Contact Liesbeth Heenk

I founded Amsterdam Publishers in 2012 as an independent publishing house. Over time, it evolved into a publishing house dedicated exclusively to Holocaust memoirs and true stories.

I am not Jewish, but I feel a deep responsibility to preserve the memory of the Holocaust and to speak up when hatred and prejudice threaten to become normalized. My connection to this history began in childhood, through the stories my mother told me about life in the occupied Netherlands and about my grandfather’s efforts to help people in hiding during the Nazi occupation. Those stories stayed with me and shaped my belief that preserving memory is not enough: we must also speak up when hatred and injustice threaten people’s lives and freedoms.

The Jewish principle of tikkun olam, repairing the world, expresses something I have come to believe deeply: that each of us has a responsibility to leave the world a little better than we found it. Preserving Holocaust testimony is my way of contributing to that purpose.

Before becoming a publisher, I was an art historian and worked in the international art world, including positions at Christie’s in London and Sotheby’s in Amsterdam.

In 2015, I accompanied a Holocaust survivor whose memoir I had published on a return visit to Dachau. I pushed his wheelchair along the gravel paths of the former camp, as he revisited a place he had last seen as a prisoner more than seventy years earlier. Seeing what it meant to him, and to his children and grandchildren, that his story had finally been preserved made me understand the profound importance of testimony. I made a promise to myself: if I could make it work, this was the work I wanted to dedicate my life to.

Since then, I have dedicated myself to preserving Holocaust true stories and ensuring that these voices continue to be heard by future generations.

For me, these books are not only historical records. They are personal stories of courage, resilience, and the enduring strength of the human spirit. It is a privilege to work with the authors who entrust me with their stories and to help preserve them for generations to come.