The Book: Tjideng Reunion
“Boudewyn van Oort’s story offers a remarkably detailed evocation of war’s effect on an innocent child and his indomitable parents. This is a tale of daily life at its most unflinching and humane, a vivid and moving memoir that recovers a lost childhood and manages to give meaning to the distortions of war.” —John Allemang
TJIDENG REUNION
About the Book
When World War II breaks out in Europe and the Nazis occupy their homeland, two Dutch families living in South Africa move to the Netherlands East Indies (now Indonesia) to contribute to the defense of the colony.
But two years later, they are caught up in the Pacific War which was unleashed to provide Japan with a secure supply of raw materials, mainly from the Netherlands East Indies.
After the Japanese occupy Java and commence a policy of ethnic cleansing, the two men are interned leaving the women to fend for themselves. Several months later the women are also forced out of their homes and the story follows them as well as a child and a grandmother through almost four years of increasingly hellish internment in Bandoeng and Batavia. The young women have no idea of the fate of their husbands.
Miraculously, both families survive and are reunited, returning to South Africa as refugees – only to find that their bitter experience on Java is to give them new insight into the developments in that country.
Tjideng Reunion is told against the backdrop of the dramatic political and military events that unfolded around the two families and changed the course of their lives.
About the Author
Boudewyn van Oort was born in South Africa, and after the war was educated in South Africa and Canada (Carleton University, Geology). A Rhodes Scholar, he studied Politics, Philosophy and Economics at Oxford, subsequently pursuing an engineering career in the oil and gas industry. Now retired, he lives in Victoria with his wife and daughter.
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Read an extract from the book HERE
{ 18 comments… read them below or add one }
Prachtige site! Ik ben (al jaren) op zoek naar Johanna Maria Adriana BEUMER, (*9-3-1873) de v.t. en b. gescheiden echtgenote van mijn grootvader Jan Willem Scholten (*13-3-1858). Februari 1937 vertrok zij van Amsterdam naar Batavia en haar verdere levensloop is onbekend. Bij naspeuring is komen vast te staan dat zij in het Tjideng-kamp op 2 maart 1945 is omgekomen en bijgezet op het ereveld Kalibanteng te Semarang. Haar broer, Johannes BEUMER, (*1875) woonde sinds 1911 in Medan N.O. Haar zuster, Alida Beumer (*1871) trouwde met Jean Guillaume laCroix en zij zijn in1904 vertrokken naar Medan N.O. Laatstgenoemde was klerk bij de H.J.S.M. Is iets over deze familie BEUMER bij u bekend?
Beste Heer Scholten,
Ik kan hier jammer genoeg niets bij toevoegen. Op 2 Maart 1945 zaten mijn moeder en ik nog steeds in Tjihapit, en de naam Beumer zegt mij niets. Misschien kan u via de andere Tjideng sites iets te weten te komen. Peter van der Kuil (woonachtend in Perth W Australie, heeft over de laatste jaren vrijveel informatie verzameld. Dan is er ook nog de Multiply site van Marguerite Ruys, woonachtend in Cairns. Ik zal via een andere e-mail die adressen door geven.
Mijn boek geeft een beknopte geschiedenis van Tjideng voor de maanden vlak voor mijn aankomst. Die informatie heb ik ten dele heb gebasseerd op dagboeken by de NIOD, Amsterdam, verkrijgbaar (de Japansche bezetting in Dagboeken – Tjideng) , en ten dele op ongepubliceerd materiaal. Maar dergelijke “egodocumenten” noemen ook maar weinig namen. Papier was trouwens schaars.
Groetjes
Boudewyn van Oort, Victoria, Canada
Vandaag ben ik aanwezig geweest bij de herdenking van de vrouwen en kinderen kampen in Bronbeek te Arnhem.Nog altijd na 64 jaar zeer indrukwekkend,ruim 750 mensen waren aanwezig.Bij de stand van de heer Beekhuis zag ik het boek Tjideng reunion,heb het zitten doorbladeren en was zeer onder de indruk van het boek,wat een werk om dit te schrijven,mijn complimenten.Dit wilde ik even laten weten,
met hartelijke groeten een ex tjidengkind,
Astrid Levert
Beste Astrid,
zeer veel dank voor jouw commentaar. Het boek is geloof ik nog meer betekenisvol hier in Noord Amerika omdat de man in de straat geen flauw idee heeft van wat er zich in de tweede Wereld oorlog afspeelde in het verre oosten. Zelfs hier aan de westkust, waar de oost Aziatische bevolking vrij groot is, en met regelmatig vliegverbinding met Azie, weet men meer van wat zich in Europa afspeelde dan aan de overkant. Voor de velen die uit Indie na de oorlog hier kwamen te wonen is het als of je in een droom wereld woont waar niemand, en vooral je kinderen, maar iets kan begrijpen van je akelige verleden. Dat is een van de redenen waarom ik het boek in het Engels schreef.
Groetjes
Boudewijn
I just left a comment elsewhere on your website, but have to add this: The author of “The Flamboya Tree”, Claartje Olink, is a cousin of my husband. Their mothers were sisters. I have no idea why she never mentions the sister and her children in her book. They were all in Tjideng at the end.
Personal relations in Tjideng and in other camps got strained by the hardship, the deprivation and the struggle for survival. We will be celebrating the 15th of August events in Whiterock, BC, not far from Seattle, and I for one wil be curious to see who all turns up and what the mood will be. Here in North America we have tended to be isolated, but the internet has provided a means for regaining contacts. I have been asked to deliver a short speech.
Dear Boudewijn,
I will certainly buy your book shortly. Marguerite Ruys mentioned your name, but I did not know who you are. I am amazed at the details and especially the photos! I lived Laan Trivelli 95.
We were in Tjideng from1943 till the end of 1944 when jews were transported to Tangerang and later to ADEK. I just published a book about it: “Camp Stories” for English speaking children.
Visit our site http://www.gastdocenten.com to read one of my stories.
Hartelijke groeten, Marjan Bruinvels-Bakker
Hello, Marianne,
We were in Tjideng for a short period ( May 1945-oct 1945). Before that in Tjihapit. The book has more to say about Tjihapit than Tjideng for that reason. I live in Canada.
Nice to hear from you. I will look up your website.
Boudewyn
I am so pleased to have found your website. My grandmother, Johanna Sophia Hamers, was interned at Tjideng with her three children, Ans, Rie and Hans. It’s wonderful to be able gain a better understanding of what they went through. My grandmother’s birthday was 15th August which in her house was always a double celebration.
Thank again.
Just looking (searching) for info about my family during their Japanese camp period. I know my grandmother Constanze(Connie) Bosscha was in Tjideng.
But maybe more familymembers?
Greetings.
My father and Grandmother may have been interned in Tjideng. My father is George Berenschot born in Java 1941 and my grandmother was Teresia A. Berenschot neé Erb. I would love some info on their years in Indonesia.
Hello Denis,
I looked through my records of Tjideng internees in August 1945 and found the following with the name “Berenschot”
Berenschot-de Boer, M.C. 20044 00001 Tjihapit
Berenschot-Hesselink, J.C. 20045 00001 Tjihapit
Berenschot-Mourer, A.C.C. 14870 00001
The top two probably shared my own journey from Tjihapit to Tjideng on May 11 1945. It was a terrible journey described more fully in my book.
In all three cases the registry only lists one family member. None of them however has the maiden name “Erb”. This is puzzling. Was your family related at all to General Berenschot?
Regards’
‘
Boudewyn, Victoria, BC
Hello Mr/ Mrs? Kerkhoven
The only Bosscha record I could find in the Tjideng camp register was as follows
Bosscha-van Hoogezand, A.M. 18161 00001
This person appears to have spent the entire war time in Tjideng.
However, my mother’s good friend, Emmy Kerkhoven (nee van Gendt) , was perhaps indirectly related? I have contact with a number of members of the Kerkhoven clan
Hoogachtend
Boudewyn
My mother, Wilhelmina Tortike, and grandmother were interned at Tjihapit, Adek and Tjideng during WWII. I only learned the names of the camps while reading her WUV records. I have a id card written in Japanese that has my grandmother’s picture on it. Mom and her brother left Amsterdam on the Johan de Witt on 12 May 1940 to join their parents in the Dutch East Indies. I didn’t learn she was a POW until I was in my late teens. She would never speak or elaborate on the events, and it has always been a blank in her life that I have known nothing about. I do have a book on the voyage on the Johan de Witt,but I cannot read it as it is written in Dutch. Wilhelmina died on December 8, 2011, and I had accepted that I would never know anything about this period in her life. Your book will change this and give me clues to this dark period. Thanks for writing of your experiences to enlighten the children of survivors.
John Loomis
Hello John, the story of your grandmother, Mrs Tortike- Kleef, and her daughter thus bears some resemblance to that of my family, except that we did not go to Adek.
Boudewyn
Boudewyn
On your list of names do you have my dad’s name
Lou or A P Roelofsen. He worked the kichen and
“hulp dienst” at the camp but he never talked
Much about his experience. Prior to the camp
He arrived on Java via the army then was Gm
At the Preamger hotel
Thanks for your assistance
Hallo Boudewijn,
I am afraid that we are the children of – The Forgotten Holocaust – nobody knows much of our war – most Dutch people and especially the Jews – do not want to know about our Holocaust.
I am afraid I have not read your book yet but I will !! You probably have not read Inez Hollander’s publication – Silenced Voice – which describes live in Camp Malang and the notorious prison – Banjoebiroe – which were the camps we tried to survive in !!
My whole family have suffered from it all and still the Japanese have never even said – sorry !!
Sincere regards from East Sussex, England
Gerard Lemmens
Hello Gerard,
I think it is a mistake to call our plight in the Dutch East Indies a “Holocaust”. I even have some reservations about those who claim that a Holocaust was narrownly averted by the timely dropping of an atom bomb. In my book i deal quite extensively with the impact Hiroshima and Nagasaki had on the course of the war. I do believe that an American invasion of Java might well have precipitated something like a holocaust, if the example of Manila is anything to go by. The war experience was terrible, and terrible was the suffering of those who died, But by August 1945 they were gone. For those who survived the war suffering has continued in one form or another, and a case can be made that the following generation has also paid a price. I feel that I came out of the war in relatively good shape, but it nevertheless left a deep mark, and my subsequent life has had its downs. I know many others who spent the war as children in camps who fared worse and whose adult lives effectively were ruined. I am a camp child, but I reckon that as a boy I was part of the 20-30% who ended up living a more or less normal life. I can not speak for the girls.