Femke Halsema

Before, in the 17th century all ancestors were baptised in Roman Catholic churches as was their first known forefather Johannes Fles (Flessinghe), born ca. 1640 in Sarbrug (Saarbrücken, Germany), who settled in Leiden, in Holland.

Olga Fles' parents Cornelis Nicolaas Fles and Truus Corbee married in 1939 in the Noorsche Kerk, Nederlands Hervormd, a Dutch Protestant church in Hilligersberg, near Rotterdam.

Halsema's mother Olga Margaretha Bertha Fles was born in 1941 in Velsen-Driehuis near harbour town IJmuiden north of Amsterdam.

They worked as civil servants, married and died in 1961 in Rotterdam.

Abram, Izaak and Jacob are common first names in Dutch Protestant churches, chosen from the Hebrew Bible, next to New Testament names.

Abram and Izaak Fles belonged to the Nederlands Hervormde Kerk (Dutch Reformed Church), just like their father Izaak, a brother to Halsema's great-grandfather Cornelis Fles, and their grandfather was.

Femke Halsema (born 25 April 1966) is a Dutch politician and filmmaker.

Halsema was born in 1966 in Haarlem in a Dutch social democratic family.

They moved to Enschede, a town in the east of the Netherlands, close to the German border (Twente).

Her father W. Halsema was a sports teacher and director of the municipal service for physical education, sports and recreation (Dienst lichamelijke opvoeding, sport en recreatie) of Enschede.

Olga lived with her husband Willem Halsema and son in Haarlem until 1966, where Femke was born.

Then the family moved to Enschede and Olga became wethouder (alderwoman) of Enschede's municipal council.

For a long time, from 1982 until 1994, her mother Olga Halsema-Fles was an alderwoman responsible for social affairs and employment for the Labour Party (PvdA) in Enschede.

Her mother was also a member of the Dutch Social Insurance Advisory Board (College van Toezicht Sociale Verzekeringen).

Halsema and her mother are of Jewish Christian descent.

In 1983, Halsema graduated from the Kottenpark-college in Enschede with a Havo-diploma.

Between 1984 and 1985 she attended the Vrije Hogeschool (teachers program for Waldorf schools) in Driebergen.

In 1985 she started training as a Dutch and history teacher in Utrecht.

In 1988 she left her training without graduating.

After that she worked for a year in a Utrecht café.

She then started studying general social sciences at Utrecht University, specialising in criminology.

During these studies she had a number of jobs related to her specialisation.

Between 1991 and 1993, she was an intern at the working group "police and immigrants" at the Ministry of the Interior and she was a student assistant for professor Frank Bovenkerk.

In 1992, she worked as an "supernumerary lecturer in scientific methods and techniques" at the Faculty of Social Sciences of Utrecht University, teaching statistics to first year students.

After Halsema graduated in 1993, she joined the staff of the Wiardi Beckman Stichting (WBS), the research institute of the Labour Party.

She was seen as a rising talent in the Labour Party.

In 1995, she published the book ''Ontspoord.

Opstellen over criminaliteit & rechtshandhaving'' ("Derailed, essays about crime and law enforcement") for the WBS.

In 1996, she travelled through the United States as a fellow for the German Marshall Fund.

She previously was a member of the House of Representatives for the leftist green party GroenLinks from 1998 to 2011, and served as the party's parliamentary leader from 2002 to 2010.

In an interview with the Reformatorisch Dagblad (RD), a Dutch Protestant Christian Reformed newspaper, in 2002 Femke Halsema presumed members of her maternal family to have been "assimilated Jews", because two nephews of her maternal grandfather Cornelis Nicolaas Fles were named Abram and Izaak, whom she supposed had been tailors.

Halsema referred to some families with the surname Fles in the region (Twente) Enschede being Jewish.

But Halsema's own family is not related to them.

Olga Halsema-Fles’ family originates from Leiden, with a few ancestors residing in Rotterdam, amongst whom Abram and Izaak Fles, her uncles.

Both Abram and Izaak Fles belonged to the Nederlands Hervormde Kerk (Dutch Reformed Church).

As such they were registered in the Rotterdam municipal archive.

Dutch historian Bart Wallet included Femke Halsema in a chapter on contemporary Dutch Jewry in an entirely revised edition (2017) of “Geschiedenis van de joden in Nederland" ("History of the Jews in the Netherlands"). But after some genealogical research in 2020 Wallet published an article in the Dutch Jewish internet magazine Jonet "Waarom Femke Halsema toch niet joods is" ("Why Femke Halsema is not Jewish after all"), admitting his mistake, indicating he will correct this in the next edition of this book. The article was reprinted in the Dutch Nieuw Israëlitisch Weekblad (New Israelitic Weekly).

On 27 June 2018, she was appointed Mayor of Amsterdam and began serving a six-year term on 12 July 2018.

She is the first woman to hold the position on a non-interim basis.

Halsema's family tree in the maternal line shows, that all ancestors in this family Fles since the start of the 18th century were baptised in Leiden, a historical stronghold of Protestantism in the Netherlands.