On August 15, 2023, the victims of the Second World War in the former Dutch East Indies were commemorated in over fifty places in the Netherlands. The war experiences and the large-scale displacement that followed are still affecting two million people in the Netherlands with an Indies family war story and in the Dutch society…
by Jane Vogel Mantiri Introduction I met Sonja in October 2011, almost seven decades after Papa was captured by the Japanese, shackled, and forced to work the Death Railway in Siam (Thailand) as a POW (prisoner of war). Papa would endure almost four years of torture before he was released from hell. He never told…
By Gerard Willem Charles Lemmens The Imperial War Museum in London asked me to write the following story. The Dutch East Indies Around my birth on April 24th, 1940, in the R.C. hospital of Surabaya, my parents bought this rattle at the silversmith—de Wolf—in honor of my birth. I (Gerard Willem Charles Lemmens) was the…
by Sheldon A. Krancher On September 1, 1939, the world changed. My world changed. I wasn’t born yet, but on that day my father was born. He was born Jan Adolf Krancher to his parents Ludwig Krancher and Henriette Krancher. He was the second of three children born in Malang on the island of Java…
by Jane Vogel Mantiri War is hell. My parents survived two wars: World War II and the Indonesian National Revolution that followed. Although those wars ended, my parents’ trauma never did. This story is dedicated to my parents. I was my parents’ only daughter. My father was a brave, strong, and loving man who lived…
by Astrid Berg, author of Mixed Bood: Reconciling My Colonial Family’s History in the Dutch East Indies. In August while visiting The Hague and riding my bike, I came upon the Indisch Monument in de Scheveningse Bosjes (large park in The Hague) near Madurodam. I had been there many times before. This time I had…
“Who was in which lifeboat?” A mission by Peter Versteeg to find out which of the three remaining lifeboats his father traveled in — as one of 116 survivors of the sunken “Poelau Bras” — and who were in the other two lifeboats? www.poelau-bras.nl (To translate this website from Dutch to English: Go to Google…
by Astrid Berg, PhD During childhood, I had little connection to my Indonesian roots. I rarely heard Maleis (Malay) or Javaans (Javanese) spoken. I only had a slight relationship to Indo/Indische customs and culture. Both my parents appeared European. My mother is Dutch, and the Indonesian influences were subtle in my Indo father. I was…
By Ronny Geenen (IndoWorld) Roots in the Dutch East Indies My youngest sister Peggy Geenen was born in Padang, in the former Dutch East Indies, during World War ll in 1943. Over 50 years later, in 1996, she, her friend Jaap, and six others decided to take a trip through the islands Sumatra and Java,…
A Search for the Truth Interview with Thomas Watson by Patricia Teunisse, Secretary of The Indo Project. Also published in Moesson International. On October 31, 2021, The Indo Project and Moesson attended the Netherlands premiere of The Past Ended on Mango Street. The documentary is the vision of Thomas Watson, who narrates the film and…