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Draft:Samuel Bernard Person

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Bernard Person
Born19 June 1894
Amsterdam, Noord-Holland, Nederland (Netherlands)
Died9 March 1981
Other namesBep Person, Samuel Bär Person, Piet Hein
Occupation(s)Journalist, Correspondent
SpouseRosa Citroen (married 1925)(1899–1980)
Children2
Parent(s)Helena (Lena) Aronowitz, Elias (Elja) Schmoeiloff Person
RelativesAron Broches (1st cousin)

Bernard Person (19 June 1894–9 March 1981) was a Dutch-born journalist who delivered daily broadcasts from New York City to the Nazi-occupied Netherlands during World War II and was later decorated by the Dutch Government. He was editor-in-chief of several newspapers, founded Facts on File, and was a United Nations correspondent.

Early life and education[edit]

Person was born Samuel Bär Person in Amsterdam to parents Helena (Lena) Aronowitz (b. 27 October 1858 in Palanga, Lithuania) and Elias Schmoeiloff Person (b. 15 October 1845 in Romny, Ukraine).

His family was Jewish. He was the youngest of seven children; the first six were born in Ukraine, and he was the only child born after his family had moved to the Netherlands.[citation needed]

Person was fluent in Dutch, German, French, Russian, Yiddish, and English.[citation needed]

Personal life[edit]

In 1925, Person married Rosa Citroen (whose older sister Lena Citroen was the wife of Erwin Blumenfeld and whose cousins included German-born Barbara Ledermann and Dutch painter Paul Citroen; the family was distantly related to the automobile family Citroën).

Bernard and Rosa had two children, Alexander Dunbar (1927–2013) and Elka Myra (married name Fink; 1928–2022), both born in the Netherlands.[1] Person had five grandchildren, all born in the United States.

Mr. Person brought his family to the United States in 1939. They sailed on the Veendam[2] and arrived at Ellis Island on 9 March 1939. The family settled in Great Neck, NY.

Career[edit]

While living in Rotterdam (as of 1913), he wrote for the Dordrechtse Courant. He moved to Amsterdam in 1915 and worked at the Foreign News Department of De Telegraaf. During World War I, he was a reporter in Berlin, after which he was a correspondent in London.[3]

As a newspaper reporter, Person covered the French occupation of the Ruhr Occupation and the 1924 trial of Adolf Hitler in Munich.[citation needed]

In 1925, he was appointed traveling correspondent for the International News Service (Hearst Concern). In 1927, he became editor-in-chief of the Provinciale Groninger Courant. From 1929 to 1938, he was editor-in-chief of the Dutch weekly newspaper de Haagse Post. Shortly after his twenty-fifth anniversary in journalism, he emigrated to the United States.[3]

Soon after arriving in New York, he became the first editor-in-chief of the Knickerbocker Weekly[4] before leaving the post due to perceived interference from business managers.[5] In 1940, Person founded Facts on File, the first news digest in the Western Hemisphere to have a cumulative weekly index, now widely used by editors and librarians.[1][5][6] At the time he was a member of the Netherlands Information Bureau in New York.[1]

Person delivered daily broadcasts to the Nazi-occupied Netherlands during World War II, using the assumed name "Piet Hein" to protect his relatives still in the Netherlands. He broadcast throughout the war over Radio Netherlands using the facilities of CBS shortwave radio.[1] Person contributed to the morale of many Dutch people during the war, and he received hundreds of grateful letters after the war from Dutch Jews.[citation needed] He continued his broadcasts from the United Nations after the war. He was later decorated by the Dutch Government.[1]

Person was assigned to the United Nations in 1945, representing Dutch newspapers. He remained at that post until 1978, when he retired.[1]

From 1946 to 1975, he was United Nations correspondent for the Amsterdam-based daily newspaper Algemeen Handelsblad and the Dutch broadcasting companies AVRÒ and NOS.[3]

Death[edit]

Person died exactly 42 years from the day the family arrived in the United States. He died in Albuquerque, NM at age 86.[1] He was buried next to his wife in Westchester County, New York.[7]

References[edit]

  1. ^ a b c d e f g "Bernard Person, Winner Of Dutch Honors in War". The New York Times. 1981-03-11. ISSN 0362-4331. Retrieved 2024-06-14.
  2. ^ @StadsarchiefRotterdam. "Zoeken op passagiers". Stadsarchief Rotterdam (in Dutch). Retrieved 2024-06-15.
  3. ^ a b c van Eeten-Koopmans, Jana (1996). "Boris Raptschinsky (1887–1983)". Studia Rosenthaliana. 30 (2): 282–303. ISSN 0039-3347. JSTOR 41482343.
  4. ^ Knickerbocker Weekly. Netherlands Publishing Corporation. 1941.
  5. ^ a b Kok, Charlotte (24 June 2011). The Knickerbocker Weekly and the Netherlands Information Bureau: A Public Diplomacy Cooperation During the 1941-1947 Era (PDF). American Studies Program. MA Thesis, American Studies Program, Utrecht University. pp. 20–23.
  6. ^ The End of isolationism : Facts on File's reports from the final weeks of 1940 /. Facts on File. 1977. ISBN 978-0-87196-049-8.
  7. ^ "Bernard Person (1894-1981) - Find a Grave..." www.findagrave.com. Retrieved 2024-06-16.
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