Jef Last

Who was Jef Last?

Josephus Carel Franciscus Last was a Dutch poet and writer.

Jef Last was a writer and socially compassionate man. He had a Catholic background. However, he was very young member of the SDAP and the "AJC". These principles, he could not practice as an assistant manager of the Enka in Ede, and eventually he resigned.

He left the revisionist social democracy to become a member of Henk Sneevliets. With his revolutionary friend André Gide, he traveled in the summer of 1936 to the Soviet Union. The pair was well received, but saw through the organized tribute and returned to the west disillusioned. Much later Last wrote a book about his friendship with Gide.

He last fought in the Spanish Civil War in the International Brigades, which was on the side of the Spanish Republic. As a result he lost his Dutch citizenship for military service for a foreign power. Shortly after the Second World War, his citizenship was returned.

From 1950 to 1953, he lived in Indonesia, particularly in Singaraja, where he worked as a teacher at a secondary school. He was friends with president Sukarno and Mohammad Hatta.