Ernest Cassutto

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Ernest H. Cassutto (December 1, 1919 – March 18, 1985) was a Dutch Holocaust survivor who became a Christian minister. He was born in Probolinggo, Dutch East Indies (now Indonesia) to secular Jewish parents; his father was a law professor. The family moved to The Hague in 1934. During the German occupation, they hid in several places across the Netherlands. In 1944, Ernest was captured and imprisoned in Rotterdam; his fiancée was killed in a concentration camp. He was rescued by a Dutch Christian underground worker just before he would have been executed.

After the war, he became a minister in the Dutch Reformed Church and immigrated to the United States in 1952 with his wife Elisabeth and their infant daughter, under the Hebrew Christian Alliance and the Reformed Church of America. They settled in the New York metropolitan area. In 1968 he became the pastor of the Emmanuel Hebrew Christian Church in Villa Nova, Baltimore County, serving until his retirement in 1979. He died in the Baltimore area on March 18, 1985.

Cassutto wrote a book about his captivity and rescue, The Last Jew of Rotterdam (1974), originally published by Whitaker House. It was later rewritten and updated by his son, Dr. Benjamin H. Cassutto, and re-released by Purple Pomegranate Productions. His other son, George H. Cassutto, maintains a website about Rev. and Mrs. Cassutto.