On 15th November 1890 my grandmother Carolina Juliana was born in Rotterdam. When she was a little girl her parents took her to the D.E.I. They lived in Semarang. When she was 19 years old she met my grandfather Johan and in March 1911 they got married there.
Their first son Hans was born December 1911 in the Juliana Ziekenhuis. My father was next in 1914 and then followed 4 girls. All their children were born in the same hospital.
My grandfather or Opa as we called him was the director of a fertilizer factory in Semarang. This meant that he often had to travel for business, even to Japan. He always came back with presents. From Japan he brought small porcelain items and trinkets. Small lacquered boxes, little ivory ornaments, so delicately made, you’d be too frightened to touch them. Porcelain bowls, vases and even some big ones.
When the children were still quite young he took them to Holland to see his father.( His mother had died when he was 3 years old.) The boys stayed in Utrecht with a foster family, so they could attend Dutch highschools. He must have loved to travel as they took the boat from Rotterdam via Southampton and sailed to New York. They took their 4 daughter with them and the youngest one was still a toddler. As they were paid passengers and not migrants and merely in transit, they did not have to wait in long rows for migration to be cleared. Instead they travelled by train to San Francisco and then took another boat to the D.E.I.
Later on the girls studied in Holland too, the eldest two came back again. When the two youngest daughters were studying in Holland, the war broke out. They could not return to the D.E.I.
Meanwhile my grandparents had moved to Buitenzorg, which was their last address before being send to the camps. The boys were registered as soldiers and whilst on duty were captured in Padelarang. Later sent to Tjimahi, from where Hans was shipped to the Birma railway and my father to Flores. The eldest daughter Marijke with her daughter Marjolijn were put in Karees and some time later put on the train with Oma, taken to Tjideng. The second daughter Milly was living in Malang in those days and she had to go to Lamperesari.
This happy family was scattered around by Nippon.
But before Oma was sent to the Karees, she travelled by train from Buitenzorg to Batavia, to see her second granddaughter – me! In front all official buildings were Japanese guards. Anyone wanting to enter such a building had to bow deeply first. Oma was not used to do that, she hated the Jap of course. But she also desperately wanted to see me. So for the first time she actually bowed for the Emperor, then was allowed inside to hold me in the hospital where I was born. Soon after that we all had to go to the camps.
Poor Oma, who had spent most of her life in the D.E.I., was married and raised her children there, then had to end this peaceful life in the tropics in such undignified way. For 3 years we all sweated it out and I must say, miraculously all of our family survived, even uncle Hans in Siam.
Opa en Oma were one of the first ones to leave the D.E.I. They somehow managed to get tickets on a plane and flew to Amsterdam, never to return to what had become a hell.
They had some friends among the native people and could leave a lot of their belongings for safe keeping during the war with them.
As soon as Opa came out of the camp he collected his belongings and shipped them to Holland. If this happened straight away or at a later stage I do not know, but I saw many household items, artifacts and furniture in Holland which they had brought from Java. They were the lucky ones, as many people had absolutely nothng left after the war.
So here are my in one way lucky grandparents and in the other way such unfortunate ones. Unfortunate because they had first to live in a flat, then on the top floor of their daughters house in the Hague. They had no garden nor servants and longed for their beloved country and its climate. What enormous change in their lives! At least they were not alone. And many of their friends and family were also living in the same town. Life just went on.
Opa was retired but had some honour jobs, which kept him going and not feeling locked up. Oma suffered rheumatism, which worsened every year. She was an amazing woman, as she hardly ever complained. I can remember her wearing knitted gloves without fingertips, just to keep her hands warm. Her condition gradually worsened. She received gold injections and therapy, but there simply was no cure.
She loved to have her family around her and enjoyed playing brain games, which we all had to join in. She truly was the centre of the family and thrived on birthdays, Xmasses and dinner parties.
Sometimes Opa took his family out to an Indonesian restaurant in Scheveningen.
They celebrated their 50th wedding anniversary in 1961. Not long after Oma was getting really bad and had to go to a nursing home, where she died in 1963, aged 73.
I was not in Holland at the time. I was in England with a friend. We were travelling around and could not be contacted. One morning I woke up and told my friend I had this strange dream, that my grandmother had died. And sure enough, that is what exactly happened.
As soon as we landed in the airport I was told Oma had passed away the night I had dreamt it.
Opa lived on for another 6 years.