March 2013 SelectedAanspraak articles in English translation Afdeling Verzetsdeelnemers en Oorlogsgetroffenen

Eddy Flora survived both the Japanese occupation and the Bersiap period in . Contents

The page numbers refer to the original Dutch edition

Page 3 Speaking for your benefit

Page 4-7 ‘As long as my family are safe!’ Eddy Flora survived both the Japanese occupation and the Bersiap period in Borneo.

Page 8-11 The longing to be reunited with my wife gave me the strength to endure all those camps! Reprisal victim Arie Kooiman talks about the consequences of the raid in Beverwijk.

Page 12-15 ‘You can’t get closer than that’ The psychiatrist Fedia Jacobs talks about mourning and relationships reborn in the shadow of war.

Page 22 Questions and Answers

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

Aanspraak - March 2013 - 2 Speaking for your benefit

On 24 January 2013, I attended the ‘Auschwitz After the Lecture, I had the opportunity to talk to Never Again Lecture’, where Mrs Beate Klarsfeld former members of the Resistance, victims of war spoke about her work against anti-Semitism and also and the staff of various aid organizations. As we received an award. The Lecture is organized every talked, I became increasingly aware of how crucial year for readers of Aanspraak and other interested it is that we should continue to show our personal parties by the Dutch Auschwitz-Committee, the interest in this special group of people. NIOD Institute for War, Holocaust and Genocide Studies and the Sociale Verzekeringsbank (SVB). It is already two years since the SVB started implementing the benefit schemes for Resistance For many years, Mrs Klarsfeld and her husband have members and victims of war. We are pleased to been carrying out their fight against anti-Semitism see that satisfaction with our service has steadily with passion and courage. Through their efforts, increased among our clients during this time. Within elusive war criminals have finally been extradited and the SVB, we take this as a compliment and we will brought to trial. The story of Beate Klarsfeld’s life, do our utmost to keep on serving you as best we can. featured in an earlier edition of Aanspraak, serves to reinforce the viewpoint that international law and the international courts are indispensable if the world is to be protected against barabarism. We cannot take freedom for granted. The future holds no Nicoly Vermeulen guarantees. Freedom still has to be defended, Chair of the Board of Directors, and we must remain vigilant in times of crisis. Sociale Verzekeringsbank

Aanspraak - March 2013 - 3 ‘As long as my family are safe!’ Eddy Flora survived both the Japanese occupation and the Bersiap period in Borneo

On 1 January 2012, Eddy Flora joined the Client a piece of rubber on a string tied around my neck Council for the Department for Members of the so that I could clench it between my teeth during Resistance and Victims of War as the representative bombing raids. We would hide in the trenches two for the SVB’s Moluccan and Indonesian clients. kilometres outside the barracks at least three times a From the time he was eighteen, he did work in the day. If we could not quite manage to reach it in time, Church and as a volunteer for the Moluccan and we would have to dodge our way through a curtain Dutch communities. As the son of a KNIL soldier in of bullets and bombs. I saw a lot of people killed and Borneo, he survived the Japanese occupation and wounded. The sound of a plane in the distance still the Bersiap period. terrifies me. Then, on 2 February 1942, the Japanese arrived at our barracks, heavily armed. Growing up in a KNIL family I was born in Long Nawang in the Apokayan The Japanese made the KNIL families gather on the Highlands of Borneo. My Moluccan father was a grass outside, then they searched for documents corporal in the Royal Dutch-Indies Army or KNIL as that could link us to the KNIL army. If they found it was known, and he had been sent to this KNIL something in your barracks, you were interrogated, outpost to guard the border with British Borneo. tortured and taken away. We trembled at the idea There, he met my mother who came from a that they would find something, but fortunately my traditional Dayak family. She already had a daughter, mother had succeeded in burying all our papers and Emma, from an earlier marriage. Our family was medals before they came. Then they took away all protestant, and I was the eldest boy. Two of my the men and put them in prison. brothers were born before the war and the third was born in 1944. In 1940 my father was ordered to do Visiting my father in prison cadre training to become a sergeant, and we were Though only six, I was the eldest boy, so a week later all to be transferred to the island of where I was allowed into the prison to take my father some the training was held. According to the traditional clothes. Every time I saw a Japanese soldier, I had to customs of Adat, my sister Emma had to stay behind make a deep bow. In the cell, my father was sitting with my grandfather, who lived alone. It was a very on the ground looking completely disheartened. emotional departure for everyone. After we left, we We hardly had a chance to talk because I could only stayed first in the military barracks in Tandjung Selor, stay a short time. When they released him after four and then in Tarakan and Samarinda. Eventually we weeks he was as thin as a rake, and he was amazed were all meant to go to Java, but we were forced to to discover that he was the only KNIL soldier who stay for a while in Samarinda because the war had had survived the prison. broken out. Sanga-Sanga The Japanese occupation Six months later we were transferred to Sanga- Our barracks in Samarinda was under continuous Sanga, a village at the mouth of the Mahakam river bombardment and gunfire from small Japanese where they extracted and stored oil. The Japanese fighter planes. Like the rest of the children, I had wanted to keep these BPM (Batavian Petroleum

Aanspraak - March 2013 - 4 Company) facilities running. In the BPM residence keep crossing the river to work. The Japanese were area, we were given a worker’s house with a garden. often out patrolling, looking for escaped workers It was not surrounded by barbed wire but it was and prisoners. One night, two escaped Ambonese always patrolled by a guard. My father did forced internees disguised in sarongs appeared at our labour as an odd-jobman or electrician to repair the door asking for shelter. One of them was called damage done to the oil facilities by sabotage, and Syahailatua. We let them stay in our shelter for three was not allowed to pause even during the allied days. If the Japanese had found them, father would bombing raids. Escape was unthinkable because have been beheaded. I took food and drink to them they had his family under guard. The allied planes as it got dark, and after three days, they ran off into did not spare the workers’ houses so we would have the jungle. After six months, we had to return to the to hide in the shelters at least five times a day. The BPM house. My parents did not mind because the storage tanks on the hills sometimes burned for villagers, who were Muslim, distrusted this Protestant days at a time. We were worried that the burning oil KNIL family with its affiliation to the , would burn our house down. that had come to live in their midst.

Turned away from the shelters Father is taken prisoner Together with my mother, we children lived for One evening my father did not arrive home. He had many months in the residence area and my mother been taken prisoner by the Kempetai, the Japanese started growing vegetables. Though he had precious military police. He was subjected to a long period little free time, my father taught me to read and of interrogation, but it was not clear why he had write because my mother could not. Whenever she been arrested. As a result, we stopped trusting needed something, she sent me. Once I had to go anyone. After three months he returned home and to the centre of the village with two bottles to get had to start work again. This was not long before coconut oil. Just as I was approaching the centre, the liberation, but my parents could not sleep. Every a bombing raid started. When I got to the shelters, evening, they would pray together and say their the people who were already there twice refused to farewells. At any moment, the Kempetai could come let me in. How could they have turned a child away and take my father away. His clothes were packed like that? As I ran away trying to avoid the exploding ready in a bundle beside the front door. bombs, my only thought was: ‘As long as my family are safe!’ I rushed to our house crying at the thought The Japanese capitulation that my family might have been killed. No one was On 15 August 1945, the Japanese capitulated. there. When at last I found my mother in a shelter Australian troups had arrived in Sanga-Sanga to and flew into her arms, she looked at the two bottles disarm the Japanese and all KNIL soldiers had to in amazement and asked me why I was still carrying report to their army sections in . The them. “What’s important is that you are safe. The Australian landing boat and the soldiers with their rest doesn’t matter a bit!” wide-brimmed hats and naked red torsos made a big impression on me. In the late afternoon, we landed Refuge in the jungle at Balikpapan, wading through knee-high water to Following the heavy bombing raids, we had to the beach. A wonderful sense of freedom. cross the river delta and take refuge in the villages in the jungle. We crossed the four kilometres of We were taken initially to the evacuation camp at water in a small boat. Just as we pushed off from Gunung Pipa before being transferred two months the bank, allied fighters planes flew over our heads later to emergency housing on the coast. To reach firing their guns. By the time we reached the other the toilet block we had to cross a long wooden bank, shivering and crying, we were soaked and footbridge over a broad stretch of beach from which covered in mud. Later we heard that they had been hundreds of decaying skeletons and skulls stared targeting Japanese positions in the area. In the back at you with laughing white teeth. This was where village they gave us a house built on stilts. In this the Japanese had beheaded their victims. We played kampong or compound, we felt safe. Father had to on the beach, among the skulls and skeletons.

Aanspraak - March 2013 - 5 The Bersiap period I had attached an orange flag to my bike and bowed One day, we were surprised to see a group of respectfully to the farmers I met as I cycled around, Indonesian freedom fighters heading up the asphalt but no one bowed in return. After the disastrous road towards our barracks, carrying machetes. They floods of 1953, we were allocated emergency killed the women and children in one of the barracks accommodation in Kruiningen, and I attended the just a few blocks away from us. We rushed inside technical school in Goes. Until my retirement, I and locked ourselves in while they fought with the worked for Rotterdam city council as head of the military police who were guarding us. A Menadonese Sport and Recreation Department. Outside my uncle of my mother, who was a real hero, managed regular job, I have also always tried to draw attention to save us with the help of his Ambonese and to the situation of Moluccan and Indonesian Timorese colleagues, and they kept a continuous Christians in the Dutch Protestant churches. On watch over us. From then on, everyone had to 1 January 2012, I joined the Client Council for the submit to body searches and we were not allowed Department for Members of the Resistance and to play outside any more. Eventually we managed Victims of War as the representative for the SVB’s to leave on a KPM cargo ship and follow my father Moluccan clients. to Pontianak. For me it was fantastic to be able to walk around on the deck inspecting the cannons Remembrance and machine guns and watching dolphins swimming The occasion of the National around the bows. Commemoration does not mean so much to me. For Moluccans, 25 April is more important because Every port represented another voyage of discovery. it was on that day in 1950 that the Republic of the Out of curiosity, I would open food crates in the South Moluccas (Republik Maluku Selatan; RMS) was warehouses. In one of them, I found corned beef, declared on Ambon. On that day every year, the which tasted delicious. For safety’s sake, we stayed whole community gets together. In the beginning I on the ship for two months until the freedom fighters played an active part in the celebrations, but during left Pontianak. As soon as the coast was clear we the last fifty years I have become more involved in left the ship. I then started going to the Dutch East- the Church. My sister Emma still lives in the interior Indies School in Pontianak, where the lessons were of Borneo, and I have often been to visit her with in Dutch. My father was promoted to sergeant, but, my wife. While we were there, we would go back because they were short of men, he was transferred to see the places where I lived as a child, and I to the Military Police where he engaged in heavy discovered that our BPM house was still standing. conflict with the freedom fighters. The situation As I get older I find myself drawn more and more became so unsafe for us that in the end we went to to the past and to the memory of my parents. I feel the Moluccas so that he could demobilise without increasing admiration for their life in Borneo. Our problems. We moved to the Netherlands In 1951. experiences during the war and the Bersiap period forged a special bond between us and I am sad to First impressions of the Netherlands think that so much of our shared history disappeared In Port Said we were supplied with warm clothing with them when they died. There is so much that I against the cold in the Netherlands. When we would still like to ask them and I miss the deep and arrived in a cold and misty Rotterdam, I was amazed meaningful contact we had together. to see white people hauling crates in the port. In the East Indies, it was always coolies who did that Interview: Ellen Lock sort of work. We were taken to what had been a concentration camp at Vught, which resembled a KNIL barracks in the East Indies. It was surrounded by a double row of fencing, four metres high, and at weekends the Dutch would come in droves to stare at us through the barbed wire. As someone who had always felt a rapport with the Netherlands,

Aanspraak - March 2013 - 6 The longing to be reunited with my wife gave me the strength to endure all those camps!

Reprisal victim Arie Kooiman talks about the consequences of the raid in Beverwijk

In response to the fatal shooting of three members Escaping forced labour of the NSB (National Socialist Movement) on 6, 13 In 1942, all unmarried young men were called up to and 14 April 1944, the German occupier decided go and work in Germany. To avoid this, I married to hold a raid in Beverwijk and Velsen-Noord with Akke on 11 June 1942. She had her gold earrings the object of taking hostage 500 young men aged made into her wedding ring. Thanks to good from 18 to 25 and moving them to Amersfoort connections, we got a rented house and ration camp until the perpetrators of the murders gave stamps. In 1943, when young married men were also themselves up. One of the young men taken in called up to work in Germany, I was issued with a reprisal in Beverwijk on 16 April 1944 was Arie doctor’s certificate stating that I had to be admitted Kooiman. He was one of 486 young men deported to hospital because of a contagious disease. That to Amersfoort camp. There, he managed to survive allowed me to stay at home “sick”. the cruel physical punishment inflicted by the cruel SS officer Kotälla, but saw others perish. He was a The raid in Beverwijk forced labourer in a number of German camps until On 16 April 1944, I was seized during the raid in the liberation. Beverwijk. Two Germans were standing in front of the door holding loaded guns. There was no time Stationed on Texel for goodbyes. Surrounded by Germans, I and twenty My father was a skipper who transported passengers others were made to stand against the church wall. and vegetables between Beverwijk and Amsterdam. ‘I’ve had it!’, I thought, utterly terrified. I saw my wife I was born in Beverwijk on 3 October 1920. From running through the field towards me so she could the age of 16, I worked at the Central Bakery in still say goodbye, but I shouted, “Go back!” They IJmuiden, where I was trained as a baker. In 1938, rounded up 486 young men at the ‘De Pont’ cinema. I started courting Akke van Dijk. A year later, We then had to walk in lines to the station, where I had to go into military service, and on 5 February we were loaded into freight cars. I wrote a message 1940, I was mobilised to Den Helder to defend the to my wife on the back of my wedding photo and Afsluitdijk causeway. However, when war broke out, threw it through an opening in the freight car. there was more fighting on the Friesian side. Two “We are being deported, I don’t know where to.” British war ships anchored off the coast of Texel to She received the message only a few days later. evacuate us, but German bombers hindered the departure of the last 1,200 men, including myself. Amersfoort transit camp In retrospect, that was a blessing in disguise, as all On arrival at Amersfoort camp, we had to stand my friends who were taken aboard the British ships in line on the heavily guarded roll call square, were killed in the Battle of the Java Sea. After the known as the rose garden. The guards took all your German surrender, I started working with my father possessions; I had to give up my wedding ring, watch on the boat. and shoes. We were given wooden clogs that were

Aanspraak - March 2013 - 7 too big. The cruel SS officer Joseph Kotälla liked to men died that they kept bringing in new teams of pick out men from the line and give them a taste of forced labourers from Poland, Russia, Italy and the his whip, while we had to watch. It was impossible Netherlands. A man from Amsterdam called Gerrit to escape. You were kept under surveillance day Scholte joined my team, and we became friends. and night from a watch tower. Kotälla and Aus der Through him, I got to know six men from Brabant Fünten beat people to death for fun. Sometimes, in Holland, who were planning to steal a car outside we had to stand still for 24 hours. If you collapsed, the camp when the time was right to escape. they would give you a kicking. Half of my teeth were knocked out. But the torture of my friend Henk Huig, Liberated by the Russians who had only just become a father, upset me the In April 1945, we heard distant canon fire. On most. His backside was beaten off and his screams 18 April 1945, the Russians were so near that the SS went straight through my soul. That could have been guards fled. Gerrit and I went straight to the car with me! After a few weeks, he was taken away. We had the men from Brabant. Lying on the roof, securely to do hard labour on a tiny amount of soup, and we tied by two ropes, Gerrit and I just managed to ride soon became undernourished. On 7 July 1944, 750 along with the overfull car. We were stopped by of us were called together at night by Kotälla. We Americans at the front, at the town of Nordhausen. were taken under guard to Amersfoort station and Gerrit and I were taken to a barn containing at least transported by passenger train to the labour camp 1,300 corpses from Dora-Mittelbau to identify them. of Spergau near Leipzig. We fled as soon as we could because we wanted to get home as soon as possible. In the German area, The labour camps of Spergau and Zöschen a German captain apprehended us and shot Gerrit At Spergau, we were guarded by SS guards. After in the stomach. I ran away as fast as I could, without 14 days, the camp was bombed by the British, and looking back. I was on the run for days, hitchhiking I was transferred to camp Zöschen. As this area was and walking. Looking back, I covered 500 kilometres where the large chemical factories of the Leuna-Werke westwards, but I can’t remember how. In Paderborn were situated, both the camps and the factories were I met a Dutchman and asked him, “I’m sorry, I have repeatedly bombed by the British. There were no no money, and my hands are too dirty. Would you air-raid shelters. In camp Zöschen, we were put to please write a letter to my wife for me?” She got work building a new barbed wire fence around the the message, “Your husband is well”. camp. Twenty six of us slept in a tent on the ground on a bit of straw. You couldn’t trust anyone because She didn’t want to know the physical punishments were merciless. One guard From Paderborn, American troops took me to knocked the remaining teeth out of my mouth with Enschede, where I was taken into a Red Cross his bare fist. I had permanent ulcers on my legs from refuge on 16 May 1945. I hitchhiked home in any being kicked. We were beaten so hard on the back way I could. My name was still on the front door, with a hard leather truncheon that many died as a thank God. I rang the doorbell at half past twelve result. During the heavy bombings of 29 July 1944, at night. My wife opened the door. I stood before I and four others crawled into a ditch behind a small her, almost unrecognizable. I weighed a mere 40 bank, bomb splinters flying all around us. Everyone kilos, was toothless, and covered in scabs. We fell on the other side of the bank was killed. into each other’s arms and hardly said anything. She did not want to know about the war. I washed Zöschen camp and shaved, but had become so unaccustomed to From Spergau, we had to walk 14 kilometres to civilisation that I proposed to lie down on the floor. Zöschen camp, which was situated between Halle No chance of that, she insisted I lay down next to and Leipzig. My work team had to build a barracks her in the bed. I reported for work the very next for the sick, carrying cement bags weighing fifty kilos morning at the job exchange. The officer there said from the station to the camp. The work got harder coolly, “Have you found a job yet?” I left without and harder because we were getting increasingly saying anything. I got a job at the municipal works weak from undernourishment and beatings. So many through a superintendent I knew. My wife watched

Aanspraak - March 2013 - 8 me deteriorate alarmingly, and asked a doctor of Beverwijk and Velsen. To my great surprise, the for advice. I was to go without delay to a Catholic barracks in Nordhausen was still there, and there was tuberculosis clinic in Velsen, where I was diagnosed a plaque to commemorate the 4,300 forced labourers with TB. As a non-Catholic, they did not want to treat who died. I attend the commemoration of the raid on me there, so I had to rest at home for 23 months. Beverwijk every year, and I remember my comrades from the Battle of the Java Sea during the Indonesia Poor as church mice commemorations. My comrade from Zöschen camp, As we hardly had any money to live on, three unions Gerrit Scholte, visited me at home after the war. He in Beverwijk supported me. They convinced the immediately showed me the big scar on his belly, director of the municipal gasworks that he should and it was good to catch up on things. employ me and that I should get sick pay. Shortly I still have nightmares in which Kotälla is standing before Christmas 1947, my wife and I were sitting in my room beating me to a pulp with his whip. at the table crying because there was nothing to eat. You never forget cruelties like that. Losing my wife We were as poor as church mice. We could not make six years ago to cancer is the worst thing I’ve ever a celebratory dinner for my mother in law’s birthday experienced. Longing to see her again gave me on Christmas day. A former resistance member from the strength to endure all those camps! Since her the union came and put 67 guilders on our table. death, I have worn her wedding ring on my little He said, “This is yours. It’s for the fruit coupons finger. We were happy together, and we had two you are owed because of your illness.” With tears dear daughters. In July 2013, the Arie Kooiman walk in her eyes, my wife went and got meat for the will take place in Spergau. I will be walking the Christmas dinner. 14 kilometres that I had to walk after the bombings together with pupils from various secondary schools. Commemoration I’m 92, so I’ve already started training for the walk! In the summer of 2006, I revisited those places in Germany with the foundation for reprisal victims Interview: Ellen Lock

Aanspraak - March 2013 - 9 ‘You can’t get closer than that’ The psychiatrist Fedia Jacobs talks about mourning and relationships reborn in the shadow of war.

Wartime violence can cast a shadow over For example, I try to show readers how parents’ relationships within families for years on end. traumas lead them to avoid contact with their Apparently inexplicable rages and lasting children, but also how this can be treated – more depressions suffered by victims of war also take often than one might expect. Sometimes, a their toll on partners and children. You can’t make whole family revolves around the pain of the first the pain of war disappear, but you can help people generation, making it almost impossible for the deal with it differently. In 2012, the psychiatrist second generation to do its own mourning. As long Fedia Jacobs wrote a book about psychotherapy as it is not discussed, a person can stay a prisoner of with war victims and their children entitled “Painful their parent’s pain for their entire life. I try to make Enrichment; mourning and relationships that are it possible to talk about painful subjects so as to reborn in the shadow of war”, which he talks break through the avoidance mechanism, which is about in the following interview. understandable but detrimental.

How did you get involved in this very special How did you come up with the title of “Painful profession? Enrichment” (Pijnlijke Verrijking)? I was born in 1956, the youngest of three sons. My mother had always been devoted to caring for We were brought up in the Jewish faith, but were our family. In 1999, she suffered a stroke, and the not orthodox. My father was a pharmacist and clinical roles were suddenly reversed. My father helped and chemist at a hospital. Many relatives of my father cared for her until she died in 2009. Always a great and mother were murdered during the Holocaust, giver, my mother was able to receive gracefully too, so we were confronted with the shadow of war from so it was always a pleasure to do things for her. At a the earliest age in our family, and many aspects of certain point, I had left my wife but wanted to spare the war hung in the air, unspoken. I knew early on my mother the sad news. I asked her, “Dear mother, that I wanted to be a psychiatrist. I specialized in what would you prefer? To continue believing psychiatry for victims of war and violence, and have something you currently believe, which makes you been affiliated with the Sinai Centre in Amstelveen happy but isn’t entirely true anymore, or to hear the since 1987. This was originally a psychiatric institution truth about what is actually happening, even though for Jewish people, but we currently treat all kinds it might be difficult to hear?” “The truth, of course!”, of patients from all over the world who have she answered. I made a clean breast of it and asked problems relating to war. her how she felt about the news. She said, “I feel enriched that you have told me this. It is a painful What did you want to achieve with this book? enrichment.” I think this is a very good title for my It is relationships with others that make us human. book. While it is difficult for many people to face Wartime violence results in loss or disruption of up to problems, learning how to deal with them contact with loved ones. If traumatic memories can enrich a person’s life. hinder a patient from entering into relationships, that’s when the oppressor has really won.

Aanspraak - March 2013 - 10 Why did you give the psychiatrist in the book it is a great pity. Sometimes a person needs more the name Samuel Rubinstein? time, or there are other problems blocking recovery. Because it allowed me to incorporate experiences of Someone might come back years later, by which other psychiatrists in my book. Under the pseudonym time effective treatment has become possible. It’s of the psychiatrist Samuel Rubinstein, I discuss a not a panacea, sometimes the trauma is simply too number of fictional treatment sessions with victims of great. Life is more tragic for some than for others. violence and their surviving relatives: Jewish people, Indonesian people, other citizens and also veterans. When has a therapy been successful? The name Samuel is in honour of my grandfather, You can say that therapy has been successful if who was gassed at Sobibor, and after whom I experiences of violence have become a painful but was named, according to the Jewish tradition. My accepted part of a person’s life story. Partners and parents went on a pilgrimage to Sobibor. My father children can then be understanding in view of their placed stones with my grandparents’ names along family member’s past, while also being able to shape the memorial avenue where the victims took their their own existence in a satisfactory and meaningful last steps towards the gas chambers. way. Having meaningful contact with others is essential to being human. But trust in others has You recently travelled to the death camps. often been fundamentally damaged by events. How was that for you? Protracted and repeated traumatization can result, In October 2012, I visited the camps in Poland on for example, in depression, nightmares, flashbacks, a trip organized for people working in the Jewish irritability and impulsivity. These are complex care system to help them better understand the problems, also for those who live with victims of war. vulnerability of the care recipients. Being there hits you harder than expected. There is an icy silence in What is special about your therapy? the air at Auschwitz and Sobibor. My understanding I think I probably confront people more intensely of the situation of the first generation of war victims than other practitioners, although always without was deepened by the oppressive effect the places transgressing boundaries indicated by patients, I visited had on me. The energy flowed out of me of course. I try to get patients to process intense and I literally had to keep moving to avoid being emotions by first mourning the happiness they lost, overwhelmed by emotion. This does not compare, of and then rebuilding the relationships as from the course, to the way the deported people had to shut time of loss. I do this through guided imagination, down their emotions in order to survive. But precisely in which the patient “rewrites” important past in that place of horror, where time has continued to encounters. “Close your eyes and go back. What pass, I was able to get a better perspective on my would you like to say to your father or mother?” own grief and anger. I walked down the path to the Thinking up a succession of events at a later point in gas chambers where my grandparents had walked time can help people come to terms with the pain. in the last minutes of their lives. I lit candles by my It cannot be good for children if their lives revolve grandparent’s stones, and phoned my 90-year old largely around the wartime violence experienced by father to share this moment with him. You can’t get their parents. I frequently see children of war victims any closer than that – the spot where your relatives who are living against a backdrop of war, as it were; were murdered. carrying psychological baggage from their parents. We can investigate this confusion, and by looking In the book, you are very honest about whether at things in a different way, change the disturbed a therapy session has been successful or not. relationships into parent-child relationships more What do you do if a session has not helped? like they are meant to be. In my book, I describe one aspect of the treatment for the consequences of complex traumas – the Are you able to distance yourself from your consequences regarding relationships. It is indeed patients’ stories? possible that the therapy will not be effective, or I have learned to do so. As a therapist, you have to that the time is not yet ripe for it, and if that is so, be secure in yourself. You empathise but you don’t

Aanspraak - March 2013 - 11 go with the patient to the depths of his or her pain. The book Pijnlijke Verrijking (Painful Enrichment) by Because of the atrocities I hear about on a daily basis Fedia Jacobs (2012) is available at Dutch bookstores in my practice, it would be easy to start thinking that for €14.95 under ISBN: 978-90-77557-93-8 or at humans are evil by nature. However, my faith teaches Uitgeverij Totemboek publishers: www.totemboek.nl, me to counter this thought. I think that what these e-mail: [email protected], tel: 020-6459972. terrible acts should teach us is how not to act; to show us how we should treat each other: respectfully and constructively, as equals, and with regard for the absolute value and dignity of human beings.

What would you like readers to take with them from the book? Under the shadow and confusion of the violence people inflict on each other, mutual relationships can become distorted. When things get difficult, we tend to avoid sore points. But it is good to confront things, even if it takes a lot of courage. Victims can continue to suffer in various ways and for a very long time from the violence they have experienced, and treating the consequences can be complicated. That is inevitable. However, there is always hope that contact with loved ones can be repaired, and it is very important not to avoid attempts to do so. If I can help victims of war and their nearest and dearest to understand and see for themselves that it is possible to heal relationships, what a wonderful result that is.

Interview: Ellen Lock

Aanspraak - March 2013 - 12 Questions and Answers

I receive a Wuv benefit and live in a nursing home. My pension fund is going to reduce my pension as Recently, the amount that I have to pay personally from 2013. I already read something in Aanspraak towards the cost of the home has increased about what to do if this happens, but it’s still not significantly. Should I report this? quite clear to me. If your Wuv benefit was reduced after you entered In the September 2012 issue, there was an article the nursing home, the amount of your personal about the reductions that some pension funds contribution towards the costs of your care and stay wanted to carry out in 2013. If your pension fund in a nursing home or care home in the Netherlands has informed you about a reduction, and you have will be taken into account when calculating your an extraordinary pension or a periodically paid benefit rate. Now that the amount you have to pay benefit which is deducted from the pension you has significantly increased, you can apply to have receive from your pension fund, you can apply to your benefit rate reassessed. However, we will only have your extraordinary pension or periodically actually carry out a reassessment if it is possible paid benefit reassessed. The best time to apply to increase your benefit by more than 1% of your would be when your pension fund implements the base amount. If you receive the Wuv amount for reduction, which in your case would be April 2013. non-measurable incapacity costs (NMIK), we will not For more information, please call our Client Service be able to reassess the amount you get because department on +31 71 5356888. personal contributions are not taken into account for the NMIK. This also applies to extraordinary Payment dates for 2013 pensions and the tax-free increment under Article Below, you will find a list of the dates on which 19 of the Wubo scheme. payments will be remitted.* It may take a few days before the payment is credited to your account, I need a rollator but I can’t get this on my depending on your bank. health insurance any more. Could I get the costs reimbursed from you? 15 January 15 May 16 September We can reimburse you for a rollator or walking frame 15 February 14 June 15 October if the assistance you need is the result of physical 15 March 15 July 15 November disorders relating to your wartime experiences. 15 April 15 August 16 December You will have to apply for this, and you must always send in your application before you incur any costs. If you have any questions, please call the number If your physical complaints do not stem from your stated on the payment notification. wartime experiences, it will not be worth your while to submit an application as this will only be rejected. * Pensions under the Extraordinary Pension You can usually see which complaints are recognised Act (WBP) are paid via Stichting 1940-1945 as stemming from the war, and which are not, by (the 1940-1945 Foundation). referring to the decisions we sent you in the past relating to the award of benefits. The cost of walking aids can vary greatly. We will reimburse the cheapest option suitable for your situation.

Aanspraak - March 2013 - 13