Dola de Jong was born
Dorothea Rosalie de Jong in 1911 in
Arnhem,
The Netherlands, to a wealthy Jewish father, Salomon Louis de Jong, and a German mother, Lotte Rosalie Benjamin. De Jong had two brothers. She owes her name to her older brother Hans, who changed Dorothea (or Dora) into Dola. Her mother, German by birth, was in poor health, so Dola often stayed with an ‘aunt Mathilde’ in
Haarlem. Her mother died when Dola was five years old. As a young woman, she aspired to become a ballet dancer, but her conservative father viewed ballet as “one step away from prostitution,” as she told
Het Parool in a 1982 interview. Her father wanted to send her to a finishing school in Lausanne, “but I was a rebel,” she said, “I always have been.” Instead, she took a job at a local newspaper,
Nieuwe Arnhemsche Courant. When the newspaper went bankrupt, de Jong moved to
Amsterdam in the early 1930s where she started taking dance lessons. She became a member of the Royal Dutch Ballet for eight years and toured the Netherlands with the
Yvonne Georgi. To fund her dance lessons, de Jong started working as a freelance journalist, writing under the pseudonym Sourit Ballon. During this time, she also published some children's books. She later divorced Hoowij and married her second husband, Robert Joseph. Together they had one son, Ian, in 1951. In 1970, she separated from Robert Joseph and started a relationship with Oscar Van Leer. The couple moved to The Netherlands, where she lived until their breakup. In 1978, she returned to New York, where she began started studying psychology and literature at the
Empire State College of the
State University of New York. After graduating in 1983, at 72, Dola worked as a teacher at the same institution until she was 78. In the late 1980s, she started painting, and wrote for
De Nieuwe Amsterdammer. == Career ==