- The Velo: Our Camp Ambulance
The “Velo” was a creation of some teen age boys in the Tjihapit camp. This was our camp ambulance. Rollo Hansen, the son of a colleague of my father is credited with the invention. The sketch was drawn after the war by H. Liesker, a fellow teenage Tjihapit camp internee. Within a year these older teen age boys had been evicted from the camp: some were lucky to be reunited with their fathers, many others ended up looking after themselves.
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I remember this velo, one of the “drivers” was Jan Staal, he was good-looking. I was 11 years old and lived in the Bengawalaan, opposite the nuns’ convent. I did not know that it was used for an ambulance, because when Jan Staal drove past he used it for his pleasure. He always smiled to us girls. He must have been a few years older than me.
Dear Rita,
thank you for your comment. I wonder what happened to Jan Staal? The idea of improvising your own vehicle made a huge impression on me, and when I lived in South Africa after the war , I tried to emulate these resourceful camp inventors. Fortunately my mother then worked in a garage and I had free acess to the collection of wrecked prewar cars that were dumped behind the garage and, thus assisted with used components, was able to do my own bit of construction at home. At the time we had a boarder living with us, a girl my age recently arrived from Holland, and I was able to provide her with suitably elegant transportation over the dusty roads of Unitas Park, Vereenging.
Boudewijn
Hallo Boudewijn,
I might know some more of Jan Staal. As far as I remember Jan was the builder/designer of the velo.
I live in Hilversum near the “Noorderbegraafplaats” where I came accross a grave of Jan Staal (Bindjai 11-06-27 – Delft 21-06-51). It might be a coincidence, but Bindjai is in Sumatra, it is the right age, and Delft has a Technical University, and it is most likely that Jan had taken up a technical study.
His mother and father are also buried there.
Father J.H.W. Staal 4-9-1897 – 27-2-1972
Mother J.M. Staal-Wemmers 22-4-1894 – 23-12-1987.
Maybe you can check it on your Tjihapit list
I tell you some more later about Tjideng.
Rita
Hi Rita, I now have access to the Tjihapit camp registry as of 1 January 1945. The list only contains about 4000 names, and only reports the names of persons who had not yet been transported elsewhere. I sought an explanation of what had happened from Emmy Monsjou, who worked in the lady’s office until the very end, but she can not remember. The list is interesting because it names each indvidual along wtih date of birth and sex . I thus discovered that my mother lied about my age. I was born in 1938 but on that list I am credited with one less year on this sorry planet. In Tjihapit the camp register consisted of index cards and the lady’s office had to prepare this with three copies (camp, Tokyo-2, Red Cross) . The cards were type written.
I reckon what happened was the following: with each transport the group leader was given a bundel of 600 or so cards for all of the travellers, and thus the file in the camp office shrank, but at the end of the war only thirty or so ladies ( Emmy Monsjou included), were left in the office to clean up. Only thirty cards should have been left when the war ended, but more information survived.
I suspect that over Christmas 1944-45 these ladies came to realize that all traces of Tjihapit and its 13,000 former inhabitants would be wiped off the face of the earth, and they set about creating a new copy of the people still left, and this is what emerged after the war.
The situation at Tjideng was exceptional in that a pretty good record exists of its inhabitants, but that is entirely due to the fact that Tjideng was in Batavia where the allies could exercise a modicum of control after August 1945. The documentary record of other camps is pathetic
Boudewijn