Amsterdam Publishers


Amsterdam Publishers is the largest publisher of Holocaust memoirs in Europe. It was founded in 2012 by Liesbeth Heenk. Since 2019 it focuses on Holocaust-related literature.

History

Amsterdam Publishers started publishing ebooks on art in 2012. One of their earliest releases was an ebook on Rembrandt etchings, and accompanied an exhibition on Rembrandt at the Teylers museum in Haarlem in 2013. It was the first time a digital publication accompanied an exhibition. In 2015, the imprint started running self-publishing workshops, which was later accompanied by an instructional handbook published in Dutch.
Amsterdam Publishers added their first non-art titles in 2014. Steinberg's Outcry was an early commercial success. Since 2019, the publisher has focused exclusively on Holocaust Memoirs. The founder, Liesbeth Heenk, has stated that the mission of the imprint is to fight anti-Semitism and Holocaust denial. Heenk's stable of writers includes a dwindling number of Holocaust survivors as well as second and third-generation members of survivors’ families.
Amsterdam Publishers is one of the few international publishing houses based in the Netherlands. Its authors are international, and books are published in English, Albanian, Czech, Dutch, Greek, Hebrew, Sinhalese, French, German, Italian, Spanish, Polish, Romanian, Slovak, Ukrainian, Russian, Chinese and Japanese.
On the occasion of the 10-year anniversary of the publishing house, the Consulate of the Kingdom of the Netherlands in New York hosted an Amsterdam Publishers authors event on 12 September 2022, and one in 2024. Since various authors were unable to attend an event in one location, the publisher decided to host a worldwide author gathering on Zoom in September 2025. In November 2022, a 7-day booktour in Albania and Kosovo took place to promote Dr Anna Kohen's Flower of Vlora in the Albanian language, Lulja e Vlorës.
At the 35th annual conference of the World Federation of Jewish Holocaust Survivors and Descendants, held in Paris from September 12 to 15, 2025, Liesbeth Heenk gave a talk and moderated a session on how to write and publish the survival stories of parents and grandparents.
Amsterdam Publishers set up a private online space where authors can communicate and can support each other. Almost 100 of its authors are active in this online group.
Liesbeth Heenk on her motivation to publish stories of the Holocaust:
My motivation is connected to a sense of injustice. It most likely started with my mother telling me and my siblings at the dinner table how she, as a young girl, used to carry pamphlets in her bike for the Dutch resistance. One doesn’t realize the significance of these things until much later. On a deeper level, I feel a strong need to do something meaningful, to change the world as much as an individual is capable of changing the world.
Amsterdam Publishers has been named "2024 Publisher of the Year" by the Outstanding Creator Award. In 2025 the publishing house has released its 100th Holocaust book.
The reservoir of true Holocaust stories continues to grow. I will consider my job to be unfinished until six million stories are told. I am 62 years old now, so hopefully still have a long time to go, but I want to ensure that even after I am gone the reservoir of stories will remain and be read. This is very important to me. From: "On Publishing Holocaust Memoirs: An Interview with Liesbeth Heenk, Founder of Amsterdam Publishers, in: AJL, vol. 23, pp. 107
On 29 June 2025, coinciding with the event in Philadelphia, where the publisher – assisted by eight of its authors – presented a selection of her books, the publisher was honored by the Jewish community of the city at Rodelph Shalom. The publishers' presence at the event caught the attention of various journalists.
Jonathan Schloss in The Algemeiner of 28 November 2025: "I published with a boutique publisher run by a non-Jewish agnostic woman with a deeply grounded and passionate moral compass. Liesbeth Heenk’s Amsterdam Publishers has published over 100 Holocaust-related books written by survivors and second-generation and third-generation authors from all religious backgrounds. I’d argue that she is not “fighting” anything. Rather, she proactively encourages vigilance against society breaking down due to irrational hate through true cautionary, inspirational stories."