Dieuwertje Blok

Dieuwer Sarah "Dieuwertje" Blok (8 August 1957 – 2 March 2025) was a Dutch actress, writer and radio and television presenter who was best known for presenting Het Sinterklaasjournaal from 2001 to 2024.

Early life and education

Dieuwer Sarah Blok was born on 8 August 1957 in Nederhorst den Berg, North Holland, which is also where she was raised. She was the second of three daughters of the Dutch historian Dick Blok and Hennie Gazan, a Dutch Jew. She was the maternal granddaughter of Dutch Jewish artist and comedian Stella Fontaine and the paternal granddaughter of Dutch Egyptologist Henri Peter Blok. Her younger sister was Tessel Blok, a radio presenter. Her uncle was Wouter Blok, a professor of Dutch literature.

During the Second World War, Blok's mother and her Jewish family went into hiding, with most of her immediate family killed by Nazi German occupiers, except for her parents, grandparents and one cousin. She married Blok's father, a non-Jew, in 1955. Influenced by the war, Blok's parents raised her to believe in political participation and social responsibility, and to fight against prejudice and for political freedom; this would influence Blok's political beliefs in her later life. However, Blok stated in an interview from 2001 that she "wasn't really a good child", describing herself as "catty and vain" with a tendency to become "very angry" and admitting to having had "a lot of fights" with her sisters. Blok's sister Tessel has nonetheless described their childhood as "free and carefree". In her adolescence, Blok also performed at the local amateur theatre in Nederhorst den Berg.