Anton de Kom

Writer and freedom fighter Anton de Kom, born in Suriname in 1898, became an influential voice in the anticolonial movement of the early twentieth century, a figure comparable to W.E.B. du Bois in the United States. We Slaves of Suriname has been a controversial and important book right from its first publication in 1934. In 1930s Suriname, Anton de Kom was deemed a communist subversive and banished to the Netherlands where We Slaves of Suriname was published, heavily censored. It was sold illegally in the Dutch colonies, where it was banned. During the Second World War De Kom joined the resistance. He died in 1945 in a German concentration camp.