Wim Polak
mayor of Amsterdam (1924-1999)
Willem "Wim" Polak (14 September 1924 – 1 October 1999) was a Dutch politician of the Labour Party (PvdA) and economist.
Biography
Polak was born to a Jewish merchant family in Amsterdam on 14 September 1924. His parents were murdered by the Nazis during the German Occupation of the Netherlands. After the Second World War, he worked as a journalist for Het Vrije Volk. Polak was appointed Secretary of State for local finances in Joop den Uyl's government. He worked towards improving the financial position of the larger Dutch cities. Subsequently, he became mayor of Amsterdam for a six-year period, where his challenges included numerous squatting cases as well as riots related to Queen Beatrix's coronation.
He died in 1999 at his home in Ilpendam.
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Vocabulary and entity names are the principal evidence signals here, because they determine the precision of every later search. The source revision retrieved here is dated Aug 28, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q607672. VIAF identifies the subject as 75705972. The Library of Congress control number is n2004042323. 3 of 3 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1924 and 1999.
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This entry incorporates text from “Wim Polak” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.