13 Facts About Gretta Duisenberg

Gretta Duisenberg-Nieuwenhuizen was born on 6 November 1942 and is a Dutch pro-Palestinian political activist.

Gretta Duisenberg is the widow of Dutch Labour Party politician Wim Duisenberg, who was the first president of the European Central Bank.

Gretta Duisenberg was born as Greetje Nieuwenhuizen into a strict Reformed family in Heerenveen, Friesland, where her father worked as a policeman.

Gretta Duisenberg broke away from her religious background in the 1960s and began using the name Gretta.

Gretta Duisenberg started a career as a nurse and was married to internist Frits Bedier de Prairie from 1967 to 1975.

In 1987 she married Gretta Duisenberg, who was then president of De Nederlandsche Bank and from 1998 inaugural president of the European Central Bank.

Gretta Duisenberg died in 2005 at his holiday home in France.

Gretta Duisenberg came to international attention in 2002 when the media reported that the president of the ECB had a Palestinian flag hanging from his house in Amsterdam.

Gretta Duisenberg came under fire when she announced her intention of collecting six million signatures as part of her campaign to draw attention to the Israeli occupation of the Palestinian Territories.

Gretta Duisenberg was asked how many signatures she'd been able to gather for the petition against the occupation and replied that 6,000 supporters had signed so far.

Gretta Duisenberg hesitated for a moment and then said, "Six million".

Gretta Duisenberg denied any link to the Holocaust, and stated that she just mentioned a multiple of the 6,000 they had already collected.

Gretta Duisenberg subsequently denied the article was anti-Semitic and stated that she would not remove it from her website, although she added that "material placed on the website does not necessarily reflect our point of view".