Early life He was born
Asser Baars in Amsterdam on April 20, 1892, although throughout his life he went by the name Dolf or Adolf. His parents were Benjamin Baars, a diamond worker, and Judith Nerden. He studied to become a
Civil engineer in
Delft, graduating in 1914. In October 1914 he married his first wife, Anna Catharina Cheriex, who was a doctor. In December 1915 he left that position to become a teacher at the
Koningin Emmaschool, a technical school in
Surabaya. One student of his during this time was
Sukarno, the future independence leader and first president of
Indonesia. In the Indies, Baars soon became active in the
Indische Sociaal-Democratische Vereeniging (Dutch: Indies Social Democratic Association), or ISDV, and in the fall of 1915 joined the editorial board of its new party newspaper,
Het Vrije Woord, alongside
Henk Sneevliet and D.J.A. Westerveld. The paper was one of the only Dutch papers in the Indies to have earned the respect of many Indonesians involved in the
Indonesian National Awakening, first because it denounced the arrest of the radical
Mas Marco in 1916, and then because it publicly opposed the
Indië Weerbar campaign to establish a 'native' army in the Indies. (This paper is not to be confused with
Suara Merdeka, an unrelated paper founded in 1950.) Published twice a month,
Soeara Merdika was aimed at the type of people who might read
Het Vrije Woord but who could not read Dutch, and to spread Social Democratic ideals among Malay readers of the Indies. 'The paper failed and ceased publication within its first year, but Baars and his allies launched another paper, ''Soeara Ra'jat'' (Malay: People's Voice), in March 1918. By October 1917 the colonial government tired of his political agitation and honorably discharged him from his teaching job in
Surabaya. The firing was widely covered in the Dutch press of the Indies; the
Bataviaasch Nieuwsblad stated that Baars had defied the Government until his dismissal, so there was no need to feel sorry for him, and that he had in addition made "disgraceful" attacks on the education system in
Het Vrije Woord. However, the Dutch-Indies Teachers' Union (NIOG), in its January 1918 meeting, determined that he had been unfairly fired and proposed to give him financial support, although in the end none was given. Their declaration stated that a teacher should be able to act like any other citizen, and if his speech crossed a line into criminal sedition, it should be a matter for the police, not his employer. and
Het nieuws van den dag voor Nederlandsch-Indië. Because the ISDV was mainly an urban party, Baars and others within the movement supported the creation of rural or agrarian organizations. In 1917 this was attempted with
Porojitno, which meant to organize peasants and unskilled laborers, and in early 1918 this was reorganized as the
Perhimpunan Kaoem Boeroeh dan Tani (
Malay: Workers' and Peasants' Association) or PKBT. Baars played a major role in it at first, although by 1919 it was reorganized again and came more solidly under the leadership of
Haji Misbach in
Surakarta. Baars was very inspired by the events of the
October Revolution and other revolutionary events in Europe. Baars became chairman of the ISDV in 1917, a position he held until 1919. In early 1919, after authorities deported his ally Sneevliet from the Indies, Baars left voluntarily and returned to the Netherlands. The government would soon deport most of the other European ISDV members in the Indies, leaving the organization in the hands of Indonesians such as
Semaun and
Darsono. Upon his return to the Indies he was much more vocally opposed to the
Indonesian nationalist movement, saying that nationalism and patriotism were the opponents of socialism. In June 1920 he divorced his first wife, Anna Cheriex. Bergsma later reappeared and may have restarted publication on his own, with some written contributions sent in by Baars. Years later allegations surfaced that he had come into conflict with the Communist party in his final years, even that he had been suspected to be a police informant and was expelled to the party in secret. Opposite rumours were also circulating that he was a Soviet spy with many fake passports and a huge cache of weapons. His recent articles in
Het Vrije Woord were also cited as reasons, including one protesting the arrest of a PKI member and another describing the
German counter-revolution. The Semarang municipal council, which he still worked for, objected on the basis that he had never broken any of the laws on propaganda and political organizing—he had limited himself to teaching and philosophical political writings—but that the government had ignored the law and taken advantage of its "extraordinary right" (
exhorbitante rechten) to nonetheless deport him.
Semaun, Baars' longtime ally, spoke up at the same council meeting and stated that Baars' expulsion had shocked members of their party, because of how diligently he had stayed within the bounds of the law and sought to avoid offense to anyone in recent years. Baars ended up resettling in the Soviet Union with Onok Sawina, becoming an engineer at the
Kuzbass Autonomous Industrial Colony in
Siberia. He wrote that foreign delegates in the USSR like his former allies
Semaun and
Darsono had very limited social circles; they worked in an office, received foreign letters and press clippings, and lived in a hotel, knowing little about the country they were living in. These letters he sent to the Indies Dutch press summarizing his book were translated into Malay, Javanese and Sundanese by the government-funded publishing house
Kantoor voor de Volkslectuur (
Balai Pustaka), in the hopes that it would turn readers away from communism. A full-length book translation was even proposed but it is unclear if the translation that eventually came out received government funding or not. Baars' allegations about life in the USSR were received with somewhat more skepticism in the Malay press in the Indies. The
Bintang Timoer speculated that he may have published it as 'revenge' for his poor treatment by the Soviets and that it was difficult to verify. Other Malay papers, such as
Abdul Muis's
Kaoem Moeda, saw a benefit to publishing it, since it might lead people back from the "darkness" of communism. In the 1930s, Baars worked at the Netherlands Economic Institute in
Rotterdam for some time. According to historian
Ruth McVey, Baars became a supporter of
Fascism in his final years.
Deportation to Auschwitz During the
Second World War, Baars was deported to
Auschwitz concentration camp, where he was killed on March 6, 1944. ==Selected publications==