Summary
A central figure in the Dutch diamond industry and the Jewish community in Amsterdam, a renowned economist and prominent Dutch Zionist leader, who became deputy diamond controller of the new state of Israel in 1948 and, with Albert Ehrenfeld, shaped its diamond-control policy (Diamonds and War — State, Capital, and Labor in British-Ruled Palestine, PDF p.259-260).
Details
- He was closely connected to the diamond world through his family and the diamond firm he ran in Amsterdam in the 1940s (Diamonds and War — State, Capital, and Labor in British-Ruled Palestine, PDF p.259-260).
- In February-April 1948 he was nominated as Albert Ehrenfeld’s deputy as diamond controller, and the two established the Department of Diamond Control under Minhelet Haam in April 1948 (Diamonds and War — State, Capital, and Labor in British-Ruled Palestine, PDF p.259).
- With Ehrenfeld he expounded the intertwining of industrial recovery, loyalty to occupational traditions and state building, representing the needs of both the state and the private industrial sector (Diamonds and War — State, Capital, and Labor in British-Ruled Palestine, PDF p.260).
- He perfected the state’s diamond assistance system by introducing currency switching — using the income from the difference between the British pound and the American dollar to finance further purchases and settle the manufacturers’ financial obligations (Diamonds and War — State, Capital, and Labor in British-Ruled Palestine, PDF p.265).
- With Ehrenfeld he was an owner and stockholder of Chevrat Pituach, the state-controlled private company that from 1950 handled the diamond arrangements (Diamonds and War — State, Capital, and Labor in British-Ruled Palestine, PDF p.265).
- His Record on the crisis in the diamond industry, 8 March 1949 (ISA/RG/48/90/23), opens Chapter 8: world markets deteriorating, German development renewed with lower wages, the producer in Israel left with no profit, and enterprises kept open only by hope of government assistance (Diamonds and War — State, Capital, and Labor in British-Ruled Palestine, PDF p.251).
- As Yaakov Arnon, his summary of the 1952 Israel Industrial Census is a source of Table 8.2 (“The Diamond Industry,” Haaretz, 8 June 1955) (Diamonds and War — State, Capital, and Labor in British-Ruled Palestine, PDF p.258).
- Chapter 8 note 18 gives his biography: born in Amsterdam in 1913 (died 1995), trained as a cleaver and polisher and graduated in economics; in 1934 he became chief accountant at Asscher’s Diamant Maatschappij under Joseph Asscher, whose daughter Loes he married, and worked also for the firm in Paris and New York; on his father’s death in 1939 he became manager of the family’s firm and was leader of the Zionist Jewish Youth Federation in the Netherlands; in June 1943 he was arrested and sent to Westerbork, released after a month with three hundred other diamond workers, and went underground; he arrived in Palestine in March 1948 and soon became a leading civil servant with the government of Israel, in diamond purchase and control (Diamonds and War — State, Capital, and Labor in British-Ruled Palestine, PDF p.329).