SelectedAanspraak articles in English translation Afdeling Verzetsdeelnemers en Oorlogsgetroffenen September 2014

They can’t touch my innermost being Toos Blokland kept a diary in the camps at Darmo-wijk and Halmaheira Contents

The page numbers refer to the original Dutch edition

Page 3 Speaking for your benefit

Page 4-7 The 15 August Commemoration speech by Gerdi Verbeet in The Hague

Page 8-12 They can’t touch my innermost being Toos Blokland kept a diary in the camps at Darmo-wijk and Halmaheira

Page 16-19 Coming to terms - silently As a teenager, Jacquelien de Savornin Lohman survived the camps at Kramat and Tjideng

Page 22 Questions and Answers

No rights may be derived from this text. Translation: SVB, Amstelveen.

Aanspraak - September 2014 - 2 Speaking for your benefit

Many of us find it difficult to say goodbye. If we say It is therefore no easy matter for me to lay down goodbye to loved ones knowing that we will never my task as Chair of the Pension and Benefit Board. see them again, that is only to be expected. But let You will have the opportunity to meet my successor, me speak from my own experience. As a three-year Dineke Mulock Houwer, in a future edition of old in early 1943, I was handed over by my mother to Aanspraak. During the coming months, I will assist a member of the resistance. He placed me in a foster Dineke in preparing for her presidency. She is an family until my mother came to fetch me in 1945. experienced administrator with a real affinity with At the time, I didn’t understand why I kept having to victims of war. I have every confidence that with its part from people, first my mother and then my foster new president, the Pension and Benefit Board will family, but even today, I still find it difficult when be in good hands. a loved one leaves or when I myself have to leave. This is the last time that I will be speaking for your On 1 January 2015, I will retire from my work as benefit. I wish you all the best. Chair of the Pension and Benefit Board. Although this is a voluntary decision, it means that I will have to say goodbye to tasks that have been very dear to me. For the last twenty-two years, I have held many different positions within the Pension and Benefit Board. I have met so many clients and members of Hans Dresden staff both in and outside the . Moving Chair of the Pension and Benefit Board encounters that have left a lasting impression on me. Sociale Verzekeringsbank

Aanspraak - September 2014 - 3 The 15 August Commemoration speech by Gerdi Verbeet

Reflecting together Stories about the war in the Every year on the morning of 14 August, a short When I became President of the House and ceremony is held in the main lobby of the old Dutch had the opportunity of giving an annual speech, parliament building. A small group of people gather I wanted to learn more. Each year I invited one by the East Indies Plaque, which was unveiled in person to attend the commemoration. Gradually, 1985. Together, they reflect on the end of the I came to understand more of what each of these Second World War in Asia. In the eleven years that I people had been through. The first person I invited was a member of parliament, I always joined them – was my history teacher. It was his stories about and in my six years as President of the Dutch House life in the camp that had first given me an insight of Representatives, I always gave a speech. into the cruelty of that war so far away. This was supplemented later by what my Dutch teacher It is not a large group that meets up every year, showed me of life in the East Indies through the but rather an intimate gathering. But that small works of writers such as Du Perron, Hella Haasse group represents the entire Dutch East Indies and Multatuli. I and a few of my classmates were community in all its diversity. In the beginning I was once invited to his mother’s house. The whole of the surprised at just how diverse it was. So many groups, Dutch East Indies condensed into one small abode. so many foundations, associations and platforms. For forced laborers in Thailand and Burma, for women Next I invited Ms De Niet, whose husband had been and children in the camps, for the boys in the President of the Dutch Senate. She told me how she boys’ camps and the children with Indo-European had arrived in the East Indies as a young woman in backgrounds outside the camps, for prisoners of war 1939. Her husband was a missionary and they were and former soldiers of the Royal Netherlands East full of anticipation for the new life they would be Indies Army – such a long list of organizations! leading, far from the Netherlands. A year later, war broke out in the Netherlands, and two years later, it Shared experiences reached the East Indies. On Ascension Day 1942, her As spokesperson for victims of war, I not only got husband was taken from their home. Later that year, to know the representatives of these organizations she herself was interned in the camp at Tjideng. but also individual victims. I heard more and more I shall never forget her description of how powerless stories. And the more I read, the more stories she felt. One year, I invited Frank, a former classmate I heard – the more I began to understand. Those of mine. At the beginning of the war, his mother had groups have a lot in common of course. Their past taken his older half-brothers to a children’s home. lies in the Dutch East Indies. That is where they spent It would be twenty years before they saw her again. their childhood, where they were happy. Until the His father had collected the boys after the war, war began. But there are also differences between but in their father’s new family they were not really them. And sometimes your experiences are such welcome. At school, Frank never spoke about it. that they are only shared by a very particular group. Another of my guests was Jan van Wagtendonk, who Experiences that have shaped your life. That are part told me about his father and grandfather. Both of of your innermost being. That shape your identity. them were arrested in early 1943, accused of spying That is why you sometimes need to be with those and executed. His younger brother died before his who have had the same experiences as you. eyes in the camp. He is still haunted by that image.

Aanspraak - September 2014 - 4 Each year, I invited a guest such as these. I am as well’, said – even though he was grateful to all these people for what they have been born after the war. willing to tell me. Each year, we remembered the war in a different way. And everyone who comes A war is not always over when peace is declared. to commemorate the war each year does so in their That is certainly true for many people who went own particular way. And so, how your remember also through the war in the Dutch East Indies. For when becomes part of your identity. Of course, much of does a war actually end? It was some time before your identity has already formed by the time you’re many in the camps heard that the war was over. And grown up. That is the part determined by where then, when there was peace, they weren’t allowed you were born, what your family was like, where you home. They had to stay in the camp because it was went to school. Then there are aspects you chose safer inside than out. Another kind of war followed. yourself: your partner, your work. And then there And then they had to leave the country they had are the things that just happen to you. Like the war. been born into, the country that was still theirs. And so your personality develops and your identity In the Netherlands they were given a cold welcome. is formed. But your identity is also shaped by how There was little in the way of respect and sympathy others respond to you. Whether you can be who you for these Dutch countrymen with their own East are – or whether you can’t. Whether the person you Indies identity, with their horrific war experiences and are meets with recognition and understanding – their deep longing for the country they had lost. And or with indifference or even disapproval. This is so began the great silence that has only been broken crucial for a person’s self-esteem. by the second or even third generation, who have inherited the burden of a bygone war. It has taken Traces of the war the Netherlands a long time to understand what My own roots do not lie in the East Indies. My all of that meant to the East Indian Dutch. In the father came from , my mother from Netherlands, they were coming to terms with their Steenbergen in Brabant. But even as a child, I own war, with rebuilding the country and looking to recognized that there was something interesting the future. Anyway, didn’t they have the monument about that country on the other side of the world. on Dam square, with an urn filled with earth from On the wall in our house, we had a drawing by twenty-two East-Indian war cemeteries? But those Sluijter of an Indonesian boy sitting on a trunk. who had gone through the war in the East Indies I always thought it was a portrait of my father as preferred to commemorate it in their own way. And a child. Why else did we eat Indonesian food so so, in 1960, the East Indies monument was erected often? It was a long time before I understood why in Enschede. In 1971 came the Women’s monument my father had been to . What he might in Apeldoorn. In 1985, the plaque in the lobby of have experienced there. And why he never wanted the Dutch parliament. And in 1988, this monument. to talk about it. That is why, at each East Indies A place for each person to commemorate. Each in Commemoration, I always think of my father. I also their own way. remember in my own way. For my father, the Second World War did not end in 1945. And that is true for Commemorating together many people. A war does not end just because the In recent years, much has changed. The war is generals have put their signatures to a document. If far behind us and the number of people who your loved ones are missing and you don’t know if can talk about it from personal experience is they are alive, the war is not really over. If your father declining rapidly. But the will to remember is as has been taken away and you don’t know where. If strong as ever. The number of people attending you’ve been separated from your mother and have the commemoration grows by the year. And not no idea where she’s gone. And even those who are only here, but around the country too. Young born after the war are marked by it. As part of their people are actively participating, even if their way parents’ legacy. In recent years, we have heard the is different from their parents’. They want to know stories told by Adriaan van Dis, Theodor Holman what happened, they want to hear the stories, to feel and . ‘My family’s war has shaped me involved, to know who they are. And so everyone

Aanspraak - September 2014 - 5 commemorates in their own way in a place that they It is the same connection that I feel with you, who have chosen themselves. But commemoration is also come here every year. Everyone gathered here something we do together. People who came to the belongs to those who are most deeply aware of Netherlands from the Dutch East Indies after the war the value of a life lived in freedom, in a democratic can share their stories of war and violence – and how society, under the rule of law. Everyone gathered they tried to settle in the Netherlands afterwards. But here belongs to those who know that none of this the stories of rebuilding the country, of increasing can be taken for granted. Every year, we realize prosperity and freedom, are stories they share with it again as we stand here. Each one us realizes it the people who were living here already. We share separately. But also together. this country with each other. Not just its land, but its values too. Freedom, justice, democracy; the All the speeches from the Dutch East-Indies foundations of our existence. That is why, for me, the commemoration are available in Dutch at: commemoration in Parliament on 14 August remains www.indieherdenking.nl one of the most important events of the year. Because I feel such a strong personal connection with the people who have always gathered there.

Aanspraak - September 2014 - 6 They can’t touch my innermost being

Toos Blokland kept a diary in the camps at Darmo-wijk and Halmaheira

During her time in the Japanese camps, Toos All photo books, pencils, pens or paper would be Blokland used scraps of paper to keep a diary destroyed and burnt.’ which survived the Japanese inspections. She kept it from the occupying forces by hiding it in her Obsession mattress. Her diary is a crystal clear record of her ‘On 28 February 1944, my mother was instructed to experiences in the camps at Darmo-wijk in get ready to leave with her children. We were loaded and Halmaheira in Semarang. It now forms the basis into open trucks and driven to the station where we for her story, which begins when she was nineteen. were crammed into boiling hot cattle wagons with the air vents covered. The babies and children wet Calm before the storm all over you and cried incessantly. We were taken ‘My father was headmaster of the Dutch trade school to the women’s camp at Halmaheira in Semarang. in Surabaya, where I was born into a protestant The camp consisted of about a hundred simple family on 2 May 1923. As a child, I wanted to grow kampong houses on either side of the Halmaheira up to be a writer. I was eighteen and working as road and surrounded by a two meter high bamboo an executive secretary at Javastaal Stokvis when fence. It was a lot worse than in Surabaya. The the Japanese occupied the city in March 1942. toilet would flood at night and you would have to We listened with my father to a broadcast by the literally walk through the shit in your bare feet while Governor General on the radio. The streets were it was swarming with biting insects. There were flies threateningly silent, the calm before the storm.’ everywhere; all over our wounds and anything that was rotting. We stank of sweat, but they only turned Imprisoned the water on for three hours in the morning. There ‘My father was put in prison and we were permitted was always a fight for water and it was impossible to visit him on 29 April 1942, which was the Emperor to get a wash. The Japanese said we could have a of Japan’s birthday. He was very happy to hear that spoonful more rice if we caught a hundred flies in a I had got engaged to Hennie Oosterloo, whom I day. If you’re hungry, you’ll do it. Whenever I see a had known since elementary school. We had to fly now, I automatically go after it. It’s an obsession move house because our house was requisitioned left over from the camp that I’ll never shake off. We to be a Japanese officer’s post. When my brother were always hungry. We were only allowed a level Johan turned sixteen, he and my fiancé were ladleful of blue sago pap in the morning and a level sent together to a men’s camp. Later in 1942 my ladleful of white rice in the afternoon. Any cat, rat, mother had to report with us to the Darmo district frog, snail, snake or other living creature we could in Surabaya, where we were assigned a room on catch disappeared into the soup to provide us with Reiniersz Boulevard. I took as many pens and sheets something in the way of protein.’ of paper as I could with me to the camp, so that I could keep a diary. I always hid it in my mattress In the last ten and fortunately it was never discovered or my mother ‘One day some cars drove into the camp full of and I would have been beaten because it was Japanese officers. They sat down at a long table and forbidden to smuggle messages out of the camp. the young women had to walk past them. They said

Aanspraak - September 2014 - 7 they were looking for waitresses for a restaurant. Halmaheira. After a few days, a small plane painted First, they picked out a hundred girls. Because I red, white and blue flew over the camp. For the was a bit older, I recognized the lust in their eyes. rest, nothing changed. It wasn’t until 23 August 1945 Afterwards, I told my mother “They’re picking girls that the Japanese camp commandant said that we to work in a brothel! ‘, but she wouldn’t believe were free. My sister Jannie, who was seriously ill, me. During the second round, I was chosen as one was taken to hospital where she slowly regained her of twenty-five girls. In the end, I was in the last ten. strength. On 1 September 1945, I got some money As soon as I saw the girls’ mothers burst into tears, by selling an old blouse to an Indonesian man, and I knew it wasn’t good. I ran away as fast as I could went out of the camp to have my hair cut and eat and hid behind a tree. Then I ran to my bed, stuck Chinese food. You couldn’t stay away long though two onions in my armpits, crawled under the horse because of the risk of attack by the nationalists. blankets and pretended I was ill. I had learned the onion trick from an Indonesian herbalist. A few weeks The Japanese soldiers were ordered to protect later, my best friend, who had also been chosen, the camp. One night, it was surrounded by hordes arrived back in the camp. She said “I’m so glad you of furious nationalists who attacked with bamboo weren’t there, it was horrific. We were raped several spears, sabers and gunfire. From all four watch times a day.” In other camps the women rebelled towers, the Japanese directed the machine guns and the girls weren’t taken. Unfortunately, in our at the onrushing fighters. After a fierce battle, the camp the women were too trusting.’ attackers retreated. That night, we were terrified. The nationalists were in a complete frenzy, incensed with A mind to forgive rage! We nursed the wounded Japanese soldiers on My mother taught me to be forgiving. She always the tables we used for cutting vegetables. The next showed respect. She suffered from uterine prolapse day through the gate I saw them throwing a huge which meant she couldn’t bow properly to the pile of dead nationalists onto trucks, where they Japanese. Once when she was standing next to me, landed with a dull thud. I’ll never forget that sound. only half bowed, she was beaten hard with a baton. I I asked one of the Japanese guards, “What are you stayed bowed, cursing to myself, burning with hatred going to do with all those bodies?” He said they for that soldier. Despite her pain, she remained very would throw them in the river. That terrible night, calm and understanding and said, “Toos, he is no the river ran red. more than a child missing his mother!” I couldn’t accept that but I endured the pain and hunger and A bouquet of thistles grief because I always thought there was something “During the Bersiap period, Halmaheira became deep inside me that they couldn’t touch. However a reception camp for both men and women. You cruel they were, they couldn’t break me. At one could get a pass to travel free and under Japanese point in Halmaheira, we were all so sick they brought guard to visit family in other camps. One day, my in a Dutch doctor, Dr De Vries, who had been in the brother Johan suddenly appeared and we fell into Werfstraat prison in Surabaya with my fiancé, and each other’s arms. The day before, my mother had who told me that Hennie was still alive. It was the taken my sisters and my brothers Arie and Wim to good Dr De Vries who also removed my mother’s Surabaya to look for my father. Johan asked me if uterus, for which she was taken to Semarang I wanted to go and find my fiancé in and hospital. My poor sick little brother Wim missed her we got permission to leave for three days. When terribly during that time. At the beginning of 1945, my father arrived in Halmaheira the next day to my twelve-year-old brother Arie had to go over to look for us, there was no one to meet him. We all the men’s camp as well. He stood in an open truck ended up just missing each other that day. The first with the tears streaming from his big brown eyes, British troops arrived on 20 October 1945 and took down his cheeks. That parting was too awful. control of the camp shortly after. My father felt it was getting far too dangerous and wanted to leave for Hardly liberated at all the Netherlands, but I wanted to stay in Indonesia When the war ended, we hardly noticed it in with Hennie. My father agreed on condition that

Aanspraak - September 2014 - 8 we married. By chance, a pastor had just arrived Only sand in the camp. I got married in an old dress with a ‘Only my brother Wim and sister Jannie are still alive. bunch of thistles for a wedding bouquet. During the My sister Corrie never really got over the camp and ceremony, we sat on the sandy ground along with spent her life in various clinics. As a girl of fourteen everyone in the camp. Our guests provided the drink in the Japanese camp, she had to work cleaning the as a wedding present by bartering their possessions. offices and was probably abused. When I was older We sang all the old camp songs, drank far too much and living in South Africa, I also suffered a complete and fell asleep as bride and groom. collapse and was admitted to a clinic where I was given eighteen electroshock treatments for war A feeling of foreboding trauma. Even then I thought, “They can rob me of ‘The next day, my father took my brothers to look everything, but they will never touch my innermost for my mother and sisters. He found them in the being.” In the end I came out of it successfully Wilhelmina convent just as the whole camp was thanks to a kind psychiatrist who taught me to look getting ready to leave. On the dangerous journey after myself better and shield myself from things. I to the port, the convoy was to be protected by followed my daughter’s advice and had my war diary British soldiers. As they were loading the trucks, published. I would love to attend the Dutch East they called “Women and children first”. Suddenly Indies Commemoration one time on 15 August but my father had a feeling of foreboding and said to I’m ninety-one years old and the journey would be too my mother, “Give me a blouse and a scarf.” By much for me. I always watch it on television though. I dressing as a woman, he managed to get into the used to cry a lot, but now I laugh things off. I have a lot first truck with my mother. While my family were of physical complaints but I’m still incredibly grateful boarding the ship, the last truck with the men was that I survived, and also for my children, my house, my hit by Molotov cocktails and went up in flames, dog and my birds. I can enjoy the birds in my garden burning them alive. My father had had the narrowest now for hours. In the camp I didn’t see a single tree of escapes, and they all reached the Netherlands or flower for three years. There was only sand.’ safely via Singapore. I stayed behind in Indonesia with Hennie.’ Interview and photos: Ellen Lock

Aanspraak - September 2014 - 9 Coming to terms - silently

As a teenager, Jacquelien de Savornin Lohman survived the camps at Kramat and Tjideng

“We hardly spoke about the Japanese camps after the sessions that we should bow to the perpetrators. the war, as though they had never existed. When Every fibre of my being rose up in protest: “I’ll never we arrived in the Netherlands there was no support bow to anyone again!” at all for traumatised victims of war. “At least it was nice and warm in Indonesia”, was always the Silently coming to terms response. For me personally, the poor welcome ‘My father worked for the Department for Economic and total lack of understanding in the Netherlands Affairs in Batavia (present-day ). He followed felt worse than being in the camp. No one was the ethical reasoning of Van Mook, who was striving interested in our story - they had had to eat tulip for political independence for the Dutch East Indies. bulbs.” Cabaret artist Jacquelien de Savornin In 1941 he was called up for active service, became Lohman tells about her own experiences; “Because a prisoner of war and we never saw him again. My so few people know anything about that time mother was left with four children, but she was the Indonesia!” type who just got on with it. She didn’t want to feel like a victim, neither did I, and we never spoke about I’m not ready to forgive the camp. I went to Indonesia in 1982 with my former ‘When I used to say my name, they’d say ”That’s husband. We visited many places from my childhood. not a name, it’s a street.” My great-grandfather I was born in Buitenzorg, which is now called , Alexander Frederik de Savornin Lohman was the on 21 August 1933. I had two older brothers: Wite founder of the Christian Historical Union in 1908, was 6 and Allard was 5. In 1941 my younger sister a precursor of the Christian Democratic Party Margriet was born. The house was still there along (CDA). It was not my party. I ended up being one with the beautiful ‘waringin’, the weeping fig tree of the co-founders of the social-liberal party (D66), whose roots I used to sit on. I filmed it all for my and years later, when my family responsibilities mother, but she showed absolutely no interest in it. had subsided, I became a member of the Dutch But she always laid a bunch of sweet peas in front of Senate. When I retired from my work as senior my father’s portrait on the anniversary of his death. lecturer in youth welfare and pedagogy, I did a After my older brother Wite died in1977, my mother bit of everything. Now I do cabaret performances. never talked about him again either. She prefers to I’m not good at sitting still. One of the things I deal with it all privately. You see that in other families did was a course in meditation which ended with too, a lot of things that are never discussed. They us having to put our arms around another course might mention something at last on their deathbed, member and say: ‘I accept you the way you are’. but many secrets go with them to the grave.’ Sitting opposite me was a young Japanese man. Suddenly I saw those slanting eyes before me and I How can they know that? couldn’t do it. The teacher though it was a pity, but ‘At the time of the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, she understood. I always think I’ve got over it, but I I was eight years old and living in Batavia. During the haven’t learnt to forgive yet. Once during a course frequent Japanese air raids, we would hide in the on family dynamics, the psychiatrist said after one of cellar with a pan or ‘wadjan’ on our heads. I thought

Aanspraak - September 2014 - 10 it was really exciting. It turned out our neighbours a small loudspeaker when it was their turn to get were members of the pro-Nazi NSB party and their their soup. I remember the jingle exactly: “Numbers daughter would stand in the garden waving to 1 to 15, come and get your soup, don’t forget your the Japanese pilots. I would think: “How can they water, no water, no soup!, numbers 15 to 45, 45 to possibly know that they are good and we are not?” 73 etc.” I had to take extra food to the important people, such as the doctors and the governor’s wife, We lived close to the port and everyone expected Tjarda van Starkenborgh Stachouwer. Her food smelt the Japanese to attack from the sea. At the wonderful but I never even took a nibble. She used beginning of March 1942, shortly before the to ‘very generously’ let me lick the pan clean. We got Japanese invasion, my mother wanted to get away, so little to eat that it was difficult to watch my mother but where could we go? Fortunately we were take a bit more food for herself than she gave us. welcome at the house of a friend of hers, Ms Van Till, in Bandung. To make sure the enemy couldn’t We always had trouble with the camp commandant, get drunk, we poured away all the alcohol she had Sonei, who was very cruel. He would summon us to into the slokan, an open ditch. The only thing we left the central square three times a day in the burning was a bottle of cod liver oil. In the end they attacked sun, and once again in the night time, and make us from the landward side, so running away hadn’t bow and bow. My mother only ever received one helped. A Korean soldier raised the bottle of cod letter from my father with a pre-printed text to say liver oil to his lips and immediately spat it out again. that he was doing fine. He had underscored some of They were boorish and shat all over the house. They the letters so that it read “I love you”.’ took my sixteen-year-old brother Wite prisoner because they thought he was the man of the house. In 1944, all boys from the age of ten had to go to the He was horribly beaten and it was days before he men’s camp, including my brothers. Saying goodbye was allowed back home.’ was terribly difficult for my mother, but for our sake, she put a brave face on it. My mother and I were set It’ll soon be over to work hoeing the ground. The camp got more and ‘After the war my mother‘s health was poor and she more crowded until it got to the point that we only was often sick with migraine, but during the war she had two meters of space each to sleep in. I think was amazingly strong and resourceful. She made the camp was much worse for my mother than for sure the enemy couldn’t use our car by removing us children. She could see the dangers and had to the battery. Then she put it back again and drove protect us. As a child, you have no inkling of time the boys, my sister and the dog to Batavia. I went and even less of danger.’ by train with our babu Amah because there wasn’t enough room for us and all the suitcases in the car. Hope In Batavia, we had to report immediately to the ‘The atmosphere in the camp was very pessimistic. camp at Kramat. At that time you could still walk in More and more people arrived from other camps, and out of the camp. My mother took all our photo and there was increasingly less food and space albums with us in the big trunk, which I was allowed per person. The tin of beef fat was our saviour. We to sleep on and which I still have in my bedroom were all as thin as rakes and covered in tropical today. An Indonesian acquaintance of my mother sores. Then the Javanese told us through the camp gave us a large tin of beef fat, which we thought gates that the atomic bomb had been dropped and tasted awful at the time. But my mother made sure that gave us hope. On my birthday, 21 August, we that that tin of beef fat went everywhere with us and still didn’t feel as if we’d been liberated. And the in the end it saved our lives. But at the beginning we liberation wasn’t really liberation because we weren’t thought ”It’ll all be over soon”.’ allowed to sing the Dutch national anthem or raise the flag. So we knew there was something else going Camp Tjideng on. Food parcels were dropped and I got such a ‘In Tjideng I went to work in the kitchen. It was my pain in my jaws from the bread because I hadn’t job to summon the different housing blocks through chewed anything for such a long time.’

Aanspraak - September 2014 - 11 From another planet mother was a war widow and her mother in Santpoort ‘When liberation came, they opened the camp gate could take us in. When this was being arranged I and everyone waited there for the men and boys asked my mother, ”Will we have to sweep the slokan to return. When members of the Red Cross arrived there too?”. All the grown-ups laughed, and I felt very from the Netherlands looking so pale and well-fed silly. As we drove to the harbour, our convoy came it was as if they had come from another planet. The under heavy fire. My mother was terrified because my unbearable stench of sweat, diarrhoea and rotting brother Allard was in another truck.’ meat in the camp was too much for them and they couldn’t get away again fast enough. It wasn’t long Moving on before my brothers were back. They looked at me ‘On New Year’s Eve, while we were at sea, they in a strange way because I was only wearing shorts called “Happy 1945!”through the loudspeakers even though I was now a young lady. For the first by mistake. It was a shame because that year had time, I felt embarrassed and after that I always wore been the worst year of our lives and 1946 gave us a blouse. To our great disappointment, there was no hope. In Suez they gave us horse blankets which sign of my father. One day, a woman who used to be the mothers on the ship made into winter coats. my teacher, Jippie, cycled over to us with a letter. I Some of the children died of measles on the way felt instinctively that it couldn’t be good news. The and after a short ceremony their bodies were thrown letter said that my father had died in 1944 working overboard. When we docked in the Netherlands, on the Pakan Baru railway on Sumatra. On the one a friend of my mother’s was waiting for us; she hand, I was very sad, but after three and a half years, immediately wrapped her woollen scarf round me I had grown used to his absence. My mother dealt and my mother’s brother drove us to Santpoort with her grief in silence.’ in his car. Some time later, my mother received a visit from a man who had been in the camp with Paradise my father. He gave her my father’s bible and his ‘In mid-October 1945, the nationalists started wedding ring. Unfortunately, my oldest brother Wite, threatening the camp and the Japanese guards who became a GP, died much too young. When the became our protectors. At the last minute, just war ended there was no support for people with war before the gates were closed again because of the traumas and he got to the point where he couldn’t violence, my mother managed to arrange a place cope anymore. I only commemorate the war for for us to stay outside the camp, at the home of an two minutes each year on 4 May, and the rest of Indonesian lady. The house was paradise compared the time, I don’t think about it. I don’t want to be with the camp; a tap with running water and soft cast in the role of victim. Everyone goes through beds instead of the ground. There was a lot of difficult periods in life. I didn’t visit my father’s grave shooting in the neighbourhood from the nationalists. in Indonesia either. Everyone has their own way of My mother was really afraid, but we just messed about remembering.’ and had a good time. We got permission to leave on the first ship sailing for the Netherlands because my Interview and photos: Ellen Lock

Aanspraak - September 2014 - 12 Questions and Answers

I have read that there is going to be a change information brochures about the calculation of in the AOW pension scheme for elderly people extraordinary pensions and Wuv/Wubo benefits, who qualify for a top-up. Could you tell me more about the consequences for benefit entitlements about this? if you move to a care home or a nursing home, Ms Klijnsma, Deputy Minister for Social Affairs and about the most frequently awarded allowances Employment, has informed the Dutch House of (reimbursements), about how your pension or Representatives that the current Top-up for Senior benefit is affected if you or your partner starts Taxpayers (KOB top-up) will be replaced by a new to receive an AOW pension, and about possible top-up as from 1 January 2015. Under the KOB top- entitlements for survivors in the event of your up scheme, all AOW pensioners receive a top-up of death. You can find the telephone number, postal € 25.12 per month in addition to their AOW pension. address and e-mail address of our Department As from 1 January 2015, the top-up will be related on the back cover of the original Dutch edition to the number of years people have accrued AOW of Aanspraak. pension as residents of the Netherlands. For AOW pensioners who have always lived in the Netherlands, Should I also report changes in my personal nothing will change. For people with a reduced circumstances separately to the Department for AOW pension, the top-up will be proportionately Members of the Resistance and Victims of War? reduced. In July, this group received a letter to It is very important that you report such changes inform them about the change. As the top-up does directly to the Department for Members of the not count as income under the benefit schemes for Resistance and Victims of War of the SVB in Leiden former members of the resistance and victims of war, as well as to the AOW pensions department, so the change will not affect extraordinary pensions that our officers can respond quickly if the change and Wuv or Wubo benefits. affects the amount of your financial support and they can prevent or limit recovery of any overpayment. Could you give more information about the An overpayment might occur if you or your partner pensions and benefit schemes themselves in moves to a care institution, if there is a change in Question and Answers, for example, about your marital status or domestic situation, or if you income which is or is not deducted, and what or your partner starts receiving a new source of benefits are available? income or loses an existing source of income. Other The information you are asking for is too extensive changes, such as a change of address outside the to discuss in this section. However, we have leaflets Netherlands, or a new bank account, should also and brochures available on various subjects which be reported directly to the Department for Members you can download from our website (www.svb.nl/ of the Resistance and Victims of War in Leiden. wvo). You can also request them by telephone, For the address, see the back cover of the original letter or e-mail. For example, we have detailed Dutch edition of Aanspraak.

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