Gerrit Bolkestein

Infobox Officeholder
name = Gerrit Bolkestein


imagesize = 125px
caption = Gerrit Bolkestein in 1942
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office = Minister for Education, Art and Science
term_start = 1939
term_end = 1945
monarch = Queen Wilhelmina
primeminister = Dirk Jan de Geer
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birth_date = birth date|1871|10|9|df=yes
birth_place = Amsterdam, Netherlands
death_date = death date and age|1956|9|8|1871|10|9|df=yes
death_place = The Hague, Netherlands
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birthname = Gerrit Bolkestein
nationality = Dutch
party = Free-minded Democratic League
spouse = Johanna Meijer
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Gerrit Bolkestein (October 9, 1871, Amsterdam – September 8, 1956, The Hague) was a Dutch politician and member of the Free-minded Democratic League.

Bolkestein was the Minister for Education, Art and Science from 1939 until 1945, and was part of the Dutch government-in-exile from 1940. In early 1944 he gave a radio address from London in which he said that after the war he would collect written evidence from Dutch people relating to the oppression they had endured during the Nazi occupation. Among those who heard the broadcast, was Anne Frank who had been keeping a diary for two years, which she had spent in hiding. His comment that he was particularly interested in diaries and letters, led Frank to edit what had originally been a diary kept for her own amusement. Frank later died in Bergen-Belsen concentration camp, but her partially edited diary was saved, and eventually published in 1946.

Bolkestein is the grandfather of prominent market liberal Frits Bolkestein.