Biography

About Andries de Rosa

After finishing primary school, Andries de Rosa became a diamond cutter. He was musically talented and felt drawn to expressions of art and social questions from an early age. With a few friends (Israël Querido, Emanuel Querido, Jacques Dreese) he founded a cultural group and a sports club.

When he turned eighteen, he turned his back on the diamond trade and settled in Paris as a musician. He got married there to the Dutch Delphine Dreese. The couple first lived in Montmartre, where they enjoyed the bohemian life of sculptors, painters, musicians and writers.

Andries de Rosa tried to earn a living by composing scores for violin with piano or mandolin accompaniment. Those scores were published under the pseudonym of A. du Roche. After the birth of their second child, De Rosa left his bohemian life behind him and returned to the diamond trade. He had become a militant socialist and he became the founder of the Parisian trade union of diamond workers. As union leader, he made several journeys to Amsterdam, where he maintained contact with Henri Polak. In order to create a contact forum for Dutch people living in Paris, De Rosa set up the association Hollandia, which held cultural as well as purely informal events.

In 1912, Andries de Rosa returned to Amsterdam with his family. He became a board member of the ANDB. In that function, he attended several conferences. In 1922, De Rosa launched the cremation organisation 'Arbeiders Vereniging voor Lijkverbranding' (AVVL) in café De Kroon at the Rembrandtplein in Amsterdam which had as its objective to enable less well-off workers to pay for an expensive cremation. He became the organisation's first chairman.

Andries de Rosa translated several literary works from the French, including works by Henri Barbusse, E. de Goncourt, Gustave Flaubert and Maeterlinck. In 1929, his novel 'Sarah Crémieux' was published.
See also his biography in Biografisch Woordenboek van het Socialisme en de Arbeidersbeweging in Nederland [in Dutch].
//Jewish Historical Museum, Documents collection, inv.nr 5122, levensbeschrijving van Andries de Rosa;
S. Bloemgarten and J. van Velzen, Joods Amsterdam in een bewogen tijd 1980-1940. Een beeldverhaal (Zwolle 1997) 142//