page_title: Lou Lichtveld
section_title: Public Offices
hierarchical_section_title: Lou Lichtveld / Biography / Public Offices
caption_attribution_description: Nederlands: Albert Helman (pseudoniem van Lou Lichtveld) voor de Convair 340 van de KLM op het vliegveld Piarco van Port of Spain op Trinidad. 1 oktober 1955
context_page_description: Lodewijk 'Lou' Lichtveld was a Surinamese politician, playwright, poet and resistance fighter who wrote under the pseudonym "Albert Helman".
  He gained notability in 1923 when he published the poetry collection De glorende dag, a milestone in immigrant literature in the Netherlands. He followed it three years later with Zuid-Zuid-West.
  In 1940, before the invasion of the Netherlands, he wrote the book Millioenen-leed about the treatment of the Jews in Nazi Germany. During World War II, he was a member of the Grote Raad van de Illegaliteit. After the war, he became part of the Emergency Parliament. In 1949, he returned to Suriname and became Minister of Education and later Minister of Health.
context_section_description: In 1949, Lichtveld returned to his native Suriname, where he was the Minister of Education and National Development and Minister of Health until 1951. The government fell over the Hospital Question in which Lichtveld had fired doctor Henk van Ommeren over all alleged irregularities which were later proven false. After his resignation as Minister, he still held various other offices. He was chairman of the Court of Audit of Suriname and director of the office folk reading. In 1961, he was appointed to the Dutch Embassy in Washington, D.C. Here, he was part of the delegation of the Kingdom to the United Nations, which was specifically concerned with the perception of Surinamese interests.
  After retiring, he settled on Tobago, later in Airole and finally in Amsterdam, where he died at the age of 92 years.
caption: Lou Lichtveld in 1955
exif: {}