cedric, American Negro Art (London: Studio 1960). . Du Bois, W.E.B., An A.B.C. of Color (Berlin: Seven Seas Books 1963). . Du Bois, W.E.B., Black Reconstruction in America (New York: S.A. Russell Company 1956). . Du Bois, W.E.B., Darkwater (New York: Schocken Books 1969). . Du Bois, W.E.B., The Black Flame. A Trilogy, V.1 - The Ordeal of Mansart (New York: Mainstream Publishers 1957). Handwritten dedication to Rosey Pool from the author, 04/01/1950. . Du Bois, W.E.B., The World and Africa (New York: International Publishers 1965). . Duberman, Martin B., In White America (Boston: Houghton Mifflin Company / Cambridge: Riverside Press 1964). . Dunbar, Paul Laurence, Folks From Dixie (New York: Dodd, Mead & Company 1898). . Dunbar, Paul Laurence, Lyrics of Love and Laughter (New York: Dodd, Mead & Company, 1906). Handwritten name (obscured). . Dunbar, Paul Laurence, Poems of Cabin and Field (New York: Dodd, Mead & Company 1899). Handwritten dedication to Rosey Pool from George Padmore, London, 28/04/1953. . Dunbar, Paul Laurence, The Complete Poems of Paul Laurence Dunbar (New York: Dodd, Mead & Company 1929). Plate underneath - obscured: From the books of Kather[...]. . Dunbar, Paul Laurence, The Love of Landry (New York: Dodd, Mead & Company 1900). . Dunson, Josh, Freedom in the Air. Song Movements of the 60s (New York: International Publishers 1965). . Durack, Mary, Keep Him My Country (London: Constable 1955). . Edmonds, Helen G., The Negro and Fusion Politics in North Carolina (Chapel Hill: The University of North Carolina Press 1951). . Edwards, Paul, Through African Eyes (London: Cambridge University Press 1966).

402

. Egerton, F.C.C., Angola Without Prejudice (Lisbon: Agency-General for the Oversea Territories 1955). . Einstein, Carl, Negerplastik (München: Wolff 1920). . Ekwensi, Cyprian, An African Night’s Entertainment (Lagos: African Universities Press 1962). . Ekwensi, Cyprian, People of the City (London: Andrew Dakers 1954). Handwritten dedication to Rosey Pool from the author, 16/10/1954. . Ellson, Hal, Rock (New York: Ballantine Books 1955). . Eno-Belinga, M.S., Litterature et musique populaires en Afrique noire (Paris: Cujas 1965). Handwritten note from the author. . Equiano, Olaudah, The Interesting Narrative of the Life of Olaudah Equiano, or Gustavus Vassa, the African. Written by Himself (Halifax: Printed at the Office of J. Nicholson & Co. 1814). . Eseoghene [C. Lindsay Barrett], The Conflicting Eye (London: Paul Breman 1973). . Ethel Waters & Charles Samuels, His Eye is on the Sparrow. An Autobiography (New York: Doubleday & Company 1951). . Evans, Mari, I Am A Black Woman (New York: William Morrow and Company 1970). Handwritten dedication to Rosey by the author, 1970. . Evans, Mari, Where is All the Music? (London: Paul Breman 1968). Handwritten note to Rosey from Paul [Breman]. . Fairbank, Walton, Jim Crow (London: Victor Gollancz 1947). . Fast, Howard, Freedom Road (London: The Bodley Head 1949). . Fast, Howard, Peekskill: USA (Moscow: Foreign Languages Publishing House 1953). . Feldman, Eugene P. Romayn (ed.), Figures in Negro History (Chicago: Museum of Negro History and Art 1964). . Feldman, Eugene Pieter Romayn, W.E.B. DuBois: Voice For Freedom (Chicago: The Museum of Negro History and Art [ca. 1950s]). . Ferguson, Blanche E., Countee Cullen and the Negro Renaissance (New York: Dodd, Mead & Company 1966). . Ferlinghetti, Lawrence, Tentative Description of a Dinner Given To Promote The Impeachment of President Eisenhower (San Francisco: Golden Mountain Press 1958). . Fermor, Patrick Leigh, The Traveller’s Tree (London: John Murray 1951). . Fisher, E., Men Of Two Worlds (London: World Film Publications Limited 1946). . Fitts, Dudley, (ed.) Anthology of Contemporary Latin-American Poetry (USA: New Directions 1947). . Flakoll, Darwin J. & Claribel Alegría (eds.), New Voices of Hispanic America. An Anthology (Boston: Beacon Press 1962).

403

. Fourteen Guianese Poems for Children (Georgetown, British Guiana: Master Printery 1953). . Franklin, Benjamin; Carl Van Doren, Benjamin Franklin’s Autobiographical Writings (London: The Cresset Press 1946). . Franklin, Benjamin; Carl Van Doren, The Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin (New York: Pocket Books, Inc. 1946). . Frazier, E. Franklin, Black Bourgeoisie (New York: Collier Books 1962). . Gabre-Medhin, Tsegaye, Oda-Oak Oracle (London: Oxford University Press 1965). . Gaillard, Jeanne, L’histoire des noirs aux U.S.A. (Paris: Les Cahiers de l’Histoire 1964). . Gaisseau, Pierre-Dominique; translated by Alan Ross, The Sacred Forest. The Fetishist and Magic Rites of the Toma (London: Weidenfeld & Nicolson 1954). . García Lorca, Federico, Poet in New York (New York: Grove Press 1955). . Gbadamosi, Bakare, Ulli Beier & Susanne Wenger, Yoruba Poetry (Ibadan: Ministry of Education 1959). . Gerbrands, A.A., Art as an Element of Culture, Especially in Negro-Africa (Leiden: E.J. Brill 1957). . Gilbert, Will G. & Mr C. Poustochkine, Jazzmuziek. Inleiding tot de volksmuziek der noord- amerikaansche negers. (The Hague: J.P. Kruseman 1952). . Giovanni, Nikki, Night Comes Softly (USA: Medic Press 1970). . Glaspell Susan, Inheritors (New York: Dodd, Mead & Company 1935). . Gloster, Hugh M., Negro Voices in American Fiction (Chapel Hill: The University of North Carolina Press 1948). Handwritten dedication to Rosey Pool from the author. . Goffin, Robert, Louis Armstrong. Le roi du jazz (Paris: Seghers 1947). . Golden, Harry, Mr. Kennedy and the Negroes (Cleveland and New York: The World Publishing Company 1964). . Golden, Harry, Only in America (Cleveland and New York: The World Publishing Company 1958). Handwritten dedication to Rosey E. Pool. . Good, Jack, Hand-Jive at 6.5 (London: Southern Music Publishing Co. 1958). . Green, Paul, In Abraham’s Bosom (London: George Allen & Unwin Ltd. 1929). . Greenway, John, American Folksongs of Protest (New York: A.S. Barnes and Company 1960). Handwritten dedication to Rosey Pool. . Gregory, Dick, From the Back of the Bus (New York: E.P. Dutton & Co. 1962). . Gregory, Dick, Nigger (London: George Allen and Unwin Ltd. 1965). . Grünewald, Matthias, Die Erasmus-Mauritius Tafel (Stuttgart: Reclam 1957). . Guillén, Nicolás, Bitter schmeckt das Zuckerrohr. Gedichte von den Antillen (Berlin: Verlag Volk Und Welt 1952).

404

. Guillén, Nicolás, Élégies antillaises (Paris: Pierre Seghers 1955). . Guillén, Nicolás, La paloma de vuelo popular (Buenos Aires: Editorial Losada, S.A. 1965). . Guillén, Nicolás, Nicolás Guillén (Paris: Pierre Seghers 1964). . Gunther, John, Inside U.S.A. (London: Hamish Hamilton [ca. 1960]). . Haïti Poètes Noirs (Paris: Éditions Du Seuil 1951). . Handy, W.C., Father of the Blues (London: Sidgwick and Jackson 1957). . Hansberry, Lorraine, A Raisin in the Sun. A Drama in Three Acts (London: Methuen 1960). . Hansberry, Lorraine, The Sign in Sidney Brustein’s Window (New York: Random House 1965). . Hansen, Kurt Heinrich, Go Down Moses (Hamburg: Furche-Verlag 1963). . Harris, Joel Chandler, illustrations by J.A. Shepeherd, Nights with Uncle Remus (London: Chatto & Windus 1913). . Harris, Rex & Brian Rust, Recorded Jazz. A Critical Guide (Harmondsworth, Middlesex: Penguin Books 1958). . Hayden, Robert, A Ballad of Remembrance (London: Paul Breman 1962). . Hayden, Robert, Words in the Mourning Time (New York: October House Inc. 1970). . Hearne, John, Voices Under the Window (London: Faber and Faber 1955). . Heffner, Richard D., A Documentary History of the United States (New York: The New American Library 1952). . Henson, Josian, edited by John Lobb, Uncle Tom’s Story of His Life. An Autobiography of the Rev. Josiah Henson (London: ‘Christian Age’ Office 1876). . Hentoff, Nat & Albert McCarthy (eds.), Jazz (New York: Grove Press 1959). . Herring, Robert (ed.), Life and Letters and the London Mercury: West Indies (London: Brendin Pub. Co. 1948). . Hess, Harry, Het leven van Duke Ellington (Rotterdam: De Nieuwe Maasstad 1946). . Heyward, Du Bose, Mamba’s Daughters (Amsterdam: Arbo 1939). . Heyward, Du Bose, Porgy (New York: Penguin Books 1945). . Hill, Clifford S., Black and White in Harmony. The Drama of West Indians in the Big City, from a London Minister’s Notebook (London: Hodder and Stoughton 1958). . Hill, Herbert, Soon, One Morning. New Writing by American Negroes 1940-1962 (New York: Alfred A. Knopf 1965). Handwritten note on inside page to Rosey Pool and Ursel ‘Isa’ Isenburg from ‘Owen’ [Dodson], dated 1965. . Himes, Chester, Couché dans le pain (Paris: Gallimard 1959). . Himes, Chester, Dare-dare (Paris: Gallimard 1959). . Himes, Chester, Hot Day Hot Night (Formerly Blind Man With A Pistol) (New York: Dell Publishing 1970).

405

. Himes, Chester, Il pleut des coups durs (Paris: Gallimard 1958). . Himes, Chester, L’aveugle au pistolet (Paris: Gallimard 1970). . Himes, Chester, La fin d’un primitif (Paris: Gallimard 1956). . Himes, Chester, La reine des pommes (Paris: Gallimard 1958). . Himes, Chester, Le casse de l’Oncle Tom. Retour en Afrique (France: Plon 1964). . Himes, Chester, Ne nous énervons pas! (Paris: Gallimard 1961). . Himes, Chester, Razernij in Harlem (Amsterdam: Born 1967). . Himes, Chester, The Big Gold Dream (London: Panther Books 1968). . Himes, Chester, The Heat’s On (London: Panther Books 1968). . Himes, Chester, The Primitive (New York: Signet Book The New American Library 1956). . Himes, Chester, The Real Cool Killers (New York: Berkley Publishing Corporation 1966). . Himes, Chester, The Third Generation (New York: Signet Book / The New American Library 1964). . Hoagland, Everett, Black Velvet (Detroit: Broadside Press 1970). . Hodges, Frenchy Jolene, Black Wisdom (Detroit: Broadside Press 1971). . Holder, Geoffrey, Black Gods, Green Islands (New York: Doubleday & Company 1959). . Hollo, Anselm, Negro Verse (London: Vista Books 1964). . Hooker, James R., Black Revolutionary (London: Pall Mall Press 1967). . Howard, Robert West (ed.), This is the South (Chicago/New York/San Francisco: Rand McNally & Company 1959). . Hoyt, Edwin P., Paul Robeson (London: Cassell 1968). . Hughes, Langston & Arna Bontemps (eds.), The Poetry of the Negro 1746-1949 (New York: Doubleday & Company 1951). . Hughes, Langston (ed.), An African Treasury. Articles, Essays, Stories, Poems by Black Africans (New York: Crown Publishers 1960). Note on half title page: ‘XIX Hum. Goom.’ . Hughes, Langston (ed.), Poems from Black Africa (Bloomington: Indiana University Press 1963). Handwritten dedication to Rosey and Isa from Langston Hughes, 21/05/1963. . Hughes, Langston (ed.), The Best Short Stories by Negro Writers: An Anthology from 1899 to the present (Boston: Little, Brown and Company 1967). Handwritten dedication to Rosey Pool from Langston Hughes, Christmas 1966, on half title. . Hughes, Langston, A New Song (New York: International Workers’ Order 1938). Title page (and publication details) are missing; photocopied title bound in. Likely bound by Isa Isenburg. . Hughes, Langston, Ask Your Mama. Twelve Moods for Jazz (New York: Alfred A. Knopf 1961). Handwritten dedication to Rosey Pool from ‘her admirers in the Drama Dept.,’ 24/10/1961. Pasted in newspaper review of book.

406

. Hughes, Langston, Dear Lovely Death (New York: The Troutbeck Press 1931). Book is partly photocopied, likely bound by Isa. Original pages are also included; the volume was privately printed - 100 copies. Photocopy of Langston Hughes’ signature included on last page with publication info. . Hughes, Langston, edited by Takeo Hamamoto & Hajime Kijima, One Friday Morning and other stories (Japan: The Eihōsha Ltd. 1960). Handwritten dedication to Rosey Pool from H. Kijima, 06/1965. Content of book in Japanese. . Hughes, Langston, Fields of Wonder (New York: Alfred A. Knopf 1947). . Hughes, Langston, illustrated by Jacob Lawrence, One-Way Ticket (New York: Alfred A. Knopf 1949). . Hughes, Langston, Jim Crow’s Last Stand [Race and Culture Series, No. 2] (New York: Negro Publication Society of America 1943). . Hughes, Langston, Lament for Dark Peoples and Other Poems ([Amsterdam]: [H. van Krimpen] 1944). Note in Dutch, dated 24/07/1958, on first page. ‘This edition... consists of 250 copies. Apart from these 50 copies have been printed on special paper, numbered from 1 - 50. 22.’ Clandestine publication from Second World War. . Hughes, Langston, Laughing to Keep from Crying (New York: Henry Holt and Company 1952). . Hughes, Langston, Lorraine Hansberry & LeRoi Jones [Amiri Baraka], Three Negro Plays (Harmondsworth, Middlesex: Penguin Books 1969). . Hughes, Langston, Margaret Bonds, The Ballad of The Brown King. A Christmas Cantata for Chorus of Mixed Voices (New York: Sam Fox Publishing Company 1961). . Hughes, Langston, Montage of a Dream Deferred (New York: Henry Holt and Company 1951). Handwritten dedication to Rosey Pool from the author, 1952. . Hughes, Langston, New Negro Poets U.S.A. (Bloomington: Indiana University Press 1964). . Hughes, Langston, Poemas. Version Castellana (Buenos Aires: Lautaro 1952). Handwritten dedication from the author to James W. Ivy, 09/1952. . Hughes, Langston, Poems ([CJK - most likely Chinese] 1960). Some translations on pages at rear of book. . Hughes, Langston, Scottsboro Limited (New York: The Golden Stair Press 1932). Book is a photocopy - note on page after title: ‘Bound By Isa [Isenburg].’ . Hughes, Langston, Selected Poems of Langston Hughes (New York: Alfred A. Knopf 1959). . Hughes, Langston, Shakespeare in Harlem (New York: Alfred A. Knopf 1945). . Hughes, Langston, Tambourines to Glory (New York: The John Day Company 1958). Handwritten dedication to Rosey [Pool] from 'Victor' - 12/1958 . Hughes, Langston, The Big Sea (New York: Alfred A. Knopf 1945).

407

. Hughes, Langston, The Book of Negro Humor (New York: Dodd, Mead & Company 1966). . Hughes, Langston, The Dream Keeper and Other Poems (New York: Alfred A. Knopf 1962). Handwritten dedication to Rosey Pool from the author, 09/1962. . Hughes, Langston, The First Book of Rhythms (New York: Franklin Watts, Inc. 1954). . Hughes, Langston, The Panther and the Lash. Poems of Our Times (New York: Alfred A. Knopf 1967). Handwritten dedication to Rosey [Pool] and Isa [Isenburg]: ‘In remembrance of him -- - L, Owen [Dodson].’ . Hurston, Zora Neale, Jonah’s Gourd Vine (London: Duckworth 1934). . Hurston, Zora Neale, Mules and Men (USA: J.B. Lippincott Company 1935). . Hurston, Zora Neale, Seraph on the Suwanee (New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons 1948). . Huxley, Elspeth, Four Guineas (London: The Reprint Society / Chatto & Windus 1955). . Hyppolite, Michelson Paul, Contes dramatiques haitiens (Port-au-Prince, Haiti: Imprimerie de l’etat 1956). . Hyppolite, Michelson Paul, Contes dramatiques haitiens (Port-au-Prince, Haiti: Imprimerie de l’etat ca. 1952). . Iglesias, Sara García, El Jagüey de las Ruinas (Mexico: Ediciones Oasis 1965). Handwritten dedication to Rosey Pool. . Introducing West Africa (London: His Majesty’s Stationery Office 1952). . Isaacs, Edith J. R. (ed.), The Negro in the American Theatre (New York: Theatre Arts, Inc. 1947). Picture of ‘Richard Harrison in The Green Pastures’ sellotaped in. . Isaeva, V.G., Afrikanskie skazki. Kniga dlia chteniia na angliiskom iazyke dlia 7 klassa [African Tales] (Moskva: Prosveshchenie 1964). . Ismail, Ibrahim Ibn, Black, No Sugar (Cairo: Afro-American Artists Promotion Team 1966). Handwritten dedication to Rosey Pool from the author, 09/1967. . Itayemi, Pheban & P. Gurrey, Folk Tales and Fables (Harmondsworth, Middlesex: Penguin Books 1953). . Jahn, Janheinz & John Ramsaran, Approaches to African Literature (Ibadan: Ibadan University Press 1959). . Jahn, Janheinz (ed.), The Black Experience Series 1. 400 Years of Black Literature from Africa and the Americas (Liechtenstein: Kraus-Thomson Organization 1970). . Jahn, Janheinz, A Bibliography of Neo-African Literature from Africa, America and the Caribbean (London: Andre Deutsch 1965). . Jahn, Janheinz, Afrika Erzählt. Erzähler Südlich der Sahara (Frankfurt: Fischer Bücherei 1965). . Jahn, Janheinz, Durch afrikanische Türen (Düsseldorf: Fischer Bücherei 1967). . Jahn, Janheinz, Negro Spirituals (Frankfurt: Fischer Bücherei 1966).

408

. Jahn, Janheinz, Schwarze Ballade (Frankfurt: Fischer Bücherei 1965). . Jahn, Janheinz, Schwarzer Orpheus (Frankfurt: Fischer Bücherei 1960). . Jahn, Janheinz, Schwarzer Orpheus (München: Carl Hanser Verlag 1954). . Jeffers, Lance, My Blackness is the Beauty of This Land (Detroit: Broadside Press 1970). . Jesse, Nico, Porgy and Bess (Utrecht: Bruna 1957). . Joans, Ted, The Hipsters (New York: Corinth Books 1961). . John, Errol, Moon on a Rainbow Shawl (London: Faber and Faber 1958). . John, Frank, Black Songs (London: Longmac 1969). Signed by the author. . Johnson, James Weldon & J. Rosamond Johnson, The Books of American Negro Spirituals (New York: Viking Press 1947). . Johnson, James Weldon, Along This Way (Harmondsworth, Middlesex: Penguin Books 1941). . Johnson, James Weldon, God’s Trobones. Some Negro Sermons in Verse (London: George Allen & Unwin Ltd. 1929). . Johnson, James Weldon, The Books of American Negro Poetry (New York: Harcourt, Brace and Company 1931). Handwritten dedication to Rosey Pool. . Johnston, Percy E., Afro America Philosophies: Selected Readings, From Jupiter Hammon to Eugene C. Holmes, (Upper Montclair, New Jersey: Montclair State College Press 1970). Handwritten note from the author on first page. . Jones, Eldred, Othello’s Countrymen: The African in English Renaissance Drama (London: Oxford University Press 1965). . Jones, Le Roi, Preface to a Twenty Volume Suicide Note (New York: Totem Press in association with Corinth Books 1961). . Jones, Le Roi, Tales (London: Macgibbon & Kee 1969). . Jones, Le Roi, The Dead Lecturer (New York: Grove Press 1964). . Jones, Le Roi, The System of Dante’s Hell (New York: Grove Press 1965). . Jones, LeRoi, Blues People (New York: William Morrow and Company 1963). . Jordan, LeRoy & Russell Atkins (eds.), The Free Lance. A Magazine of Poetry and Prose (USA: The Free Lance Press 1968). Typescript signed note to Rosey Pool from the editors thanking her for her help; newspaper cutting about the death of one of the magazine’s co-editors. Rosey Pool contributed a piece to this issue (pp. 30 - 31). . Kaczér, Illés, Ikongo (Amsterdam: N.V. De Arbeiderspers 1938). . Kalombo, Vidye, Gaston Burssens, 12 Nigger Songs (Antwerp: De Sikkel 1946). . Kamm, Josephine, African Challenge (London, Edinburgh, Paris, Melbourne, Toronto and New York: Thomas Nelson and Sons Ltd. 1946).

409

. Kanza, Thomas R., Propos D’un Congolais naïf (Brussels: Les Amis de ‘Presence Africaine’ 1959). . Kate, Rolf ten & Paul Breman, et al., 6 Over Jazz (Zaandijk: Heijnis 1958). . Kaufman, Bob, A Bobmunist Manifesto (Francisco: City Lights Books 1959). . Kaufman, Bob, Second April (San Francisco: City Lights Books 1959). . Kennedy, Charles O’Brien (ed.), A Treasury of American Ballads. Gay, Naughty and Classic (London: Arco Publishers 1957). . Kennedy, R. Emmet, Mellows. A Chronicle of Unknown Singers (New York: Albert and Charles Boni 1925). . Kennedy, Stetson, I Rode With The Ku Klux Klan (London: Arco Publishers Limited 1954). . Kerlin, Robert Thomas, Negro Poets and Their Poems (Washington, DC: Associated Publishers, Inc. 1923). . Khair-Eddine, M., Nausee noir (Paris: Royet-Journoud 1964). . Killens, John Oliver, Slaves (New York: Pyramid Books 1969). . Killens, John Oliver,And Then We Heard The Thunder (New York: Alfred A. Knopf 1963). Handwritten dedication to Rosey by the author, 1965. . King, Martin Luther, Stride Toward Freedom (New York: Ballantine Books 1958). . Knight, Etheridge, Poems from Prison (Detroit: Broadside Press 1968). . Kolb, Sylvia & John, A Treasury of Folk Songs (New York: Bantam Books 1948). . Kom, Anton de, Strijden ga ik (Leiden: Stichting tot behoud en stimulatie van Surinaamse Kunst, Kultuur en Wetenschap], [ca. 1969]). Includes handwritten dedication to Rosey Pool, dated 08/07/1969. . Krieger, Kurt & Gerdt Kutscher, Westafrikanische Masken (Berlin: Museum für Völkerkunde 1960). . L’Art Nègre. Sources évolution expansion (Dakar: Reunion des Musees Nationaux 1966). . L’Homme de Couleur (Paris: Libraries Plon 1939). . La Guma, Alex, A Walk in the Night (London: Heinemann Educational Books Ltd. 1968). . La Guma, Alex, And A Threefold Cord (Berlin: Seven Seas Books 1964). . La Rose, Antony, Foundations. A Book of Poems (London, Port of Spain: New Beacon Publications 1966). Handwritten dedication to the author. . La Rose, John (ed.), New Beacon Reviews. Collection One (London: New Beacon Books 1968). Note on front cover in Rosey Pool’s writing ‘See p.17.’ . Lang, Jain, Il Jazz (Milan: Mondadori 1950). . Lanham, Peter, Blanket Boy’s Moon (London: Collins 1953).

410

. Laszlo, Andreas E., Doctors, Drums and Dances (New York: Hanover House, Garden City 1955). . Lavallée, Joseph, M. de L. ..., ancien Capitaine au régiment de Bretagne, Le Nègre Comme Il y a peu de blancs (Paris: Buisson 1791). . Lavedan, Pierre, Histoire de Paris (Paris: Presses Univeritaires de France 1967). . Lawrence, Jacob, Harriet and the Promised Land (New York: Windmill Books, Simon & Schuster Inc. 1968). Handwritten dedication from the author. . Lee, Don L., Dynamite Voices 1. Black Poets of the 1960’s (Detroit: Broadside Press 1971). . Lee, Don L., Think Black! (Detroit: Broadside Press 1968). . Lee, Don L., We Walk The Way of The New World (Detroit: Broadside Press 1970). . Lengellé, Maurice, L’esclavage (Paris: Presses Univeritaires de France 1955). . Leslau, Charlotte, Wolf Leslau & Jeff Hill, African Proverbs (New York: Peter Pauper Press 1962). . Leuzinger, Elsy, Art of the World: Africa. The Art of the Negro Peoples (London: Methuen 1960). . Lewis, W. Arthur, Michael Scott, Martin Wight & Colin Legum, Attitude to Africa (Harmondsworth, Middlesex: Penguin Books 1951). . Lewisohn, Ludwig, The Story of American Literature (New York: The Modern Library, Random House Publishing 1939). . Lichtveld, Lou & C.F.A. Bruijning, Suriname (Amsterdam: N.V. Amsterdamsche Book - En Courant Mij 1957). . Lilje, Hans, Kurt Heinrich Hansen & Siegfried Schmidt-Joos, Das Buch der Spirituals und Gospel Songs (Hamburg: Furche-Verlag 1961). . Lincoln, C. Eric, The Black Muslims in America (Boston: Beacon Press 1961). . Linderman, Frank B. & Winold Reiss, Blackfeet Indians (USA: Great Northern Railway 1935). . Littlejohn, David, Black on White. A Critical Survey of Writing by American Negroes (New York: Grossman Publishers 1966). . Lloyd, A.L., Coaldust Ballads (London: Workers’ Music Association 1952). . Locke, Alain (ed.), The New Negro. An Interpretation (New York: Albert and Charles Boni 1925). . Loeb, Charles H., The Future Is Yours (Cleveland, Ohio: The Future Outlook League, Inc. 1947). . Logan, Rayford Whittingham, The Negro and the Post War World: A Primer (Washington DC: The Minorities Publishers 1945). . Lomax, Alan, Mister Jelly Roll. The Fortunes of Jelly Roll Morton, New Orleans Creole and “Inventor of Jazz” (London: Cassell 1952).

411

. Lomax, Louis E., The Negro Revolt (New York: The New American Library 1963). . London Council of Social Service, Commonwealth Children in Britain (London: National Council of Social Service 1967). . Lorde, Audre, Cables to Rage (London: Paul Breman 1970). . Lormian, Henri, L’Art Malgache (Paris: Boccard 1934). . Love, Rose Leary (ed.), A Collection of Folklore for Children in Elementary School and at Home (New York: Vantage Press 1964). . Lowe, Paul E. (ed.), Minstrel Guide and Joke Book (Baltimore, Maryland: L & M Oppenheimer 1912). . Lowenfels, Walter (ed.), Poets of Today. A New American Anthology (New York: International Publishers 1964). . Lubin, Maurice A., Poesies haitiennes (Rio de Janeiro: Caso do Estudante do Brasil 1956). Handwritten dedication to Rosey Pool from the author, 18/05/1963. . Luthuli, Albert, Let My People Go (Collins: Fontana Books 1963). . Lyle, Katie Letcher, Maude Rubin & May Miller, Lyrics of Three Women (Baltimore, Maryland: Linden Press 1964). Handwritten dedication to Rosey Pool from May Miller, one of the authors, dated March 1964. . Macinnes, Colin, City of Spades (London: Macgibbon & Kee 1957). . Macpherson, K., Borderline. A Pool Film with Paul Robeson (London: The Mercury Press 1930). . Madgett, Naomi Long, Star by Star: Poems (Detroit: Harlo Press 1965). Handwritten dedication to Rosey by the author, 23/10/1965. . Mainstream. New Negro voices (New York: Masses & Mainstream Inc. 1963). . Mandela, Nelson, No Easy Walk to Freedom (London: Heinemann Educational Books Ltd. 1965). . Markowitz, Arthur, With Uplifted Tongue (South Africa: Central News Agency Limited [undated]). . Marsh, J.B.T., The Story of the Jubilee Singers With Their Songs (Cleveland, Ohio: The Cleveland Printing and Publishing Co. 1892). . Marshall, Herbert, Mildred Stock, Ira Aldridge: The Negro Tragedian (London: Rockliff 1958). . Marshall, Paule, Brown Girl, Brownstones (New York: Random House 1959). . Martin, John Bartlow, The Deep South Says Never (New York: Ballantine Books 1957). . Maunick, Edouard J., Les Manéges de la mer (Paris: Présence Africaine 1964). Handwritten dedication/note to Rosey Pool from the author, 1966. . Maurice, Albert, Afrikaanse Kunsten en Moderne Wereld (Brussels: Bij de Vissende Kat 1951). . Mayfield, Julian, The Long Night (London: Four Square Books 1960).

412

. McCullers, Carson, Reflections in a Golden Eye (Harmondsworth, Middlesex: Penguin Books 1967). . McCullers, Carson, The Member of the Wedding (London: The Cresset Press 1946). . McCullough, N. Verrle, The Other Side of Hell (New York: Exposition Press 1952). . McDarrah, Fred W., Greenwich Village (New York: Corinth Books 1963). . McFarlane, J.E. Clare (ed.), A Treasury of Jamaican Poetry (London: University of London Press 1949). . McKay, Claude, Banjo. A Story without a Plot (New York: Harper & Brothers 1929). Clipping covered by plate; address of ‘The Book Shop’ NJ pasted in back. . McKay, Claude, John Dewey, & Max Eastman, Selected Poems of Claude McKay (New York: Bookman Associates 1953). . McKinney, Bessie Walton, Life and Light. Meditations in Poetry (Detroit: Bessie Walton McKinney 1958). . Meine dunklen Hände. Moderne Negerlyrik in Original und Nachdichtung (München: Nymphenburger Verlagshandlung 1953). . Mélanges. . Mendelsohn, Erich, Amerika. Bilderbuch eines Architekten (Berlin: Rudolf Mosse Buchverlag 1928). . Meredith, James, Three Years In Mississppi (Bloomington: Indiana University Press 1966). . Merriam, Eve, Montgomery, Alabama, Money, Mississippi and Other Places (New York: Cameron Associates 1956). . Métraux, Alfred, Le Vaudou Haïtien (Paris: Gallimard 1958). . Mezzrow, Mezz & Bernard Wolfe, Really the Blues (New York: Dell Publishing 1946). . Minstel Memories. The Story of Burnt Cork Minstrelsy in Great Britain from 1836 to 1927 (London: Alston Rivers Ltd. 1928). . Mistral, Gabriela, translated by Langston Hughes, Selected Poems of Gabriela Mistral (Bloomington: Indiana University Press 1957). . Mitchell, Glenford E. & William H. Peace III (eds.), The Angry Black South (New York: Corinth Books 1962). . Mittelholzer, Edgar, En welke is onze zonde (Amsterdam: Em. Querido 1953). . Mittelholzer, Edgar, Sylvia (London: New English Library 1968). . Monti, Franco, African Masks (London: Paul Hamlyn 1969). . Moon, Bucklin, The Darker Brother (New York: Second Printing Bantam Books 1949). . Moore, Bai T., Ebony Dust ([unknown location]: Monrovia Moore 1963). . Moore, Gerald, Seven African Writers (London: Oxford University Press 1962).

413

. Moore, Geraldine, Behind the Ebony Mask (Birmingham, Alabama: Southern University Press 1961). Handwritten dedication. . Morand, Paul, translation Hamish Miles, Black Magic (London: William Heinemann Ltd. 1929). . Moravia, Charles, Roses et Camélias: poesies (Port-au-Prince: Imprimerie Madame F. Smith 1903). . Morisseau, Roland, Germinations d'espoir (Port-au-Prince: Imprimerie N.A. Theodore 1962). . Morisseau-Leroy, F., Diacoute (Deschamps, Port au Prince 1953). . Morris, James C., From a Tin-Mouthed God to His Brass-Eared Subjects. “A is For Aphorism” (New York: Greenwich Book Publishers 1966). Handwritten note to Rosey from the author, 08/1967. . Morris, Tina (ed.), Victims of Our Fear (Blackburn, England: Screeches Publication [ca. 1960s]). . Morse, Jim, Folk Songs of the Caribbean (New York: Bantam Books 1958). . Motley, Williard, Knock On Any Door (New York: The New American Library 1954). . Mphahlele, Ezekiel (ed.), African Writing Today (Harmondsworth, Middlesex: Penguin Books 1967). . Mphahlele, Ezekiel, The African Image (London: Faber and Faber 1962). . Mphahlele, Ezekiel, The Living and Dead and Other Stories (Ibadan: Ministry of Education 1961). . Muensterberger, W., Lyriek der natuurvolken (Arnhem: Van Loghum Slaterus 1947). . Muntslag, F.H.J., Tembe (Amsterdam: Prins Bernhard Fonds 1966). Signed by the collaborator. . Murphy, Beatrice M., Love Is A Terrible Thing (New York: The Hobson Book Press 1945). . Murray, Tom, Folk Songs of Jamaica (London: Oxford University Press 1951). . Mustapha, Mukhtarr, Thorns and Thistles (London: Paul Breman 1971). . Nigeria in Costume (Lagos: The Shell Company of Nigeria Limited 1960). Signed to Rosey Pool. . Nigeria, Federal Ministry of Information, Musique de notre terre (Lagos: Federal Ministry of Information 1966). . Nkosi, Lewis, Home and Exile (London: Longmans, Green and Co 1965). . Nkosi, Lewis, The Rhythm of Violence (London: Oxford University Press 1964). . Noble, Peter, The Negro in Films (London: Skelton Robinson 1947). . Nouvelle Somme De Poésie Du Monde Noir (Paris: Présence Africaine 1966). Book has been rebound; bibliographical info missing.

414

. Nussbaum, Anna, Afrika Singt (Vienna & Leipzig: Speidel 1929). . Nzekwu, Onuora, Wand of Noble Wood (New York: The New American Library 1963). . Ojike, Mbonu, My Africa (London: Blandford Press 1955). . Okigbo, Christopher, Limits (Ibadan: Mbari 1964). . Osadebay, Dennis Chukude, Africa Sings (Ilfracombe: Arthur H. Stockwell 1952). . Ottley, Roi, Black Odyssey (London: John Murray 1949). . Ottley, Roi, New World A-Coming (Cleveland and New York: The World Publishing Company 1945). . Ottley, Roi, No Green Pastures (London: John Murray 1952). . Ottley, Roi, White Marble Lady (New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux 1965). . Our Drama (Lagos: Federal Ministry of Information 1966). . Page, Thomas Nelson, Social Life in Old Virginia Before the War (New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons 1910). . Palfi, Marion, Suffer Little Children (New York: Oceana Publications 1952). . Parkes, Frank Kobina, Songs From The Wilderness (London: University of London Press 1965). . Parny, Évariste, Chansons Madécasses (Paris: La Haye 1948). . Parrinder, Geoffrey, African Mythology (London: Paul Hamlyn 1967). . Paton, Alan, Denn Sie Sollen Getröstet Werden (Frankfurt: Fischer Bücherei 1956). . Paton, Alan, Hope For South Africa (London: Pall Mall Press 1958). . Paton, Alan, Too Late The Phalarope, 1958, Panther Books, Jonathan Cape, London . Paul, Elliot, That Crazy Music. The Story of North American Jazz (London: Frederick Muller Limited 1957). . Peck, James, Freedom Ride (New York: Simon and Schuster 1962). . Perkins, Eugene, Black Is Beautiful (Chicago: Free Black Press 1968). Two handwritten dedications on title page. . Petry, Ann, Country Place (London: Michael Joseph 1948). . Petry, Ann, The Girl Called Moses: The Story of Harriet Tubman (London: Methuen 1960). . Petry, Ann, The Narrows (London: Victor Gollancz 1954). . Petry, Ann, The Street (London: Michael Joseph 1947). Contains pasted in cut outs of articles about the author in front pages. . Phelps, Anthony, Présence: Poème (Haiti: Art Graphique Press 1961). . Pierre-Louis, Ulysse, Sortilèges Afro-Haïtiens (Port-au-Prince, Haiti: Imprimerie de l’etat 1961). . Pieterse, Cosmo, Seven South African Poets (London: Heinemann Educational Books Ltd. 1971).

415

. Pittman, Evelyn LaRue, Rich Heritage. Songs About American Negro Heroes (Ohio: Harlow Publishing 1944). Handwritten note from the author. . Pool, Rosey E. & Paul Breman (eds.), Ik zag hoe zwart ik was (The Hague: Daamen 1958). Probably Rosey Pool’s own copy. There are autographs throughout - often on the poets’ pages - from the authors of the poems, as well as handwritten poems; typed memo in front cover; pasted in newspaper articles mentioning the book. . Porter, Dorothy B. (ed.), A Catalogue of the African Collection in The Moorland Foundation Howard University Library (Washington, DC: Howard University Press 1958). . Porter, Dorothy B., The Negro in the United States: A Selected Bibliography (Washington: Library of Congress 1970). . Porter, J.A., Ten Afro-American Artists of the Ninteenth Century (Washington, DC: The Gallery of Art, Howard University 1967). Handwritten dedication to Rosey Pool. . Posy, Bonnard, Roussan Camille. Le Poète D'Assaut A La Nuit (Port-au-Prince: Imprimerie des Antilles 1963). . Premier festival mondial des arts nègres (Premier festival mondial des arts nègres 1966). . Randall, Dudley (ed.), Black Poetry (Detroit: Broadside Press 1969). . Randall, Dudley, More to Remember. Poems of Four Decades (Chicago: Third World Press 1971). Handwritten dedication to Rosey Pool from the author, 11/10/1971. . Randall, James, Jr., Don’t Ask Me Who I Am (Detroit: Broadside Press 1970). . Raven, John, Blues for Momma and other Low Down Stuff (Detroit: Broadside Press 1971). . Redding, J. Saunders, Stranger and Alone (New York: Abridged Popular Library 1950). . Reed, John & Clive Wake, A Book of African Verse (London: Heinemann Educational Books Ltd. 1964). . Reid, Victor Stafford, New Day (New York: Alfred A. Knopf 1949). . Reid, Victor Stafford, The Leopard (New York: The Viking Press 1958). . Rensburg, Patrick van, Guilty Land (Harmondsworth, Middlesex: Penguin Books 1962). . Rive, Richard (ed.), Quartet. New Voices from South Africa (London: Heinemann Educational Books Ltd. 1965). . Rive, Richard, African Songs (Berlin: Seven Seas Books 1963). . Rivers, Conrad Kent, The Still Voice of Harlem (London: Paul Breman 1968). . Rivers, Conrad Kent, These Black Bodies and this Sunburnt Face (Cleveland, Ohio: First Free Lance Press 1962). Handwritten note to Rosey Pool from the author. . Rogers, J. Overton, Blues and Ballads of a Black Yankee (New York: Exposition Press 1965). . Rollins, Charlemae Hill, They Showed The Way (New York: Thomas Y. Crowell Company 1964).

416

. Rollins, Charlemae, We Build Together (Revised Edition). A Reader’s Guide to Negro Life and Literature for Elementary and High School Use (Chicago: National Council of Teachers of English 1948). Handwritten dedication to Rosey Pool from the author. . Roumain, Jacques, Dauwdruppels op Haïti (Amsterdam: Uitgeverij Pegasus 1950). . Roumain, Jacques, Gouverneurs de la Rosée (Paris: La Bibliothèque Française 1944). . Roumain, Jacques, Herr über den Tau (Hamburg: Rowohlt 1950). . Rouzier, Mona, Sur les vieux themes (Port-au-Prince, Haiti: Imprimerie N.A. Theodore 1958). . Roy, Claude, Arts Sauvages (Paris: Robert Delpire 1957). Happy Birthday note on two cards, dated 1.5.58, sellotaped. . Royal Tropical Institute (Amsterdam), Rotstekeningen Afrika (Amsterdam: Royal Tropical Institute 1952). . Royer, Louis-Charles, La Maitresse Noire (Paris: Editions de France 1928). . Ruark, Robert, Something of Value (New York: Doubleday & Company 1955). . Rubin, Leslie, This Is Apartheid (London: Victor Gollancz Ltd. 1959). . Rutherford, Peggy, Darkness and Light. An Anthology of African Writing (Johannesburg: Drum Publications 1958). . Ryan, Isobel, Black Man’s Town (London: Jonathan Cape 1953). . Sadeek, Sheik M., Dreams and Reflections: A Collection of Poems (Newtown, Guyana: Sheik M. Sadeek 1969). . Sadeek, Sheik M., Namaste (Guyana: Richard A. Noble 1965). . Salkey, Andrew, Drought (London: Oxford University Press 1966). . Salkey, Andrew, Earthquake (London: Oxford University Press 1965). . Salkey, Andrew, Hurricane (London: Oxford University Press 1964). . Salkey, Andrew, Riot (London: Oxford University Press 1967). Handwritten dedication from the author. . Salkey, Andrew, The Shark Hunters (London: Thomas Nelson 1966). Handwritten dedication from the author. . Sanchez, Sonia, We A BaddDDD People (Detroit: Broadside Press 1970). . Santa Cruz, Nicomedes, Decimas (Lima: Libreria-Editorial Juan Mejia Baca 1960). . Sarif Easmon, R., Dear Parent and Ogre (London: Oxford University Press 1964). . Savage, Horace C., Life and Times of Bishop Isaac Lane (Nashville: National Publication Company 1958). Handwritten dedication to Rosey E. Pool. . Savage, Joan, Hurray for Bobo (Chicago: Children’s Press, Inc. 1947). . Schoener, Allon (ed.), Harlem On My Mind: Cultural Capital of Black America 1900-1968 (New York: Random House 1968).

417

. Schulte Nordholt, J.W., translation H.B. van Wijngaarden, The People That Walk In Darkness (London: Burke Publishing Company 1960). . Schumann, Wolfgang, Flammende Insel im Ozean. Ein biographischer Roman um Toussaint L’Ouverture (Leipzig: Paul List 1953). . Scribes, The, Sing, Laugh, Weep: A Book of Poems (St Louis Press Publishing 1944). . Segal, Ronald, The Tokolosh (London: Sheed & Ward 1960). . Senghor, Léopold Sédar & Janheinz Jahn, Tam-Tam Schwarz: Gesänge vom Senegal (Heidelberg: Wolfgang Rothe Verlag 1955). . Senghor, Léopold Sédar, Anthologie de la nouvelle poésie nègre et malgache de langue française (Paris: Presses Univeritaires de France 1969). . Senghor, Léopold Sédar, Botschaft Und Anruf: Sämtliche Gedichte (München: Carl Hanser Verlag 1963). . Senghor, Léopold Sédar, Éthiopiques: poèmes (Paris: Éditions Du Seuil 1956). . Senghor, Léopold Sédar, L.S. Senghor: Poète Sénégalais (Paris: Fernand Nathan 1964). . Senghor, Léopold Sédar, Léopold Sédar Senghor (Paris: Pierre Seghers 1961). . Senghor, Léopold Sédar, Nocturnes: Poèmes (Paris: Éditions Du Seuil 1961). . Seton, Marie, Paul Robeson (London: Dennis Dobson 1958). . Seymour, A.J., Window on The Caribbean (British Guiana: F. A. Persick Ltd. 1952). . Seymour, Arthur J., Magnet Poems (Guyana: [ca. 1950]). . Shore, Herbert L. & Megchelina Shore-Bos (eds.), Come Back, Africa! (Berlin: Seven Seas Books 1968). . Silber, Irwin (ed.), Lift Every Voice! The Second People’s Song Book (USA: Sing Out 1957). . Simenon, Georges, Le Mort De Belle (Paris: Presses De La Cité 1952). . Simenon, Georges, Le Nègre (Paris: Presses De La Cité 1957). . Simmons, Herbert, Corner Boy (Boston: Houghton Mifflin Co. / Cambridge: Riverside Press 1957). . Sinclair, Upton, Boston (London: T. Werner Laurie Ltd. 1929). . Smedts, Matthew, No Tobacco No Hallelujah (London: William Kimber 1955). . Smith, Huston (ed.), The Search For America (Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall, Inc. 1959). . Smith, James L., Autobiography of James L. Smith (Norwich: Press of the Bulletin Company 1881). Handwritten: Amos Collins, Westerly. . Smith, Lillian, Now Is The Time (New York: Dell Publishing 1955). . Smith, Lillian, The Journey (London: The Cresset Press 1955). . Smith, William Gardner, Last of the Conquerors (New York: Farrar, Straus and Company 1948).

418

. Socé, Ousmane, Contes et légendes d’afrique noire (Paris: Nouvelles Editions Latines 1962). . Soyinka, Wole, A Dance of the Forests (London: Oxford University Press 1963). . Soyinka, Wole, Kongi’s Harvest (London: Oxford University Press 1967). . Soyinka, Wole, The Lion and the Jewel (London: Oxford University Press 1963). . Soyinka, Wole, The Road (London: Oxford University Press 1965). . Spectacle Féerique de Gorée (Paris: Impressions André Rousseau 1966). . Steichen, Edward, prologue by Carl Sandburg, The Family of Man. An Exhibition of Creative Photography, Dedicated to the Dignity of Man, with Examples from 68 Countries, Conceived and Executed by Edward Steichen (New York: Museum of Modern Art 1955). . Stern, Philip Van Doren (ed.), The Life and Writings of Abraham Lincoln (New York: The Modern Library, Random House Publishing 1940). . Still, William Grant & Langston Hughes, Troubled Island. An Opera in Three Acts (New York: Leeds Music Corporation 1949). Handwritten dedication from Langston Hughes. . Stowe, Harriet Beecher a.o., Autographs for Freedom (London: Sampson Low, Son & Co; and John Cassell, Ludgate Hill 1853). . Stowe, Harriet Beecher, The Key to Uncle Tom’s Cabin. Presenting the Original Facts and Documents upom which the Story is Founded. Together with Corroborative Statements Verifying the Truth of the Work (London: Clarke, Beeton and Co. 1853). . Stowe, Harriet Beecher, Uncle Tom’s Cabin (London: Ward, Lock & Bowden, Limited ca. 1852). . Stowe, Henriette Beecher, La Case du Père Tom, ou Vie Des Nègres en Amérique (Paris: Barba 1953). . Student Council of the College of Liberal Arts, Howard University, Program March 13, 1962: Student Council Citation to Professor E. Franklin Frazier (Washington DC: Howard University Press 1962). . Talley, Thomas W., Negro Folk Rhymes: Wise and Otherwise (New York: The Macmillan Company 1922). . Taylor, John, Afrikanische Passion: The Passion In Africa (München: Kaiser Verlag 1962). . Tead, Diana & Jane Eakin Kleiman, What is Race? (Paris: Department of Mass Communication of Unesco 1952). . The ART Gallery Magazine: Afro-American issue, Vol. 11, No. 7 (April 1968). . Thoby-Marcelin, Philippe & Pierre Marcelin, The Pencil of God (London: Victor Gollancz 1951).

419

. Tolson, Melvin B., The Harlem Gallery, Book 1: The Curator (New York: Twayne Publishers, Inc. 1965). Handwritten dedication to Rosey Pool from the author, dated 1965, covered by library card. . Tong, Raymond, Figures in Ebony (London: Cassell 1958). . Tooley, Sarah A., Life of Harriet Beecher Stowe, Told for Boys and Girls (London: Sampson Low, Marston and Company Ltd. 1891). . Tracey, Hugh, “Lalela Zulu.” 100 Zulu Lyrics (Johannesburg: African Music Society 1948). . Trent-Johns, Altona, Play Songs of The Deep South (Washington DC: The Associated Publishers, Inc. 1944). . Trotman, Donald (ed.), Voices of Guyana (Newtown, Guyana: Sheik M. Sadeek 1968). . Turner, Darwin T. (ed.) Black American Literature Essays (Columbus, Ohio: Charles E. Merrill Publishing Company 1969). . Turner, Darwin T. (ed.) Black American Literature Poetry (Columbus, Ohio: Charles E. Merrill Publishing Company 1969). . Turner, Lorenzo Dow, Africanisms in the Gullah Dialect (Chicago: University of Chicago Press 1949). . Tutuola, Amos, Der Palmweintrinker. Ein Marchen von der Goldkuste (Heidelburg: Wolfgang Rothe Verlag). . Tutuola, Amos, The Palm-Wine Drinkard and his Dead Palm-Wine Tapster in the Deads’ Town (London: Faber and Faber 1962). . Twain, Mark, Life on the Mississippi (New York: Bantam Books 1945). . Twain, Mark, The Adventures of Tom Sawyer (Cleveland and New York: The World Publishing Company 1946). . Underwood, Leon, Bronzes of West Africa (London: Alec Tiranti 1949). . Underwood, Leon, Figures in Wood of West Africa (London: Alec Tiranti 1951). . Underwood, Leon, Masks of West Africa (London: Alec Tiranti 1952). . Van Vechten, Carl, Nigger Heaven (Leipzig: Bernhard Tauchnitz 1928). Handwritten dedication to Rosey Pool from the author, dated July 1954. . Vandercook, John W., Black Majesty (New York: cket Books, Inc.1952). . Verger, Pierre, Bahia de tous les poètes (Lausanne: Éditions Clairefontaine 1955). . Verse and Voice: A Festival of Poetry (Poetry Book Society 1966). . Vianen, Bea, Sarnami, hai (Amsterdam: Em. Querido 1969). . Voices of Ghana: Literary Contributions to the Ghana Broadcasting System, 1955-57 (Accra: Ministry of Information and Broadcasting 1958).

420

. Wake, Clive (ed.), An Anthology of African and Malagasy Poetry in French (London: Oxford University Press 1965). . Walcott, Derek, In A Green Night. Poems 1948-1960 (London: Jonathan Cape 1962). . Walrond, Eric, Tropic Death (New York: Boni & Liveright 1926). . Washington, Booker T., Up From Slavery (New York: Doubleday, Page & Co 1901). Handwritten name and date [unreadable]; 2 leaf, 3 page manuscript letter pasted in on half title page. . Watkins, Sylvestre C. (ed.), Anthology of American Negro Literature (New York: The Modern Library / Random House Publishing 1944). . Wea Teba, The Book of Hymns. Selected Verses from the Protestant Episcopal Church (New York: LeMere Music Publishers 1959). . White, Charles & Sidney Finkelstein, Charles White: Ein Künstler Amerikas (Dresden: VEB Verlag Der Kunst 1955). . Whitman, Albery A., Twasinta’s Seminoles, or, Rape of Florida (St. Louis: Nixon-Jones Printing Co. 1890). . Wiener, Leo, Africa and the Discovery of America (Philadelphia, PA: Innes & Sons 1922). . Williams, Denis, Image and Idea In The Arts of Guyana (Georgetown, Guyana: The National History and Arts Council, Ministry of Information 1969). . Williams, John A. & Charles F. Harris (eds.), Amistad 1 (New York: Random House 1971). Handwritten dedication to Rosey E. Pool. . Williams, John A. & Charles F. Harris (eds.), Amistad 2 (New York: Random House 1971). . Williams, R. O., Miss Williams’ Cookery Book (London: Longmans, Green and Co 1957). . Wilson, Neill C., The Freedom Song (New York: Henry Holt and Company 1955). . Woodward, C. Vann, The Strange Career of Jim Crow (New York: A Galaxy Book 1957). . Work, John W., American Negro Songs and Sprituals (New York: Bonanza Books 1940). . Wouters, Herman, Zwart Afrika (Amsterdam: Em. Querido 1959). . Wright, Richard, Lawd Today (New York: Walker and Company 1963). . Wright, Richard, Uncle Tom’s Children (Cleveland and New York: The World Publishing Company 1946). . Writers’ Committee of the Great Cities School Improvement Program of the Detroit Public Schools, Play With Jimmy (Chicago: Follett Publishing Company 1962). . Yannick Brunoghe, Big Bill Blues (London: The Jazz Book Club 1955). . Yeates, Mary, Discrimination Against Coloured People (London: W.F.T.U. Publications Ltd [ca. 1951]). . Yerby, Frank, Floodtide (London: William Heinemann 1951).

421

ABBREVIATIONS

A&M Alabama Agricultural and Mechanical College [now University] AJC Arbeiders Jeugd Centrale / Labor Youth Central AMSAC American Society of African Culture AVRO Algemene Vereniging Radio Omroep / General Association of Radio Broadcasting BBC British Broadcasting Corporation BRAC Bond van Religieuze Anarcho-Communisten / Association of Religious Anarcho- Communists COBRA Avant-garde art movement (1948-1951) based in Copenhagen (Co), Brussels (Br), and Amsterdam (A). COC Cultuur- en Ontspannings Centrum / Dutch organization for LGBT people CORE Congress of Racial Equality CPH Communistische Partij Holland / Communist Party Holland CPN Communistische Partij van Nederland / Communist Party of the Netherlands EHRI European Holocaust Research Infrastructure GICOL Gemeentelijke Inhaalcursus voor Ondergedoken Leerlingen / Municipal Catch-Up Course for Pupils in Hiding HBCUs Historically Black Colleges and Universities IISH Internationaal Instituut voor Sociale Geschiedenis / International Institute of Social History (Amsterdam) IvAO Instituut voor Arbeiders Ontwikkeling / Institute for Worker Development J.M. Je Maintiendrai (Dutch resistance newspaper) JHM Jewish Historical Museum Amsterdam / Joods Historisch Museum JHM Joods Historisch Museum / Jewish Historical Museum, Amsterdam KJVD Kommunistischer Jugendverband Deutschlands / Young Communist League of Germany KPD Kommunistische Partei Deutschlands / Communist Party Germany KRO Katholieke Radio Omroep / Catholic Radio Broadcasting NAACP National Association for the Advancement of Colored People NASA National Aeronautics and Space Administration NIOD Nederlands Instituut voor Oorlogsdocumentatie / NIOD Institute for War, Holocaust and Genocide Studies NSDAP Nationalsozialistische Deutsche Arbeiterpartei / National Socialist German Workers’ Party 422

NWO Nederlandse Organisatie voor Wetenschappelijk Onderzoek / Netherlands Organisation for Scientific Research OSP Onafhankelijke Socialistische Partij / Independent Socialist Party RIAS Roosevelt Institute for American Studies, Middelburg RSAP Revolutionair-Socialistische Arbeiderspartij / Revolutionary Socialist Laborers’ Party RSP Revolutionair Socialistische Partij / Revolutionary Socialist Party SA Sturmabteilung / Nazi paramilitary organization SAC La Société africaine de culture / The Society of African Culture SDAP Sociaal-Democratische Arbeiderspartij / Social Democratic Workers’ Party (Netherlands) SDSC Sociaal-Democratische Studentenclub / Social Democratic Student Club SEBA Stichting tot Exploitatie en Bescherming van Auteursrechten / Foundation for Exploitation and Protection of Copyright SJV Socialisties Jeugdverbond / Socialist Youth Association (youth organization OSP). SKK Socialistische Kunstenaars Kring / Socialist Artists Circle SKK Socialistische Kunstenaars Kring / Socialist Artists Circle SNCC Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee SPD Sozialdemokratische Partei Deutschlands / Social Democratic Party of Germany UNCF United Negro College Fund VARA Vereeniging van Arbeiders Radio Amateurs / Association of Worker Radio Amateurs VPRO Vrijzinnig Protestantse Radio Omroep / Liberal Protestant Radio Broadcasting Corporation

423

LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS

INTRODUCTION

Figure 0.1 Jewish Historical Museum Amsterdam, inv.no. F010635. Figure 0.2 Information derived from correspondence based at: the Rosey Pool Collection at the University of Sussex; the Rosey Pool Papers at the Moorland-Spingarn Research Center; the Institute for War, Holocaust and Genocide Studies(NIOD); the International Institute of Social History (IISH); and the Langston Hughes Papers at Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library, Yale University.

CHAPTER 1: AMSTERDAM

Figure 1.1 Jewish Historical Museum Amsterdam, inv.no. F010617. Figure 1.2 Information derived from various sources: Amsterdam City archives, Rotterdam city archives, Genealogie Online, URL: http://www.genealogieonline.nl, Jewish Online Monument, URL: http://www.joodsmonument.nl. Figure 1.3 Jewish Historical Museum Amsterdam, inv.no. F010618. Figure 1.4 Jan Meilof, Een wereld licht en vrij. Het culturele werk van de AJC (Amsterdam: Stichting Beheer IISG 1999) 307. Figure 1.5 IISH, BG B10/979. Figure 1.6 Het volk. Dagblad voor de arbeiderspartij 28.8653 (1 October 1927) 8. Figure 1.7 Het volk. Dagblad voor de arbeiderspartij 27.8198 (5 January 1927) 4.

CHAPTER 2: BERLIN

Figure 2.1 Jewish Historical Museum, Amsterdam, inv.no. F010620. Figure 2.2 Daniel E. Ahearne, ‘Little Man Caught’ [review of Gerhard Kramer’s We Shall March Again], Hartford Courant [Hartford, CT], 5 June 1955, 140. The ‘little’ or ordinary man refers to Kramer, who is reportedly caught in the Nazi machine. Figure 2.3 Source: http://www.bobwebshop.de/Filmplakat-Berlin-die-Sinfonie-der-Grossstadt/ Figure 2.4 Source: https://www.grad-london.com/whatson/kino-film-soviet-posters-of-the-silent-screen. Figure 2.5 Wikimedia, https://www.kinopoisk.ru/picture/1604986/#. Figure 2.6 Private archive Rudi Wesselius, Scrapbook Rosey Pool ‘Highpoint,’ 1950s, n.p. Figure 2.7 Private archive Rudi Wesselius, Colored photo album ‘Isa’ Isenburg, ca. 1920s, n.p. Figure 2.8 Private archive Rudi Wesselius, Colored photo album ‘Isa’ Isenburg, ca. 1920s, n.p. Figure 2.9 Wikimedia Commons / Deutsches Bundesarchiv, Bild 102-14597.

424

CHAPTER 3: WESTERBORK

Figure 3.1 Jewish Historical Museum, Amsterdam, inv.no. F010630, no. 2. Figure 3.2 Amsterdam City Archives, 010122029456. Photo by J.M. Arsath Ro’is, 22 September 1960. Figure 3.3 Amsterdam City Archives, OSIM00004005002. Figure 3.4 Wikimedia / Memorial Center Camp Westerbork. URL: https://nl.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bestand:Boulevard_des_Mis%C3%A8res_Westerbork.jpg (accessed 20 April 2019). Figure 3.5 Website Boekhuis, https://cbonline.boekhuis.nl Figure 3.6 Information derived from: Ben Braber, ‘Passage naar vrijheid. De groep-Van Dien. Duitse joden in Nederlandse illegaliteit.’ Unpublished Master’s thesis. Amsterdam, 1986; Westerbork, Archive Werner Stertzenbach, RA 2635, ‘Verzet in het “Polizeiliche Durchgangslager [W]esterbork,”’ 6; Stichting 1940-1945, File 29750: G.M. van Wees. Figure 3.7 Website Beeldbank WO2, NIOD, 66111, Rijnja/117: Westerbork, undated. Figure 3.8 Memorial Center Camp Westerbork, Carthotheek Jewish Council, 278364: Person’s card Rosey Pool. For a detailed examination on the information on these cards see: Raymund Schütz, ‘Vermoedelijk op transport. De Joodsche Raadcartotheek als informatiesysteem binnen sterk veranderende kaders: repressie, opsporing en herinnering. Een archiefwetenschappelijk onderzoek naar de herkomst, het gebruik en het beheer van een bijzondere historische bron.’ Unpublished Master’s thesis, Leiden University [2010] 2011, 63f173, 104. Figure 3.9 BeeldbankWO2.nl, NIOD, Fotohandel Van Vliet: Bezet Nederland, 153529. Figure 3.10 Information derived from: Stichting 1940-1945, File 29750, G.M. van Wees. Figure made by author by using VennMaker 2.0.0.

CHAPTER 4: AMSTERDAM

Figure 4.1 Information derived from: Dienke Hondius and Miep Gompes-Lobatto, Absent. Herinneringen aan het Joods Lyceum Amsterdam, 1941-1943 (Amsterdam: Vassallucci 2001); Ben Braber, Zelfs als wij zullen verliezen. Joden in verzet en illegaliteit, 1940-1945 (Amsterdam: Balans 1990) 173; ‘Theater Der Prominenten,’ Theaterencyclopedie of the University of Amsterdam Special Collections, URL: http://theaterencyclopedie.nl/wiki/Theater_Der_Prominenten; Website Joods Monument, URL: https://www.joodsmonument.nl/; Bart de Cort, ‘Biografieën van de leden van de Onafhankelijke Socialistische Partij (OSP, 1932-1935),’ 2006, digital file, IISH Amsterdam; Record and family cards, Amsterdam City Archives. Full list of names can be requested with the author. Figure 4.2 Jewish Historical Museum, Amsterdam, inv.no. F010630a.

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Figure 4.3 Mink van Rijsdijk, Reünie op papier. Joodse oorlogskinderen kijken terug op hun jaren aan die ‘wonderlijke school’ (Weert: Van Buuren 2000) 37. Figure 4.4 Used sources for figure: Correspondence Rosey Pool and Langston Hughes, New York, NY (16 letters, 1945-1949). Source: Yale, Beinecke, JWJ MSS 26, Langston Hughes Papers, Box 130, Folder 2429. Correspondence Rosey Pool and Ann Petry [Old Saybrook, Connecticut] (2 letters, ?-1948). Source: Howard, 125: Ann Petry. Correspondence Rosey Pool and Melvin Tolson [Marshall, Texas] (2 letters, 1946-1946). Source: Howard, 153: Melvin B. Tolson; Library of Congress, Melvin Tolson Papers. Correspondence Rosey Pool and Richard Wright [probably sent to Chicago, Illinois, although Wright was moving to Paris in this period] (1 unanswered letter, 1946). Source: Yale, Beinecke, Richard Wright Papers, JWJ MSS 3, Box 104, Folder 1553. Figure 4.5 Sussex, SxMs19/10/1/2, Scrapbook 1945-1949. Figure 4.6 Jewish Historical Museum Amsterdam, inv.no. F010624. Figures 4.7 Jewish Historical Museum Amsterdam, inv.no. F010617 [cropped by author]. Figures 4.8 Jewish Historical Museum Amsterdam, inv.no. F010621 [cropped by author]. Figures 4.9 Jewish Historical Museum Amsterdam, inv.no. F010622 [cropped by author]. Figures 4.10 Sussex, SxMs19/5/2/5. Photographs [cropped by author]. Figures 4.11 Sussex, SxMs19/10/1/9, Scrapbook 1963-1967.

CHAPTER 5: LONDON

Figure 5.1 Private archive Rudi Wesselius, photo album Rosey Pool. Figure 5.2 Jewish Historical Museum Amsterdam, inv.no. F010645. Figure 5.3 Website Glentree Estates, URL: http://www.glentree.co.uk/binary_data/ 1939_23_highpoint_floorplans.jpg (accessed 26 June 2017). Figures 5.4 to 5.11 Sussex, scrapbooks; Private archive Rudi Wesselius, photo albums Rosey Pool. Figure 5.12 Eric Walrond and Rosey E. Pool (eds.), Black and Unknown Bards. A Collection of Negro Poetry (Aldington, Kent: Hand and Flower Press 1958). Figure 5.13 Rosey E. Pool and Paul Breman (eds.), Rosey E. Pool en Paul Breman (eds.), Ik zag hoe zwart ik was. Poëzie van Noordamerikaanse negers. Een tweetalige bloemlezing van Rosey E. Pool en Paul Breman (Den Haag, Bert Bakker / Daamen N.V. 1958). Figure 5.14 Rosey Pool, Beyond the Blues. New Poems by American Negroes. Selected and introduced by Rosey E. Pool (Lympne, Kent: The Hand and Flower Press 1962). Figure 5.15 Rosey Pool, with an introduction by Jan Willem Schulte Nordholt, Ik ben de Nieuwe Neger. Gedichten, rijmen, liedjes en dokumenten uit 300 jaar verzet van de Amerikaanse neger (The Hague: Bert Bakker / Daamen 1965). Figure 5.16 Private archive Rudi Wesselius, personal photo album Rosey E. Pool.

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Figure 5.17 Network of Rosey Pool based on correspondence, focusing on her contact with Langston Hughes and his influence on her network (n=497). Created by author by using Microsoft Access and Gephi.

CHAPTER 6: HILVERSUM

Figure 6.1 Netherlands Institute for Sound and Vision, FTA001020499_017_arc. Figure 6.2 Rosey E. Pool, ‘”Advocaat Pro Deo” pleit voor allen,’ Vrije Geluiden. Radio- en Televisieprogrammablad van de V.P.R.O. 28.36 (6 September 1958) 6. Figure 6.3 Sussex, SxMs19/13/5, Scrapbook 1948-1962. Figure 6.4 University of Sussex, The Keep Special Collections, Rosey Pool Collection, SxMs19/13/6, Scrapbook Advocaat pro deo, n.p. Figure 6.5 Netherlands Institute for Sound and Vision, FTA001020499_001_arc. Figure 6.6 ‘TV-kijkers wilden weten: Hoe liep het af met Donald?,’ Het Parool, 11 September 1958, 9. Figure 6.7 Jewish Historical Museum, Amsterdam, inv.no. F010643.

CHAPTER 7: THE DEEP SOUTH

Figure 7.1 Sussex, SxMs19/14/1/4, Scrapbook 1959-1960. Figure 7.2 Made by author with Google MyMaps. Based on information derived from scrapbooks. Figure 7.3 Sussex, SxMs19/10/1/5, Scrapbook 1959-1960. Figure 7.4 Sussex, SxMs19/14/1/5, Scrapbook 1959-1960 Figure 7.5 Made by author with Google MyMaps. Based on information derived from scrapbooks. Figure 7.6 Sussex, SxMs19/14/1/4, Scrapbook 1959-1960. Figure 7.7 Sussex, SxMs19/14/1/4, Scrapbook 1959-1960. Figure 7.8 Sussex, SxMs19/14/1/4, Scrapbook 1959-1960. Figure 7.9 Sussex, SxMs19/14/1/4, Scrapbook 1959-1960. Figure 7.10 Sussex, SxMs19/14/1/4, Scrapbook 1959-1960.

CHAPTER 8: MISSISSIPPI

Figure 8.1 Sussex, SxMs19/5/2/5: Photographs. Figure 8.2 Map Jackson, Mississippi, 1962, 1:250000, Old Maps Online, no. 5599084, URL: http://www.oldmapsonline.org/map/usgs/5599084 (accessed 15 April 2019). Figure 8.3 Sussex, SxMs19/10/1/8 Scrapbook 1963-1968. Figure 8.4 Atlanta University Center, United Negro College Fund (UNCF) Papers, Microfilm 1254: Tougaloo Southern News 70.4 (May 1960) 4. 427

Figure 8.5 Rosey E. Pool, Lachen om niet te huilen (Rotterdam: Lemniscaat 1968) 56. Figure 8.6 Trip Burns, ‘Real Violence. 50 Years Ago at Woolworth,’ Jackson Free Press, 23 May 2013. Courtesy of Fred Blackwell. URL: http://www.jacksonfreepress.com/news/2013/may/23/real- violence-50-years-ago-woolworth/ (accessed 15 April 2019). Figure 8.7 Photo taken by Jack Thornell of the Jackson Daily News. Derived from: ‘Tuesday, May 28, 1963: Sit-in, Jackson, Mississippi,’ Blog The ‘60s at 50, 28 May 2013. URL: http://the60sat50.blogspot.com/2013/05/tuesday-may-28-1963-sit-in-jackson.html (accessed 15 April 2019).

CHAPTER 9: ALABAMA

Figure 9.1 Sussex, SxMs19/5/2/5, Photographs. Figure 9.2 Sussex, SxMs19/10/1/6, Scrapbook 1961-1963. Figure 9.3 Sussex, SxMs19/10/1/8, Scrapbook 1963-1968. Figure 9.4 Jewish Museum Amsterdam, F010641. Figure 9.5 to 9.8 Sussex, SxMs19/10/1/8: Scrapbook 1963-1968. Figure 9.9 Website NASA, URL: https://www.nasa.gov/centers/marshall/history/marshall-and- alabama-am-sign-cooperative-agreement-november-1968.html (accessed 14 April 2019).

CHAPTER 10: AFRICA

Figure 10.1 Library of Congress, Photo by Jack Delano for OWI. URL: http://www.loc.gov/pictures/item/2005687122/. Figure 10.2 Sussex, SxMs19/2/4, 4-92. Figure 10.3 Derived from: Randy Weston, African Rhythms. The Autobiography of Randy Weston (Durham, NC: Duke University Press 2010) 148. Courtesy of Howard University, Moorland- Spingarn Research Center (MSRC), American Society of African Culture (AMSAC) Collection, Box 41. Figure 10.4 Photograph by Jonathan Adeka. Source: Yale, JWJ MSS 26, Langston Hughes Papers, Box 463, Folder 11248. Object ID 2017006 Figure 10.5 Jewish Historical Museum Amsterdam, inv.no. F010642. Figure 10.6 Visualized by author with Raw. Data derived from various sources (see full list of archives in the back).

CONCLUSIONS

Figure 11.1 Sussex, SxMs19/5/2/5, Photographs. Photograph by Bert Sprenkeling.

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EPILOGUE

Figure 12.1 Sussex, SxMs19/10/1/6 Scrapbook 1961-1963. Photoshopped by the author.

ABOUT ROSEY E. POOL

Figure 14.1 Sussex, SxMs19/13/5 Scrapbook 1948-1962.

SOURCES

Figure 15.1 Jewish Historical Museum Amsterdam, F010623.

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SURVIVOR, AGITATOR. ROSEY E. POOL AND THE TRANSATLANTIC CENTURY.

English summary

Rosey E. Pool (1905-1971) was a Dutch Jewish translator, educator, and a specialist of Black poetry.

Throughout the twentieth century she found herself multiple times in the ‘eye of the storm’ at pivotal moments. Through several ‘contact zones,’ Pool’s life in the ‘Transatlantic Century’ is unfolded against the background of the remnants of world history. Each contact zone aims to answer (parts of) the main questions: who she was, what her personal motives were, what her influence was on public debates, and why she is missing from historiography. Instead of searching for a singular, stable identity throughout the sixty-six years of her life, this dissertation looks at the different roles she took on at different moments in time by critically examining and deconstructing her public appearances. By using theories on intersectionality, gender, performance, memory, trauma, and critical race theory, this book tells Rosey Pool’s life story and defines her at the same time. Two distinct characteristics are dominant throughout the book: that of a survivor, and that of an agitator.

Each chapter focuses on transformative travels Pool made that changed her life. Starting with Pool’s youth in Amsterdam in the 1910s and 1920s, her beliefs were firmly shaped by bullying as well as her activism in the socialist movement. The second chapter focuses on her time in Berlin in the 1930s, a city that was a revelation to her sexually and politically, turning her into a fierce anti- fascist, but marked as Jewish. Chapter three focuses on Camp Westerbork, and the few years that changed her life for good as she escaped the Holocaust. It was only in 1945 that she truly turned to the African American cause, a decision that was largely stimulated and formed by the context of postwar Amsterdam. In chapter five Pool makes her first appearance on Dutch television in 1958, turning her and her co-star Gordon Heath into national celebrities. Chapter six takes place in

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1959/1960 in the Deep South, where Pool talked about one of her former pupils, Anne Frank. The next chapter again returns to the South, but now to Tougaloo College in Mississippi, 1963, where

Pool grew out to be an ‘outside agitator.’ Chapter eight focuses on the smallest contact zone of all:

Pool’s own home in London, which became a salon of the Black Atlantic. Inspired by the African

American struggle for equality, Pool in 1966/1967 again returned to the South, this time to

Huntsville, Alabama, where the remnants of the past were perhaps most clearly visible, except in her own writings. The final chapter weaves together two Pan-African festivals in Lagos (1961) and Dakar

(1966), as well as Pool’s crumbling and fading position by the end of the 1960s.

This biography aims to go beyond ‘methodological nationalism’ that dominated much of twentieth century historical writing. Her life was very much a countercultural story, focusing on the

‘other’ - or shadow history as you may call it - of her time, and to approach grand historical narratives from a different point of view. Rosey Pool is a forgotten figure of the twentieth century, and her life opens up the possibility to explore networks of transnational anti-fascist and socialist activism, Jewish resistance during the Holocaust, LGBT history, while her postwar life - or, perhaps more appropriate, her post-Holocaust life - touches upon some different historical narratives which are often studied in isolation, such as the role of whites and Jews in the Civil Rights Movement, the residues of Old Left activism in the Cold War, but also the double edged role of trauma in political activism.

431 OVERLEVER, ONRUSTSTOKER. ROSEY E. POOL EN DE TRANS-ATLANTISCHE EEUW.

Nederlandse samenvatting

Rosey E. Pool (1905-1971) was een Nederlands Joodse vertaalster, docente, en specialist van Zwarte poëzie. Tijdens de twintigste eeuw bevond ze zich meerdere malen op cruciale momenten in het oog van de storm. Pools leven in de trans-Atlantische eeuw wordt verteld door middel van verschillende

‘contact zones’ waarin de restanten van de wereldgeschiedenis duidelijk worden. Elke ‘contact zone’ beantwoordt (delen van) de hoofdvragen: wie was Rosey Pool, wat waren haar motieven, wat was haar invloed op publieke debatten, en waarom ontbreekt ze in de geschiedenisboeken? In plaats van op zoek te gaan naar een enkele, stabiele identiteit tijdens haar 66 jaar lange leven, kijkt deze dissertatie juist naar de verschillende rollen die zij op zich nam tijdens verschillende momenten, en worden haar publieke acties kritisch bekeken en gereconstrueerd. Met behulp van theorieën over intersectionaliteit, gender, performance, geheugen, trauma, en critical race theory, vertelt dit boek het verhaal van Rosey Pool en definieert haar. Twee verschillende karaktereigenschappen springen er bovenuit: die van overlever, en die van onruststoker.

Rosey Pools idealen werden sterk beïnvloed door haar jeugd in Amsterdam in de jaren tien en twintig, toen zij werd gepest op school, maar ook toen zij actief werd in de socialistische beweging.

Het tweede hoofdstuk richt zich op Berlijn in de jaren dertig, een stad die zorgde voor een seksuele en een politieke openbaring, en een stad waar zij uitgesproken antifascist werd, terwijl haar Joodse achtergrond steeds zwaarder ging wegen. Hoofstuk drie richt zich op Kamp Westerbork, de oorlogsjaren en hoe Pool de Holocaust overleefde: vijf cruciale jaren in haar leven. Evengoed was het pas in 1945 dat zij zich volledig richtte op de Afro-Amerikaanse kwestie, een beslissing die sterk werd gestimuleerd en gevormd door de context van naoorlogs Amsterdam. In hoofdstuk vijf verschijnt Pool

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in 1958 voor het eerst op Nederlandse televisie, waardoor zij en haar tegenspeler Gordon Heath nationale beroemdheden worden. Hoofdstuk zes vindt plaats in de Deep South, in 1959/1960, waar

Pool sprak over een van haar voormalige leerlingen, Anne Frank. Het hoofdstuk daarna richt zich wederom op het Zuiden, maar nu op Tougaloo College in Mississippi, waar Pool zich in 1963 ontpopte tot onruststoker van buitenaf. Hoofdstuk acht gaat over de kleinste ‘contact zone’ van allemaal: Pools eigen huis in Londen, dat uitgroeide tot een salon van de Black Atlantic. Geïnspireerd door de Afro-Amerikaanse strijd voor gelijkheid, keerde Pool in 1966/1967 wederom terug naar het

Zuiden, ditmaal naar Huntsville, Alabama, waar de restanten van de afgelopen wereldoorlog wellicht het meest zichtbaar waren - alleen niet in haar eigen teksten. Het laatste hoofdstuk behandelt twee

Pan-Afrikaanse festivals in Lagos (1961) en Dakar (1966), en Pools eigen afbrokkelende en verminderende invloed aan het eind van de jaren zestig.

Deze biografie wil voorbij gaan aan methodologisch nationalisme dat historisch onderzoek van de twintigste eeuw heeft gedomineerd. Het is ook een tegencultuurverhaal, dat zich richt op het

‘andere’ verhaal – wellicht de schaduwgeschiedenis - van haar tijd, en hoe grote historische narratieven vanuit een ander perspectief bekeken kunnen worden. Rosey E. Pool is een vergeten figuur uit de twintigste eeuw en haar leven biedt de mogelijkheid diverse onderwerpen te belichten: netwerken van transnationale antifascistisch en socialistisch activisme, Joods verzet tijdens de Holocaust, LGBT geschiedenis, terwijl haar naoorlogse leven - of eerder: leven na de Holocaust - verschillende historische narratieven bij elkaar brengt die vaak geïsoleerd van elkaar worden bestudeerd, zoals de rol van witten en Joden in de Amerikaanse burgerrechtenbeweging, de overblijfselen van Oud Links activisme in de Koude Oorlog, maar ook de dubbelzinnige rol van trauma in politiek activisme.

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INDEX

23a Highpoint, London...... 129, 144 Allways Travel Service ...... 134 A Raisin in the Sun (1959 theater play) ..... 173 Alma, Peter ...... 45 Abdul-Malik, Ahmed ...... 337 Alte Kampinsassen ...... 95, See Westerbork Accent ...... 204 (transit camp) Acting ...... 169 Altruism ...... 178, 187 Advocaat pro deo (1958 TV play) .... 152, 153, Pitfalls of ...... 189 157, 163, 166, 167, 168, 170, 173, 174, American Society of African Culture 317, 318, 319 (AMSAC) ...... 244 Africa ...... 117, 245 Amsterdam African American poetry ...... 36, 69 Nieuwe Hoogstraat 18 ...... 29 African American references Nieuwe Prinsengracht 120 ...... 211 Amsterdam, 1930s ...... 75 Weesperstraat ...... 30 During WWII ...... 104 Zanddwarsstraat ...... 31 Afrikaans ...... 145 Animal Farm (1954 movie) ...... 159 Afrique (journal) ...... 252 Anna Visscherschool (Amsterdam) ...... 32 Agitator ...... 261 Anne Frank Ailey, Alvin ...... 251 American interpretation of ...... 184 Al mijn zonen (1958 TV play) ...... 315 American look-a-likes ...... 182 Alabama ... 127, 139, 144, 145, 150, 188, 249, American school children and ...... 180 312 Anne Frank Foundation ...... 196 Alabama A&M College .. 220, 221, 230, 232, Pool’s memories of ...... 183, 191 234, 235 Pool’s translation of Diary ...... 109, 178 Civil Rights activism ...... 231 Anti-colonialism ...... 165 Albarda, Willem ...... 42 Anti-fascism ...... 76, 77 Albion College (Albion, Michigan) ...... 320 Association of German and Stateless Albion, Michigan ...... 320 Anti-Fascists ...... 302 Aldington, Kent ...... 135 Attitude towards Jews ...... 82 Algemeen Nederlands Jeugd Verbond German anti-fascists in the Netherlands (ANJV) ...... 380 ...... 100, 110 Algemene Nederlandse Bond van Handels- en German Jewish anti-fascists ...... 90 Kantoorbedienden ...... 298 Link with communism ...... 82 All My Sons (1947 play) ...... 315 Anti-nationalism ...... 43 All My Sons (1958 TV play) ...... 155 Anti-otherism ...... 158, 189, 213

435 Anti-racism ...... 165 Beittel, Adam Daniel ...... 201, 215 Anti-Semitism ...... 32, 76, 181, 191 Belafonte, Harry ...... 244, 253 Apartheid ...... 145 Belgium ...... 39 ‘American Apartheid’ ...... 147 Bell, Madeline ...... 132 Arab, Alabama ...... 223 Benin treasures...... 251 Arbeiders Jeugd Centrale (AJC) .. 57, 289, See Beperkt zicht (1945 book) ...... 104, 110 Labor Youth Central (AJC) Bergen-Belsen (concentration camp) ...... 192 Archives ...... 20 Berlin ...... 76 Arkansas ...... 166 Helmstedter Strasse 6 ...... 293 Arnhem ...... 111 Potsdamer Platz ...... 53 Ashkenazi Jews ...... 27 Potsdamer Stra e 123 ...... 287 Association of Religious Anarcho- Schwerinstraße β...... 62 Communists (BRAC) ...... 57 Wilmersdorf ...... 293 Ast, Bruno ...... 85, 299 Berlin. Symphony of a Metropolis (1927 movie) Atlanta Daily World ...... 193 ...... 54 Atlanta University ...... 186, 248 Beugeling, Mies ...... 34 Atlanta, Georgia ...... 180, 191 Beyond the Blues (1962 anthology) ... 136, 137, Auschwitz ...... 84, 85, 88, 94, 95, 103, 297 139, 143, 144, 150, 313 Autobiography ...... 22 Beyond the Blues (1962 LP) ...... 159 Avocat pro deo (1958 TV play, Belgium) ... 319 Beyond the Blues (anthology) ...... 330 AVRO (broadcaster)...... 154, 314 Bier, Jakob Hermann ...... 96 Baarn ...... 98, 99, 100, 101, 110 Birmingham, Alabama ...... 216 Baez, Joan ...... 203 Black and Unknown Bards (1958 anthology) Bahá’í faith ...... 15, 48, 265, 266 ...... 135, 137, 138 Baks, Priest ...... 100 Black and Unknown Bards (1958 poetry Baldwin, James ...... 131, 203, 243, 253, 254 reading, London)...... 159 Baltimore Afro-American (newspaper) ...... 241 Black and Unknown Bards (1963 TV series) Baraka, Amiri ...... 136, 254, 265 ...... 143, 313 Baschwitz, Kurt ...... 85, 299 Black Arts Movement...... 136 BBC ...... 103, 154, 157 Black Atlantic ...... 127, 142, 149, 251 African American poetry on BBC radio Black Power ...... 234 ...... 159 Black Sister. Poetry by Black American Women, BBC Dutch Service ...... 154 1746-1980 (1981 anthology) ...... 314 BBC Radio ...... 323 Black/Jewish comparisons ... See Comparisons Beier, Ulli ...... 338 Black-Jewish alliance ...... 114

436 Blanchitude ...... 253 Burgan, Lawrence ...... 337 Blauwe Knoop ...... 30 Burma ...... See Myanmar Blok, Hetty ...... 163 Burn, Rise, Burn (song) ...... 38 Boaz, Alabama ...... 223 Burnet, Roel ...... 315 Bond van Religieuze Anarcho-Communisten Bussum ...... 167 (BRAC) ...... See Association of Religious Buys, Anneke ...... 15, 265, 341 Anarcho-Communists (BRAC) Cambrellan, Alex ...... 337 Bond van Sociaal-Democratische Campbell, Ambrose ...... 157 Vrouwenclubs ...... 46 Campbell, Sir Jock ...... 312 Bond, Horace Mann ...... 248, 337 Capital (book) ...... 29 Bond, Julian ...... 139, 242, 312 Cardozo, Ben Lopez ...... 106 Book burning (Berlin 1933)...... 67 Carew, Jan ...... 242 Boone House Poets (Detroit) ...... 143 Carmichael, Stokely ...... See Ture, Kwame Bootsie (cartoon figure) ...... 225 Carmiggelt, Simon ...... 157 Borinski, Ernst . 199, 201, 202, 203, 204, 205, Caroling Dusk (book) ...... 116 212, 216, 218, 326, 327, 328 Carroll, Vinnette ...... 130, 143, 159 Bramall, Eric ...... 315 Catholicism ...... 48, 100 Branch, William B...... 337 Césaire, Aimé ...... 150, 194, 214, 251 Brando, Marlon ...... 172 Chaffee, Lois ...... 217 Braun, Wernher von ...... 233, 234, 331 Charles, Francis ...... 315 Brecht, Bertolt ...... 53 Charles, Ray...... 139, 311 Breman, Paul ...... 142, 255 Chattman, Johnny Earl ...... 198 Brief Encounter (1945 movie) ...... 315 China ...... 157 Brief Encounter (1956 TV play)...... 155 Chopin, Frédéric ...... 134 British Guiana ...... 130, 310 Christ Recrucified (1954 novel) ...... 315 Britten, Benjamin ...... 239 Christ Recrucified (1959 TV play) ...... 155 Broadway ...... 178, 181 Christus wordt weer gekruisigd (1947 TV play) Broer, G. de ...... 285 ...... 315 Bronkers, Aaf ...... 98 Civil Rights Movement ...... 192 Bronkers, An ...... 98 Africa and ...... 245 Brooks, Gwendolyn ...... 131, 242 Alabama A&M College activism ...... 231 Bullying ...... 33, 76 Boycott Jackson Mississipi (1963) ...... 215 Buma Stemra ...... 134 in Dutch media ...... 157, 167 Bunche, Ralph ...... 203 Clandestine presses ...... 102 Buonarroti, Michelangelo ...... 228 Clark, Rubastine M...... 198

437 COC (Dutch LGBT organization) ...... 249 Connor, Edric ...... 130 Cohen, Fré ...... 45 Connor, Eugene ‘Bull’ ...... 222 Cold War ...... 233, 250 Connor, Pearl ...... 159 American segregation and ...... 166 Conspiracy of silence ...... 123 American-Soviet space race ...... 222 Constantine, Sir Learie ...... 312 Homosexuality and ...... 133 Contact zones ...... 24 Collem, Simon van ...... 315 Cook, Mercer ...... 251, 252 Collins, Leslie M...... 138 Cook, Willie ...... See Jones, Alando X. Color (book) ...... 308 Coward, Noël ...... 315 Color line ...... 225 Cuba ...... 75 Colour bar ...... 130 Cullen, Countee ...... 112, 116, 117, 120, 121, Communism 123, 124, 144, 228 Dutch postwar society and ...... 119 Cunard, Nancy ...... 135, 305 Communist Party United States of America Cuney, Waring ...... 117, 144 (CPUSA) ...... 112 Dakar ...... 251, 252, 255 Communist Party, Germany ...... See Danner, Margaret ...... 136, 231, 265 Kommunistische Partei Deutschlands (KPD) Davis, Gloria...... 141 Communist Party, Netherlands ...... See Davis, John A...... 337 Communistische Partij van Nederland Davis, Ossie ...... 254 (CPN) De Vrije Katheder (newspaper) ...... 117 Communistische Partij van Nederland De Vrije Kathederclub (Amsterdam) ...... 118 (CPN)...... 56, 82 Dean, James ...... 172 Communists ...... 90 Deep Are the Roots (1947 theater play) ...... 130 Comparisons Deep Are the Roots (theater play, 1945) ..... 158 Black/Jewish ...... 104, 117, 139, 158, 214 Demerary ...... See British Guiana Jim Crow/Apartheid ...... 145, 147 Den Haag ...... See The Hague Jim Crow/Nazi Germany .... 116, 189, 193, De-Nazification ...... 320 202 Deportations Concentration camps Stepping out of train ...... 94 Bergen-Belsen (concentration camp) ... 192 Depressions ...... 122 Gas chambers ...... 194 Detroit ...... 143, 182, 184, 313 Concertgebouw (Amsterdam) ...... 117 Devine, George ...... 312 Congress of Racial Equality (CORE) .....215, Diary of a Young Girl, The 217, 218 Lawsuit (1958) ...... 190 Conley, Binford ...... 223 Movie 1959 ...... 178, 181

438 References to African Americans in Diary Dutch Association for the Abolition of ...... 193 Alcoholic Beverages ...... 30 Rosey Pool’s translation ...... 304 Dutch East Indies ...... 42 Rumors about authenticity ...... 191 Dutch Military Government ...... 110 Theater play 1955 ...... 178 Dutch police ...... 86 Performance at Fisk University ...... 192 Dutch Revolt ...... 247 Dichtung des nordamerikanischen Negers, Die Ebony (magazine) ...... 337 ...... See Dissertation Ebony Rhythm (1948 ) ...... 311 Dickinson, Emily ...... 62, 302, 380 Edinburgh ...... 144 Didn’t the Lord Deliver Daniel (spiritual) .. 104 Edman, Marion ...... 180, 320 Die Eisenbahn (song) ...... 93 Education Dienaren van de Ster in het Oosten ...... 34 Certificate calligraphy and typing ...... 84 Dietrich, Marlene ...... 62 Certificate Dutch-German translator .... 84 Dietsch Studenten Verbond ...... 42 English lessons to German Jewish refugees Direct action ...... 192 ...... 80 Disney ...... 232 PhD ...... 124, 206 Dissertation...... 70, 294 Teaching Dutch ...... 74 Divorce from Gerhard Kramer ...... 64 Teaching English ...... 74, 79 Dixon, Jack ...... 154, 155, 157, 159, 164, 170 Teaching English while in hiding ...... 98 Resistance during WWII ...... 155 Teaching in Amsterdam (1940s) ...... 110 Dodson, Owen ...... 132, 133, 231, 239 Teaching in Mississippi (1963) ...... 206 Dordrecht ...... 119 Teaching to German Jewish refugees ..... 74 Dorsey, Charles ...... 223 Ehrlich, Max ...... 96, 106 Double consciousness ...... 214 Eikelenboom (store Amsterdam) ...... 31 Double life ...... 77 Einstein, Albert ...... 53 Double V-campaign ...... 114 Eisenbahn, Die (song) ...... 93 Douglas, Laetitia ...... 315 Ellington, Duke ...... 251, 252 Douglass, Frederick ...... 228 Ellison, Ralph ...... 242, 254 Du Bois, W.E.B...... 132, 164, 194, 214, 239, Emmy awards ...... 143 250, 335 Emperor Jones, The (1953 TV play) ...... 159 Visit to the Netherlands (1958) ...... 165 Enwonwu, Ben ...... 252 Dumont-Huiwoud, Hermie ...... 242 Epstein, Sally ...... 59 Dunham, Katherine ...... 253 Erwin, Booker T...... 337 Düsseldorf ...... 90 Eskens, Theo ...... 284 Eurocentric history ...... 228

439 Evers, Medgar ...... 330 Friendships out of conviction ...... 240 Fabio, Sarah Webster ...... 140 Instrumental friendships ...... 240 Family Führer ...... See Hitler, Adolf Friends as substitute for...... 240 Fulbright ...... 313 Fauset, Jessie ...... 242 Fulbright Program ...... 177, 179, 180, 186 Feminism ...... 150 Dutch Fulbright committee ...... 177 Fields, Julia ...... 144, 145 Fuller, Hoyt ...... 231, 339 Figer, Theobald ...... 290 Fundraising ...... 187 Final Solution ...... 80 Gaffel, Wim ...... 37 First Girls HBS See First Girls HBS Garner, Lela...... 198 (Amsterdam) ...... 33 Gatlin, Joyce ...... 198 First World Festival of Negro Arts (Dakar Gbeho, Philip ...... 252 1966) ...... 251 German communist party (KPD) ...... 110 Fischer, Lena ...... 60, 61, 63, 290 German Jewish refugees Fisk University (Nashville, Tennessee) ....263, Dutch leftwing support of ...... 75 314 Within Camp Westerbork ...... 89 Fisk University (Nashville, TN) ...... 192 Gerrit van der Veen (resistance group) ..... 106 Five Pound Press ...... 102 Gershwin, George ...... 134 Flemish ...... 36, 46 Gershwin, Ira ...... 149, 239 Flowers, Martha ...... 337 Gestapo ...... 70 For the Defence (1956 TV play) ...... 157, 159 Gewitter über Gottland (1926 movie) ...... 54 For the Defence (1958 BBC radio play) ..... 157 Ghana ...... 130, 147, 250, 310 Fowlkes, William ...... 193 Ghetto, Jewish (Amsterdam) ...... 31 Frank, Anna (sister-in-law) ...... 86 GICOL ...... 112 Frank, Anne ...... 80, 106, 109, 155, 178, 206, Gilroy, Paul ...... 149 304, 307 Girl Scouts ...... 34 At Jewish Lyceum ...... 81 Go Down Moses (spiritual) ...... 104 Frank, Edith ...... 80 Goes, Frank van der...... 29 Frank, Leonhard ...... 36 Gold Coast ...... See Ghana Frank, Margot ...... 184 Goldstein, Chaja ...... 106 Frank, Otto ...... 109, 178, 190, 191, 304 Golf, Naomi ...... 198 Freedom Rides ...... 218 Gonzalez, Dave ...... 337 Freedom Schools ...... 218 Goodman, Amella ...... 337 Friedrich Wilhelm University ...... 53 Gorlee, Nico ...... 289 Friendships Gow, James ...... 158

440 Graham Du Bois, Shirley ...... 150, 165, 250 Hennetje (shop Amsterdam) ...... 31 Greensboro, North Carolina ...... 192 Hepburn, Audrey ...... 163 Gruber, Max ...... 91 Heppner, Albert ...... 299 Grüne Polizei ...... 86 Hernton, Calvin...... 138 Haarlemschen Kegelbond, Haarlem ...... 285 Heteronormativity ...... 64 Habilitation ...... 294 Heymann-David, Alice ...... 81, 97 Hadassah, women’s Zionist organization Heynemann, Susanne ..... 68, 97, 98, 102, 110 (Chicago, IL)...... 185 Hiding Haldane, J.B.S...... 76 First poetry anthology ...... 310 Hall, Mary Ann ...... 198 Importance of literature ...... 98 Hamburg ...... 82 Support networks ...... 99, 101 Hamburgerstraat 21, Utrecht ...... 302 Highland Park, Michigan ...... 181 Hamel, Meijer ...... 380 Hill, Elizabeth ...... 341 Hampton Institute ...... 176 Hill, Mozell ...... 186, 323 Hampton, Lionel ...... 245, 337 Hillesum, Etty ...... 103, 303 Hampton, Virginia ...... 176 Himes, Chester ...... 242 Hand and Flower Press ...... 135, 137 Hinderas, Natalie ...... 337 Handels- en Kantoorbediendenbond ...... 289 Hirschfeld, Kurt...... 296 Handwerkersvriendenkring ...... 29, 38, 40, 41 Hirschfeld, Magnus ...... 53, 63 Hansmann-Knopp, Cilly ...... 305 Historically Black Colleges and Universities Haringman, Max ...... 46, 106 (HBCUs) Harlem Renaissance ...... 131, 135, 141 Black colleges and universities ...... 186 Harris, Laline ...... 337 Hitler, Adolf ..... 58, 66, 69, 74, 165, 167, 193 Harris, Ruth Bates ...... 331 Hofland, Henk ...... 318 Hatterman, Nola...... 110, 117, 121, 305, 381, Hogen, Ina v.d...... 290 382, 383 Hogereburgerschool (HBS) See First Girls HBS Hayden, Robert ...... 149, 192, 231, 255, 256 (Amsterdam) HBS ...... 39 Holborn College of Languages (London) Heath, Gordon 130, 133, 152, 155, 158, 159, ...... 134, 320 160, 163, 165, 167, 168, 170, 172, 174, Holder, Geoffrey ...... 337 265 Holk, Lambertus Jacobus van ...... 318 Learning Dutch ...... 163 Hollander, Arie den ...... 33 Hebrew ...... 79 Hollander, Ine den...... 33 Helmstedter Strasse (Berlin)...... 293 Hollywood movies ...... 55 Helping ...... 76 Holocaust

441 Denial ...... 190 Illinois ...... 179 Deportations from Camp Westerbork ... 88 Incident (poem) ...... 120 Knowledge of ...... 77 Independent Socialist Party (OSP) .... 57, 106 Holst, Henriette Roland ...... 36, 45, 59 India ...... 166 Homosexuality ...... 133, 159, 249 Indonesia ...... 165 Horree, Ineke ...... 319 Inness-Brown, Virginia ...... 339 Howard University (Washington, DC) .... 263 Institut für Sexualwissenschaft ...... 53 Hughes, Langston ... 112, 114, 115, 116, 117, Instituut voor Arbeidersontwikkeling (IvAO) 123, 127, 131, 133, 136, 144, 145, 146, ...... 36, 285 149, 228, 238, 239, 240, 241, 242, 243, International Institute for Social History 244, 245, 246, 247, 248, 249, 250, 251, (IISH/IISG) ...... 77 252, 253, 254, 255, 284, 306, 337, 338 International Language Club (Croydon, Homosexuality...... 249 London) ...... 130 Visit to Netherlands (1965) ...... 249 International Lenin School (Moscow) ..... 305 Huiswoud, Hermie ...... 152, 162 International Red Aid ...... 68 Huiswoud, Otto ...... 112, 243 International, The (song) ...... 54, 283 Huiswoud-Dumont, Hermie ...... 112 Intersectional invisibility ...... 266 Humor ...... 79, 205 Intersectionality ...... 16, 159, 204 Hunger Winter (1944) ...... 122 Intimate Original Art ...... 35 Huntsville, Alabama 221, 222, 224, 230, 232, Isenburg, Ursel (‘Isa’) ...... 124, 127, 132, 133, 233, 235 158, 207, 249 Civil Rights Movement ...... 231 Israel ...... 185, 191 Desegregation ...... 232 J.M. [Je maintiendrai] (newspaper) ...... 119 Hyman, Earle ...... 133, 159 Jackson High School (Detroit, Michigan) 183 I Know Moonlight (spiritual) ...... 104 Jackson High School (Wyandotte, Michigan) I Too Am America (poetry reading ...... 321 Amsterdam, 1945) ...... 118 Jackson, Etta M...... 198 Ibo, Wim ...... 161, 315 Jackson, Oliver ...... 337 Identification with African Americans Jacobs, Cilia ...... 85, 299 Based on overweight...... 123 Jacobs-Gast, Martha ...... 85 Identities ...... 262 Jahn, Jan-Heinz ...... 252 Ik ben de Nieuwe Neger (1965 anthology) .136, James, Leon ...... 337 137, 139, 141, 315 James, Willis ...... 337 Ik zag hoe zwart ik was (1958 anthology) .136, Jansma, Arie...... 305 138, 142 Jerram, Leif ...... 24

442 Jessurun, Joost ...... 98 Jonge Strijders ...... 298 Jessurun, Marie ...... 98 Joodse Raad See Jewish Council (Netherlands) Jessurun-Pool, Jacoba ...... 86, 106, 304 Kafka, Franz ...... 66 Jew star ...... 13 Kalamazoo, Michigan ...... 182, 183 Jewish Karl Marx Schule (Berlin) ..... 53, 60, 66, 208, Anti-Jewish measures Netherlands ...... 78 288 Jewish Council (Netherlands) .. 79, 81, 83, 84, Katowice, Silesia ...... 202 93, 103, 235, 296, 297 Kazantzakis, Nikos ...... 315 Jewish Lyceum (Amsterdam) .. 79, 83, 95, 96, Kennedy, John F...... 243 106, 178, 184, 296, 297 Kentering (SDSC journal) ...... 42, 43 Time-line Pool's affiliation with ...... 297 Kenya ...... 244 Jewish Quarter (Amsterdam) ...... 30, 86, 124 Kincaid, Oteria ...... 198 Jews King, Ed ...... 211 anti-Jewish measures in Berlin ...... 67 King, Martin Luther, Jr...... 166 Ashkenazi Jews ...... 27 Kinsbergen, Eva ...... 286 Hybridity of Dutch Jews ...... 30 Kinsbergen, Nora (‘Noor’) ...... 45 Jewish appetite ...... 122 Knöchel, Wilhelm ...... 305 Jewish diamond workers ...... 31 Knoxville College (Tennessee) ...... 144 Portuguese Sephardic ...... 27 Koestner-Swiat, Priscilla ...... 183, 322 Jim Crow ...... 119, 227 Kommunistische Partei Deutschlands (KPD) . 82 Alabama ...... 222 KPD Emigrationsleitung (Amsterdam) .. 82 Jim Crow/Apartheid comparisons ...... See Kops, Bernard ...... 132 Comparisons Kops, Erica ...... 132 John, Erroll ...... 132, 316 Kramer, Gerhard F. .. 51, 58, 60, 64, 290, 291 Johnson Publishing Company ...... 254, 341 Kreuzabnahme (1927 play) ...... 54 Johnson, Gloria ...... 323 KRO (broadcaster) ...... 154, 314 Johnson, James Weldon ...... 117, 228 Kroeze, Mien ...... 284 Johnson, John H...... 341 Ku Klux Klan (KKK) ...... 200, 222 Johnson, William Spaarndam ...... 162 Labor movement Jones, Alando X...... 232, 333 Position of women ...... 60 Jones, Claudia ...... 310 Labor Youth Central (AJC) .... 35, 37, 38, 43, Jones, Donald ...... 161, 162, 163, 172 46, 284 Jones, LeRoi ...... See, See Baraka, Amiri Lachen om niet te huilen (1968 book) ...... 213 Jones, Virgil ...... 337 Lagos, Nigeria ...... 245 Jong, Année Rinzes de ...... 57 LaGrone, Oliver ...... 144

443 Laine, Cleo ...... 130, 159 Lorde, Audre ...... 136, 242, 265 Langhorne, Bruce ...... 337 Los Barritos de Carmin (Surinamese women’s Lasekan, Akinola ...... 252 orchestra) ...... 315 Last, Jef ...... 45, 47, 57, 106, 241, 284 Love ...... 61 Le Corbusier ...... 310 Löwenberg, Martin...... 82, 84 Lebeer, Paul ...... 252 Lubbe, Marinus van der ...... 66 Legêne, Susan ...... 346 Lubetkin, Berthold ...... 310 Leiden (Netherlands) ...... 42 Lustige Neun (Berlin) ...... 62 Leiden University ...... 318 Lying...... 49 Lenin, Vladimir ...... 54, 243 Madgett, Naomi Long ...... 139, 143, 313 Lesbianism ...... 128 Madrid ...... 335 Subculture Berlin ...... 61 Magere Brug, Amsterdam ...... 124 Visibility on streets Berlin ...... 292 Mali ...... 251 Lester, Julius ...... 194 Mandela, Nelson ...... 251 Levi, Ernst ...... 81 Manley, Edna ...... 305 Levin, Meyer ...... 109, 190, 304 Mann, Stanley ...... 157, 173 Lewenstein, Oscar ...... 312 Manning, Joan ...... 315 Library Marriage ...... 64, 287 Rosey Pool’s books ...... 311, 326 Marseillaise (song) ...... 54 Liège (Belgium) ...... 39 Marshall Space Flight Center (Huntsville, Lincoln University ...... 246 Alabama) ...... 234 Linden, Hanna van der ...... 311 Marx, Erica ...... 135 Literature ...... 102 Marx, Karl ...... 29, 228 Little Rock, Arkansas ...... 135 Marxism ...... 42 Little Rock Central High School Marxist writers ...... 76 Integration ...... 166, 172 McBurnie, Beryl ...... 132 Littlewood, Joan ...... 312 McCarthyism ...... 164, 243, 250 Living Corpse, The (1929 movie) ...... 65 McKay, Claude ...... 117, 131, 228 Livingstone College (North Carolina) ....226, Melkman [Michman], Joseph ...... 296 333 Melody of the World (1929 movie) ...... 54 Lloyd Hotel (Amsterdam) ...... 74, 75, 91 Memory ...... 17 Loggem, Manuel van ...... 241 Mengele, Josef ...... 95 London .... 127, 130, 131, 135, 144, 146, 254, Methodological nationalism ...... 266 310 Meyer, Hajo ...... 79, 296 Lopes Cardozo, Benjamin ...... 68 Michel, Mijrtiel ...... 299

444 Michigan...... 179 Muiderpoort train station ...... 87 Michman, Joseph .. See Melkman [Michman], Mulisch, Harry ...... 157 Joseph Multidirectional memory ...... 14 Middelburg, Duco ...... 284 Munich ...... 68 Miller, Arthur ...... 315 Music Miller, Rayna ...... 341 Singing ...... 38, 68 Milligan, Spike ...... 312 Mussolini, Benito ...... 94 Minns, Al ...... 337 Myanmar ...... 130, 310 Mississippi ...... 191 NAACP ...... 112, 165 Mississippi State Sovereignty Commission NASA ...... 221, 222, 232, 233, 234, 331, 334 ...... 200, 211 Nashville, Tennessee ...... 255 Mitteilungsblatt der Interessengemeinschaft National Association for the Advancement of antifaschistischer Deutscher in den Colored People (NAACP) ...... 215, 330 Niederlanden ...... 100 National Socialist German Workers' Party Modisane, Bloke ...... 146, 147, 323 (NSDAP) ...... 290 Moengo Boys ...... 307 Victims of ...... 90 Mol, Albert ...... 125, 133, 287 Nazareth College (Kalamazoo, Michigan) Mols-de Leeuwe, Enny ...... 112 ...... 183 Money ...... 196 Nazi Germany Income Rosey Pool ...... 186 American school children’s perception of Mongo, Frank ...... 307 ...... 181 Monkau, Marius ...... 152, 162, 163 Impact on Netherlands ...... 73 Monocle (glasses) ...... 64 National Socialist German Workers' Party Monokelbar (Berlin) ...... 62 (NSDAP) ...... 58, 59 Montgomery Bus Boycott ...... 135, 166 Nazi claim to power of 1933 ...... 66 Moon on a Rainbow Shawl (1957 theater Nederlandse Vereniging tot Afschaffing van play) ...... 316 Alcoholhoudende Dranken ...... See Dutch Moore, Leo ...... 337 Association for the Abolition of Alcoholic Morehouse College (Atlanta, GA) ...... 312 Beverages Morocco (1930 movie) ...... 62 Négritude ...... 214, 244, 253, 254, 266 Morrison, Richard D...... 224, 227, 230, 234 Negro Theatre Workshop Trust (London) Moscow ...... 166 ...... 312 Movies ...... 54 Networks MS St. Louis (1939) ...... 75 Black Atlantic networks ...... 114 Mug, Jeanne ...... 37, 38 Prewar network ...... 108

445 Neukölln (Berlin quarter) ...... 60 Othello (1950 theater play) ...... 159 New Negro Poets: USA (1964 anthology) ... 144 Otsep, Fyodor ...... 65 New York...... 254 Oudegeest, Jan, Jr...... 41 Nicol [Nicoll], Davidson ...... 253 Overst, Hyman ...... 38 Nieuwe Hoogstraat 18, Amsterdam ...... 29 Pach, Stella ...... 90 Nieuwe Prinsengracht 120, Amsterdam ....86, Padmore, George ...... 310 100, 124, 211 Palestine ...... 93 Nigeria ...... 157, 244 Paletstraat 14, Amsterdam ...... 121 Night Comes Softly (1970 anthology) ...... 314 Palfi, Marion ...... 53, 288 Night of Broken Glass ...... See Kristallnacht Pan-Africanism ...... 244, 246 Nkosi, Lewis ...... 323 Pankey, Aubrey ...... 159 Normal, Alabama ...... 232 Paris ...... 68, 158, 159, 241, 252, 254, 335 Norman, Memphis ...... 198, 216, 217 Parkes, Frank ...... 146, 147 Notowicz, Nathan ...... 81, 93, 322 Parks, Rosa ...... 166 Nun-Story, The (1959 movie) ...... 164 Parool, Het (newspaper) ...... 117 Obesity ...... 33, 122, 123 Party (poem) ...... 43 Odetta ...... 245, 337 Payant, Lee ...... 158, 159, 316 Odufré, Joes ...... 156, 315 Pazant, Edward ...... 337 Okigbo, Christopher ...... 255 Peace, Doris A...... 210 Olatunji, Michael...... 245, 337 Peat Bog Soldiers (song) ...... 320 Olf, Bill [a.k.a. ‘Billy the Kid’] ...... 307 Pegasus (student journal) ...... 312 Oliver, Benny ...... 217 Pels, Peter van...... 178 Olivier, Sir Laurence ...... 312 Pension Hommeles (TV series 1957-1959) . 161 Onafhankelijke Socialistische Partij (OSP) ... See Performativity ...... 16 Independent Socialist Party (OSP) Peters, Brock ...... 159, 337 Oosie, Majo ...... 307 Petry, Ann ...... 114 Oosteinde...... See Tehuis Oosteinde PhD ...... 123 Oosteinde 16-14, Amsterdam ...... 74 Philadelphia Transit Strike (1944) ...... 119 Oostelijke Handelskade 34, Amsterdam .... 74 Philanthropy ...... 187 Opernplatz (Berlin) ...... 67 Pillarization ...... 28, 153 Ordnungsdienst (OD) ...... 94 Pinkston, Jutha ...... 198 Orientalism ...... 117 Pittsburgh Courier (newspaper)...... 115, 225 Oruwari, Karine ...... 132 Place de l’Indépendance, Dakar ...... 252 Oruwari, Katie ...... 132 Plooyer, Erik ...... 152 Oster, Guus ...... 315 Poetry of the Negro, The (1949 anthology) . 311

446 Poitier, Sidney ...... 173, 254, 312 Reichstag building, burning of (Berlin 1933) Polak, Bea ...... 290 ...... 66 Polak, Henri ...... 45 Reichswehr ...... 57 Pool, Jozef (‘Jopie’) ...... 30, 32, 40, 86, 240 Renna, Anna ...... 183 Pool, Louis ...... 28, 86, 304 Resistance ...... 247 Pool-Jessurun, Jacoba ...... 26, 29 By Catholics ...... 100 Popular Front Duplicating identity cards ...... 83 Resistance within Camp Westerbork ..... 90 Escape routes ...... 82 Portuguese Sephardic Jews ...... 27, 30 Escapes from Camp Westerbork ...... 91 Portuguese synagogue (Amsterdam) ...... 34 Forge documents ...... 82 Posthumus-van der Goot, Willemijn Help to German Jews in Berlin, 1930s .. 68 Hendrika ...... 314 Helping people escape from Camp Pothuis-Smit, Carry ...... 45 Westerbork ...... 85 Potsdamer Platz (Berlin) ...... 53 Hiding Jews ...... 155 Potsdamer Stra e 123 (Berlin) ...... 287 Hiding people ...... 82 Prabhu, Pandarinathβ Hari ...... 323 Illegal publications...... 102 Pratt, Mary Louise ...... 24, 259 Illegal work and ...... 83, 103 Premsela, Benno ...... 249 Kidnap people ...... 82 Prentiss, Audrey...... 198, 212, 214, 329, 330 Knocking Dutch national anthem ...... 86 Primitivism ...... 117 Passive resistance ...... 219 Pudovkin, Vsevolod ...... 55, 65 Resistance poetry ...... 139 Querido (publisher) ...... 117, 134 Revolutionair Socialistische Partij (RSP) ..... See Rabbie, Herman ...... 287, 290 Revolutionary Socialist Party (RSP) Race and the Netherlands Revolutionary Socialist Party (RSP) ...... 56 Innocence ...... 116 Rijn, Griet van ...... 336 Nazi race ideology ...... 77 Rijn, Rembrandt van ...... 228 Race laws, Nazi ...... 78 Rijxman, A.S. (Wim) ...... 286 Race plays ...... 160 Rive, Richard ...... 144, 145 Radio Oranje ...... 154 Robeson, Essie ...... 310 Randall, Dudley ...... 231, 265, 313 Robeson, Paul ...... 239, 310 Razzia of 26 May 1943 ...... 86, 211 Robinson, Elder ...... 339 Reckord, Barry ...... 132 Robinson, Renault ...... 341 Red Cross ...... 95, 108 Roosevelt, Franklin ...... 165, 167 Red Scare ...... 243 Rosey Pool Award ...... 265, 341 Reform ...... 38 Rothberg, Michael ...... 14

447 Route, William ...... 206 Sneevliet, Henk ...... 56 Route, William Francis ...... 198 Snodgrass, William ...... 143, 313 Royal Free Hospital (London) ...... 130 Sobibór ...... 88, 240 Ruttmann, Walter ...... 54 Sociaal-Democratische Arbeiderspartij (SDAP) Sadberry, Evelyn ...... 198 ...... See Social Democratic Workers' Party Salkey, Andrew ...... 132 (SDAP), See Social Democratic Workers’ Sandberg, Willem ...... 106 Party (SDAP) Sannes, Goswijn ...... 45 Social Democratic Student Club (SDSC) .. 40 Sapphic ode to Emily Dickinson (poem) ... 62 Social Democratic Workers’ Party (SDAP) Schackman, Al ...... 337, 338 ...... 28, 29, 30, 35, 42, 45, 90, 166 Schaper, Bertus ...... 284 Social mobility ...... 49 Schmidt, Annie M.G...... 161, 239, 317 Socialist Artists Circle ...... See Socialistische Schomburg Center ...... 309 Kunstenaars Kring (SKK) Schönemann, Friedrich ...... 70, 293 Socialist Youth Union (SJV)...... 57 Schubert, Franz...... 380 Socialist-communist rivalry ...... 289 Schuhmacher, P...... 285 Socialisties Jeugdverbond (SJV) ...... See Socialist Schulte Nordholt, Jan Willem ...... 315 Youth Union (SJV) Schwerinstraße (Berlin) ...... 62 Socialistische Kunstenaars Kring (SKK) ...... 45 Schwietert, Charles ...... 286 Société Africaine de Culture (SAC) ...... 244 Scottsboro Boys ...... 70, 222 Soestdijk Palace ...... 98 Scrapbooks ...... 21, 195 South Africa...... 145, 147 Segregation Soviet Union ..... 118, 165, 241, 243, 277, 284 Rosey Pool's response to...... 188 Sovkino ...... 55 Sellers, John ...... 337 Soyinka, Wole ...... 243 Senegal ...... 251 Spain Senghor, Leopold ..... 149, 214, 243, 252, 254 Spanish Civil War ...... 241, 247 Shakespeare, William ...... 302 Spanish Civil War ...... 284 Shame ...... 99 Sperre ...... 83 Silence ...... 235 Spier, Jo ...... 284 Simmons, Clifford ...... 253 Spingarn, Arthur ...... 127, 132, 146, 149, 215 Simone, Nina ...... 239, 245, 248, 337, 338 Spirituality Singer, Kurt ...... 106 Agnosticism ...... 100 Sluis, Meijer van der ...... 112 Christmas celebration 1943 ...... 101 Smit, Frank ...... 315 Spoleto (Italy) ...... 68 Smith, Muriel ...... 130, 159 Staatscourant (newspaper) ...... 304

448 Star of David ...... 78 Theater Steen, Guus van der ...... 314 Political theater ...... 160 Stein, Gertrude ...... 133 Race plays ...... 160 Stenhuis, R...... 285 Theater am Kurfürstendamm ...... 53 Sterman, Django ...... 162 Theater der Prominenten ...... 106 Sterman, Otto .... 152, 162, 165, 168, 265, 317 Theosophy ...... 44 Stertzenbach, Werner ...... 90, 91, 103, 303 Theosophical Association...... 35 Stichting tot Exploitatie en Bescherming van Therapy Auteursrechten (SEBA)...... 134 Education as therapy ...... 113 Stoop, Ritsaert ...... 284 Group therapy ...... 207 Storm Over Asia (1928 movie) ...... 55 Regression therapy ...... 212 Storytelling ...... 179 Thivy, J.A. (John) ...... 164 Stowe, Harriet Beecher ...... 111 Threepenny Opera ...... 53, 68 Stroman, Clarence ...... 337 Tijn, Bernhard van ...... 286 Student Nonviolent Coordinating Tikkun olam ...... 113 Committee (SNCC) ...... 139 Tingen, Frits ...... 36, 189, 264 Student Voice (journal) ...... 139 To Kill a Mockingbird (1962 movie) ...... 173 Studio Vitus (Bussum) ...... 152, 167 To Sir, With Love (1967 movie) ...... 173 Stuiveling, Garmt ...... 284 Toklas, Alice B...... 133 Suriname ...... 111, 117, 157 Tolhuis, Het, Amsterdam ...... 285 Surinamese people living in Amsterdam Tolson, Melvin ...... 114, 115, 116, 131, 242 ...... 110 Tool, Harriet (alias Rosey Pool) ...... 77 Survivor ...... 260 Toppkeller (Berlin) ...... 62 Survivor’s guilt ...... 99 Tougaloo College .... 198, 199, 201, 203, 216, Talladega, Alabama ...... 188 226, 327, 330 Talladega College ...... 188 Tougaloo Nine ...... 201 Tehuis Oosteinde ...... 74, 81, 83, 96 Transnationalism ...... 18 Television...... 156 Trauma ...... 17 Black actors on Dutch television ...... 161 Education and ...... 208 Women on Dutch TV, 1950s ...... 156 Invasive thoughts ...... 125 Temple Beth Emeth (Wilmington, Work ethic and ...... 125 Delaware) ...... 186 Treurniet, Arie ...... 284 Tennessee ...... 144 Tropic Death (1926 novel) ...... 135 Terminology ...... 17 Truth, Sojourner ...... 131 The Hague ...... 165 Tubman, Harriet ...... 77, 93, 228, 295

449 Ture, Kwame ...... 203 Voltaire ...... 302 Tuskegee College ...... 224 Vondel, Joost van den ...... 380 Tweesprong (1956 TV play) ...... 315 Voorbergh, Cruys ...... 283 Uncle Tom’s Cabin (novel) ...... 111 Vorrink, Koos ...... 289 Underground Railroad ...... 77, 93, 295 Vorst, Meyer ...... 299 Union for office personnel .... See Handels- en Vos, Margot ...... 36, 264 Kantoorbediendenbond Voth, Rhoda M...... 209 Union for Social Democratic Women’s Voyage of the Damned ...... See MS St. Louis Clubs ...... See Bond van Sociaal- (1939) Democratische Vrouwenclubs VPRO (broadcaster) ...... 170 United Negro College Fund (UNCF) .....147, Programs on race ...... 156 186, 187, 188, 210, 226, 323, 324 Vriendschap (journal) ...... 249 University of Alabama (Huntsville) .. 233, 332 Vrij Nederland (newspaper) ...... 119 University of Alabama (Tuscaloosa) ...... 332 Waarheid, De (newspaper) ...... 166 University of Amsterdam .. 39, 46, 47, 49, 120 Waffen-SS ...... 86, 91, 94, 95 University of Berlin ..... See Friedrich Wilhelm Walcott, Derek ...... 242, 255 University (Berlin) Walker, Yvonne O...... 337 Usseau, Arnaud d’ ...... 158 Wall Street stock market crash (1929) ...... 56 Utrecht ...... 96, 98, 101, 102, 110, 165, 302 Wall, James ...... 337 Van Dien resistance group .. 81, 82, 84, 90, 93, Wallace, George ...... 222, 224 100, 106, 110 Stand in the door ...... 332 Van Waegeningh (bookstore Berlin) ...... 53 Walrond, Eric ...... 135, 137 VARA (broadcaster) . 44, 45, 46, 59, 154, 285 Washington, Booker T...... 131 Vegetarianism ...... 39 Wayne State University (Detroit) .... 143, 180, Vereinigung Sozialdemokratischer Studenten 313 ...... 286 We Shall March Again (1955 novel) ... See Wir Vereniging van Duitse en Statenloze Werden Weiter Marschieren (1952 Antifascisten (VDSA) ...... 380 novel), See Wir Werden Weiter Vermeyden, Henk...... 290 Marschieren (1952 novel) Verwey-Jonker, Hilda ...... 40, 41 We Shall Overcome (song) ...... 215 Vijf Ponden Pers Wees, G.M. van ...... 96, 100, 287 Five Pound Press ...... 102 Weesperstraat (Amsterdam) ...... 30 Vinson, Audrey L...... 225, 230, 236, 335 Weimar Republic ...... 51 Vleeschouwer, Jopie ...... 303 Welch, Elisabeth ...... 130 Volksbühne movement ...... 54 Welk, Ehm ...... 54

450 Wenger, Susanne ...... 305 Wilmette, Illinois...... 341 Wereldomroep (broadcaster) ...... 154, 314 Wilmington, Delaware ...... 186 Wessel, Horst ...... 59 Wilson, G. Marshall ...... 337 Wesselius, Eva ...... 100 Wilson, Jimmy ...... 166, 172 Wesselius, Rudi ...... 100, 287, 346 Wir Werden Weiter Marschieren (1952 novel) West African Arts Club (London) ...... 130 ...... 287, 366 Westerbork (transit camp) ...... 87 Wiseman, Victor H...... 323 Alte Kampinsassen ...... 89 Wit op zwart (1957 radio broadcast) ...... 315 Clothing in camp ...... 301 Woerden (Netherlands) ...... 33 Escapes ...... 91 Wolkers, Jan ...... 157 Facilities within camp ...... 87 Woodruff, Hale ...... 337 Library ...... 95 Woolworth’s sit-in (Jackson, Mississippi, Pool’s attitude in camp ...... 91 1963) ...... 201, 216, 217 Pool’s escape from ...... 96 World War I ...... 35 Response to Pool’s escape ...... 301 World War II Spirituals in ...... 263 Invasion Netherlands (1940) ...... 76 Tempering with administration records . 85 Wright, Richard ...... 114, 117, 243 Westerweel resistance group ...... 296 Wyandotte, Michigan...... 182, 321 Weston, Randy ...... 245, 246, 337 Wyandotte Community Theatre...... 321 White Citizens’ Council ...... 200, 202 Wyatt, Addie ...... 341 White patrons of Black art ...... 111 Wyndham’s Theatre (London) ...... 130 White, Roger ...... 341 Xavier University (New Orleans) ...... 190 Whiteness ...... 245, 246, 248, 254 Yevtushenko, Yevgeny ...... 252 Wijk, Paula van...... 162 Ypsilanti, Michigan ...... 183 Williams, Annie Belle ...... 198 Ypsilanti High School ...... 181 Williams, Dianella ...... 198, 208 Yu, Chin ...... 157, 315 Williams, Rev. Austen ...... 312 Zanddwarsstraat (Amsterdam) ...... 31 Willis, Melinda Lois ...... 198 Zeeuw, Stien de ...... 284 Wilmersdorf (Berlin quarter) ...... 293 Zionism ...... 93

451