Stories 
Portrait of Angeline Amaly Jacobsz. This photograph is from the collection of her daughter Carla and was made available by Angela Verheul.
This story contains fragments from Ans's notebook. These are referred to as "grandmother's whisper."
Prologue: lost voices
The wind bit into her skin like a strange punishment. Ice crystals stung like splinters against her cheeks, so unlike the warm rain of tropical Surabaya. She gripped the frozen railing, her gaze fixed on the wet, unfamiliar quayside of IJmuiden. This cold country was supposed to become her home, but everything felt strange and distant.
Charles stood beside her, his arm firmly entwined with hers. His grip was warm, reassuring. Yet even his touch could not drive away the cold that had taken root deep within her. She knew he felt her fear, her sorrow, but nothing was said. Their silence spoke louder than all the words she did not dare to utter.
Behind her lay everything she had ever known: the land of her youth, of jasmine blossom and palm trees, of spiced fragrances, warm sunshine, and soft evening sounds. Of laughing voices that slowly faded in her memories—the voices of her mother, brothers and sisters, safe and familiar. No birds of paradise any more, no endless nature teeming with life—only the cold shrieking of seagulls and the rumble of suitcases on the slippery quayside.
She did not look back. If she turned around, she might break. Indonesia had released her, cast her out, and erased her existence like footprints by the sea.
When she finally set foot on shore, she took a deep breath and pulled her shawl more tightly around her. As if she could also cover her past with it. From that moment she decided to remain silent—not out of cowardice, but to survive. About the land she lost, about the pain she left behind, she would never speak again. She hid everything deep within herself, behind a smile that was not entirely her own. "We are in the Netherlands now," she thought, "so we behave accordingly."
A lost youth: from warmth to silence
Angeline Amaly Jacobsz (Ans) was born on 10 January 1931 in Surabaya, but her earliest memories were not those of a bustling port city. She grew up in the quieter Sidoarjo, a little to the south of Surabaya, where her parents, Francis Duncan Jacobsz (Doh) and Alexandrien Frederique Westhoff (Rien), lived before everything changed.
Sidoarjo was a city of broad roads lined with palm trees, surrounded by rice fields that stretched endlessly to the horizon. The smell of muddy fish ponds mingled with the sweet aroma of sugar cane. Along the banks, the Brantas river flowed lazily, while fishermen cast their nets in the early morning—their voices rising above the lapping of oars.
Ans in 1931. The photograph is from the collection of Ans's daughter Sonja and was made available by her grandson Rutger Dercks.
Memories of an innocent time
In the garden behind the house she played with her brother James Eugèn Jacobsz (Jim) and her sister Cornelia Roswita Jacobsz (Klein). Their bare feet left prints in the sandy ground. When it had rained, the warm mud clung between their toes. They ran between the bamboo posts of the fence, while the afternoon sun cast long shadows on their soft, brown skin. When tiredness took hold, they settled beneath the trees. Light filtered through the leaves, dancing across their arms and legs. And the scent of ripe fruit hung sweetly in the warm air.
Their childhood felt like a world without end, carried along by the rhythm of the house. While they played, the baboes—Javanese servants—tended to the meals, washed the clothes and helped the children dress. Their fingers were skilled and gentle when they combed her hair or fastened the buttons of her dress. They knew nothing other than that each day unfolded in the same familiar cadence—until their parents reminded them of what lay hidden in the grass and among the trees.
Father warned them about snakes, invisible in the tall grass, lying motionless until you came too close. Mother spoke more softly, almost in a whisper, of spirits that woke at dusk. And then there were the monkeys—mischievous and unpredictable—that would leap from the branches without warning and carry off anything left loose. The dangers were real, but their parents led them to believe that caution offered protection—that as long as they heeded the warnings, nothing could happen to them.
Yet not every discomfort could be avoided. Sometimes it came closer, in their own hair. The baboes tried to delouse them, but the fleas were too numerous. In the end, father Doh decided there was only one solution. He sat them on a wooden stool in the garden, gently tilted their chin upward and wiped a damp cloth across their scalp. Then he took the razor—a gleaming piece of steel that caught the sunlight—and began with firm, patient strokes. Carefully he scraped away the last stubble, while tiny black hairs drifted down like fine dust and were carried away by the wind. The smell of soap mingled with the scent of grass and earth, and the metal felt cool against their warm skin. When he was done, he wiped their heads once more with a damp cloth and gave them a gentle pat on the shoulder. Their smooth heads shone in the sunlight as they giggled and ran their hands over them, marvelling at the strange sensation.
Still getting used to the unexpected lightness on their heads, they ran into the garden in search of something soft and familiar. She played with her father's puppies, their small bodies trembling with enthusiasm. The moment their soft fur touched her cheek, she giggled. Their wet snouts licked her face, their paws scrambling against her hands. She held them tightly against her, as if afraid they would disappear the moment she loosened her grip. Later these pups would grow into hunting dogs, faithful companions to her father. But now they were still small, innocent and full of energy.
Ans as a young girl, sitting in the sand with two playful puppies, at her family home in the 1930s.
Ans and Jim with a puppy and shaved, smooth heads. In the background stands one of the Javanese servants. The photographs are from the collection of Ans's daughter Sonja and were made available by her grandson Rutger Dercks.
Then there was her father's motorbike. Large and robust, with a deep, heavy rumble when it started. Sometimes she was allowed to sit on it, her little legs dangling over the side. Her small fingers found the horn, and with a light press a shrill, jolly sound rang out. She burst into laughter and threw her head back in pure joy. On good days her father lifted her up onto the tank in front of him, held her firmly and drove slowly in circles around the garden. The wind rushed past her cheeks, her heart pounding with excitement. She felt grown-up, as if together they ruled the world.
Ans on her father's Excelsior motorbike, together with one of the little dogs. The photograph is from the collection of Ans's daughter Sonja and was made available by her grandson Rutger Dercks.
Outside, the kampong lived according to its own rhythm. Even before the street vendors came into sight, they announced their arrival with rhythmic tapping—a block of wood struck repeatedly against another piece, a familiar sound that rippled through the morning stillness. 'Roti, roti manis!' it rang out, drawing ever closer. The smell of freshly roasted peanuts and fried tempeh could be detected from a long way off. Sometimes she was handed a warm roll, sweet and soft, with butter that melted on her tongue. Later in the evening, when the air had cooled, came the tinkling of a bell and the sweet scent of ginger and sticky rice drifting towards her—warm and syrupy, with peanuts that crunched between her teeth.
After the meal the children ran again on bare feet through the lush garden and over the cool tiles of the veranda. Their voices rose up in the golden light of the setting sun. In the distance the sound of a gamelan orchestra rang out, carried on the evening breeze, coming from a wedding celebration that would last deep into the night.
Before the first stars appeared, they were called in—time for a bath. With lukewarm water from a bucket they rinsed away the dust of the day. The scent of coconut oil and soap from her father's factory drifted on the wind, while drops ran down her skin like the last remnants of the day. It was the evening ritual—washing, drying, falling asleep with the smell of soap still in their skin. A few more whispered voices beneath the sheets. And one last breath of wind through the trees.
But just as a river slowly changes course, so too did the certainties of her childhood begin to shift. At first barely perceptible. Whispered conversations behind closed doors. Tensions in the house she did not yet understand. Her parents, once the foundation of her safe world, seemed to be drifting ever further apart.
A house in shards
"A child cannot choose its own parents. As parents you make many mistakes—you only realise that later, when you are old and take stock of your life."
She was not yet five years old when the first cracks in her parents' marriage became visible. In the evenings, as the sun slowly sank below the horizon, she heard their quarrels. Sometimes they were suppressed words, hissing like steam escaping from a kettle. At other times voices shot through the walls of their house like whiplashes. She knew it would end with a door slamming. With a silence that was just as suffocating as the words before it.
Not long afterwards her mother packed up their belongings. She left the house, with her children at her side—Jim, Klein and the child she still carried under her heart. Her father, Doh, remained behind in the house that had once been theirs together. He was still there, but no longer there for her.
After the separation, Rien found shelter with her former foster parents—grandpa and grandma Claasz. But Ans was not happy there. “A couple of... old dears (I shouldn’t say that). Jim knows what I mean,” she wrote later. She had had no voice in what happened. No choice. No farewell. Her father did not disappear physically, but he was erased from her life. As if she was no longer permitted to have a father. As if her mother's pain had to wipe out her memories of him too.
Not long afterwards her youngest brother was born, Roelof François Jacobsz (Boy). Their mother now stood alone, with four children and no steady income. She fought to provide for them. But the world left little room for a woman without a husband. During the day she tried to feed them. At night the echoes of a lost battle still resounded in their house. Sometimes there was silence. But that was heavier than words.
It was this hopelessness that forced her mother to make a heartbreaking choice: as the eldest daughter, Ans was sent to the convent. She had never had a voice in the decisions that shaped her life. Her family fell apart, and she disappeared—just like her father—from the house.
"My mother, what was she like? She was kind. She was there. That says it all. She had an extremely difficult life and never, not once, did I hear her complain. She was so resigned, she let everything wash over her, perhaps from grief, I don't know."
Behind closed gates
"Five, six years old and you went into the convent, only during the holidays were you allowed home. You were well cared for, but you were a number."
As the eldest daughter, Ans was sent to the convent. Not of her own free will, but because her mother had no other choice. Without a husband and without a steady income, Rien could no longer care for all her children. The decision was painful, but unavoidable. For Ans it felt like a silent message: she no longer truly belonged anywhere. “Children of Rien, we ate bread of charity,” she would write later. Those words carried the pain of dependence and the quiet shame that would mark her youth.
The gate closed. Her mother walked away. And her footsteps slowly died away on the stones. For the first time she felt how empty a place could be. Even with so many people around her. The smell of floor wax and old books hung in the corridors, mingled with the cold dampness of stone that never quite warmed. Her footsteps echoed across the tiles. Everything here seemed to tell her to be quiet. To become invisible. But the quieter she became, the louder the echoes in her head grew.
Each day began early, before sunrise. First morning prayer, kneeling on the hard wooden pews, the voices of the sisters murmuring psalms in a monotonous cadence. Her knees tingled from the long sitting, her eyes watered with sleep. Then washing with ice-cold water from a basin—a shock that momentarily took her breath away. The lessons were long and silent. The only interruption was the sound of the blackboard on which Latin prayers were written in chalk. But at night the silence became oppressive. Broken only by the soft sobbing of other girls who, like her, longed for the warmth of a home that seemed ever more distant.
“You are born to serve God and thereby to enter heaven,” was drummed into her by the nuns. But sometimes she wondered why life on earth then had to be so hard.
Only during the long summer holidays was she allowed to return to her mother. But she did not go back to a home she knew.
Jim, Boy and Ans together with Auntie Bob (whose precise identity is unknown) in Blitar—probably during the long summer holidays. The photograph is from the collection of Ans's daughter Sonja and was made available by her grandson Rutger Dercks.
The door creaked familiarly as it opened. The sun shone on the veranda as always. But the warmth felt different. It no longer felt like home. Her mother had remarried. In 1939 her first half-brother on her mother's side was born: Alex Westhoff. The woman who had taken her to the convent now held a new baby in her arms. And Ans felt like an outsider in her own mother's life. Her room was no longer her room. Her mother was still her mother. But her gaze seemed to drift ever further away. As if Ans were merely a ghost of a past that no longer belonged to her.
Even the smells had changed. The familiar smell of her father's soap, which had once lingered in the cupboards and cushions, was gone. Strange scents filled the air instead. And the furniture seemed different. As if she were entering a house that was slowly forgetting her.
But Blitar was not a home—it was a stopping point. A place where memories of the past were still tangible, but where she could no longer find herself. As if she were a visitor in her own childhood, condemned to exist only on the fringes of other people's lives.
The holidays were merely a brief escape—a breath of freedom immediately swallowed up again once the convent gates closed behind her. Back inside, she fell once more into the rhythms of prayers and silence. The days seemed to flow into one another. Until one day her sister Klein appeared within the convent walls.
"When Klein was five, she came too, and one day I saw my little sister at the top of the stairs. I looked up and could not go to her. Come on then, my little sister, I will help you. Two small frightened children, who could not go to each other."
The convent gates had swallowed her world. The past, the voices, the warmth—all left behind. Out of reach. Inside here only silence counted. She had learnt to be quiet, to obey, to make herself as small as possible. And perhaps that was just as well. For outside the walls the world was beginning to tilt.
When the war came
One evening Ans was woken by a strange sound. It was deep and low, as if the earth itself were growling. At first she thought it was an earthquake. But the bed did not shake. This was something different. She lay still. Her breath held. As if she could think the sound away.
Outside came the muffled scraping of boots on the dusty road. The heavy stamping of feet drummed like a heartbeat—drawing ever closer.
She pushed the thin blanket aside and crept to the window. Other girls were awake too. Their eyes wide and tense in the glow of the lanterns outside. And then she saw it. Through the window, silhouettes loomed out of the night: soldiers, dressed in khaki uniforms with long rifles on their backs. The moon reflected off their helmets. Her heart pounded in her throat.
"There were hundreds of marching soldiers. Japanese. It was terrifying."
The following morning the nuns were gone. No farewell, no explanation. Only empty corridors. At first the girls still thought they would come back. But the days passed. And no one returned. The refectory was quieter. The dormitory emptier. The prayers shorter. The girls whispered less. Moved more carefully. As if they did not want to draw attention. As if they were afraid that if they made too much noise, they would be the next to go.
"And so we ended up in Blitar with grandma and grandpa."
Blitar
Surabaya was buzzing with life. The smell of fresh satay and bakso from street stalls mingled with the scent of oil and rubber from the harbour. Trams and cars moved through busy streets where she had once walked as a child with her brothers and sister, hand in hand, between men in hats and women in kebayas hurrying through the city.
Blitar was slow, quiet. No harbour, no trams, no shopping streets full of light and sound. Only long roads with trees hanging deeply over the paths, as if wishing to whisper their secrets. During the day the village lay languid beneath the sun; in the evenings little was heard but the soft chirping of crickets and the calling of geckos.
In the foreground Boy sits on his tricycle, with Klein beside him holding a doll. On the right Jim leans against his bicycle. At the back Ans stands holding a doll, and mother Rien holds the young Alex. The photograph is from the collection of Ans's sister Klein and was made available by Bert Otterspeer.
"There [in Blitar] we learned what work was. We girls learned to cook, to mend, to do lacework and to knit from sister Gulje, an old Surinamese nurse who lived with grandma and grandpa. Knitting, socks, stockings, blouses, underpants to sell so we could eat."
Not only Ans and Klein had to work; Jim and Boy were given tasks too. They learned to tend plants, water orchids, keep the garden tidy. But it was not always divided fairly.
"Jim was the black sheep—what a beating that boy got, undeservedly. And tending plants. Orchids and so on. The positive thing, Jim, is that you now know how to look after those things. We certainly earned our bread then. Bread of charity."
Now that Ans could no longer go to school, work became her anchor. But outside, the war was creeping ever closer. Japanese patrols walked through the streets, their gazes fixed and searching. The Kempeitai appeared more and more frequently. Men disappeared without reason. Families were taken away. Nobody knew who would be next.
Mothers anxiously kept their daughters indoors the moment the Japanese drew near. Sometimes it was too late. One girl was taken away. Her mother screamed her name. But nobody dared to intervene. The next day people whispered that she had ended up in one of the 'houses'. After that, nobody uttered her name again.
At home the work continued as if nothing had changed. But Ans saw her mother coughing more and more often—softly at first, then deeply and painfully. Her skin grew paler, her movements slower. Perhaps it was exhaustion, perhaps something else. The baby was nearly due. She could not stay here. Not in these circumstances.
They had to return to Surabaya. The city where everything had once begun. Her mother would be able to find the care she needed there. But nothing would be the same. They packed a few belongings, convinced they would return soon once everything was over. But the war had other plans.
Darmo
And so came the day that Ans and her mother were interned in Surabaya. The metres-high fences closed behind them and the world grew smaller. Inside there was only one certainty: hunger. What had first been an uncomfortable feeling became a constant reality.
The camp was full of women and girls. (Indo-)Europeans, Chinese, Armenians. Mothers with children. Daughters without fathers. The men were locked up separately. The older boys—those who had grown too big to be counted as children any longer—were taken away, separated from their mothers. Jim too. His scream was the last thing Ans heard from him.
Daily life in the camp was harsh and monotonous. The nights were spent in overcrowded rooms, where families lay shoulder to shoulder with complete strangers. Privacy was a luxury nobody knew any more. Sleeping took place on thin mats of woven leaves, which offered little protection against the cold, hard floor. Outside, in improvised kitchens, the meagre food was cooked in large barrels over open wood fires. Rations were distributed sparingly and were just enough to keep one alive. But never enough to drive away the constant, gnawing hunger. Every plate was a reminder of what they did not have. Every mouthful a silent wish to be truly full again one day.
Older children, such as Ans, had to help with various chores. They scrubbed floors, swept squares clean and hauled buckets of water—sometimes for hours under the blazing sun. They relieved themselves in primitive latrines: filthy holes in the ground where the stench was unbearable and flies gathered around the foul remains. Dysentery, malaria and tropical ulcers quickly claimed victims. Medicine was scarce; the Japanese kept it for themselves. The people in the camp were regarded by the Japanese as worthless dirt. Death thus quickly became a familiar visitor within the fences.
Then, on 19 October 1943, her half-sister Antonia Elly Lucie Westhoff was born. A new life in a place where death predominantly held sway. Her mother held the baby close against her, as if she could thereby protect her from the world outside the fences. But how do you protect a child from a place that broke even adults?
What remained unspoken
Death did not reign only in Ans's camp. Atrocities took place elsewhere daily as well. One such event was later recalled by Silvia Magdalena Jacobsz (Meiske), a half-sister of Ans who was imprisoned in a different camp.
"A woman from our camp had not bowed properly before the sentry. When he ordered her to do it again—and this time correctly—she answered him back rudely. Her insolent reply must have deeply humiliated him, for what followed was horrific. All the camp inmates had to assemble on the roll-call ground to witness her punishment for insulting a representative of the Emperor of Japan. When everyone had gathered, the woman was made to kneel in the middle of the square and bow forward. One of the Japanese raised his samurai sword and killed her with a single blow. Whether she was actually beheaded I am not certain—I had closed my eyes just before the blow fell. From others I later heard that she was dead."
Not only cruelty as public punishment, but also the everyday drive to survive could have deadly consequences. Meiske later recounted how she once tried to smuggle food through the fences by deceiving a Javanese vendor with counterfeit money. She was caught and received a severe punishment: for hours she was made to stand on a metal barrel, her face turned towards the sun, while the metal beneath her bare feet grew ever hotter.
What Ans herself experienced in the camp remains largely hidden. There were things she never spoke about. Silences that weighed heavier than words. Perhaps because some memories were too painful to hold on to. Or because they could only survive in silence. Sometimes it is not what is told, but what remains unspoken, that is most keenly felt.
After the liberation: chaos and uncertainty
15 August 1945. The news came via the radio: Japan had surrendered. The war was over. But in camp Darmo, Ans felt no joy, only a strange, suffocating emptiness. The Japanese guards, once so feared and merciless, had suddenly become silent shadows. Some sat dejected on their haunches, staring into nothing as if their souls had left them. Others withdrew to dark corners of the camp, where with trembling hands and faces full of shame and despair they prepared for their end. The sound of their final cries pierced the camp, sharp as knives, followed by a heavy silence. What did freedom mean any more?
The Indonesian Revolution
Outside the walls a new struggle immediately broke out. Surabaya seethed with rage and rebellion, led by nationalist Indonesian youths, the pemoeda's, who were violently erasing every reminder of the colonial past. Street names, monuments, shops, families—everything that had once been familiar and safe was destroyed with brute force driven by deep hatred.
Frank Boon, the husband of Ans's half-sister Meiske, remembered that time in Surabaya well. He saw how a group of pemoeda's dragged the Chinese neighbour from across the street out of his modest spice shop, kicking and beating him and forcing him to his knees. With wild eyes and uncontrollable fury they seized his pregnant wife and tore her clothing to shreds. While her husband was forced to watch, her belly was ripped open with a bamboo spear. The unborn child fell from her body, helpless and convulsing on the blood-soaked stones. With a sickening fervour they trampled the child, again and again, as if to prove how much hatred their feet could carry. The woman screamed—a piercing, almost animal sound that rose above the uproar—until she too was speared with sharp bamboo spears. Her cries slowly died away, lost in the noise of cheering voices crying 'Allahu Akbar!' over and over, as if the bloodbath were a holy victory.
The shopkeeper knelt on the ground, petrified, his face contorted with fear and disbelief. Tears streamed silently down his cheeks, knowing that his future had just been torn away for ever—that he would never again hold his wife, never see his child grow up. His only crime: he was Chinese. It was pure racism. An inhuman hatred that knew no mercy, no reason and no humanity. He looked up one last time, into faces full of hatred, and understood that he was next.
These atrocities were no exception. They had become part of Ans's daily reality. Indo-Europeans like Ans belonged nowhere any more. They were not fully Dutch, nor Indonesian either. To the Dutch they were strangers; to the Indonesians they were traitors. Freedom did not exist. Only fear and confusion.
"The political situation was so dire," Ans wrote of those years.
Ironically, it was now her former Japanese guards who had to protect her from the threat outside. The camp remained closed, the fences firmly locked for her own safety. The enemies who had oppressed them for years were now their last hope.
Only when British troops entered Surabaya at the end of 1945 after fierce fighting and brought the streets to some semblance of calm did the gates of Darmo finally open.
Upon her release Ans was registered, medically examined, deloused and dewormed by the Red Cross. For the first time in years she could wash herself with proper water and soap; finally a feeling of being clean again, even though her skin remained rough and her body thin. Even the simple comfort of a normal lavatory felt like a strange luxury. As if she were slowly being permitted to become human again.
While she cautiously tried to adjust to this new reality, she heard that her father had died on the notorious Burma–Siam Railway. The news came unexpectedly, but changed little—she had, after all, never truly known her father. Yet she realised that with this the chance to ever come to know him had been lost for good.
A new home
Ans moved with her family to Jalan Dinojo 80, where they lived together with her mother Rien, foster grandparents Claasz, brothers Jim, Boy and Lex, sisters Klein and Lucie, and a Chinese woman named Tjie Tjeng Soei. The house was small and crowded, but despite everything they were together.
Ans and Klein posing together for a Christmas greeting in 1946. The photograph is from the collection of Ans's daughter Sonja and was made available by her grandson Rutger Dercks.
Yet nothing was the same any more. Outside a threatening silence hung in the air. The city had changed, the unrest palpable. The 7-year-old Alex did what he could to help his family. His energy and boldness were admirable for such a small child.
"Lex always came home with food. He scavenged everywhere. Later he also brought home the soldier from whom he had got that food. Lex, he died of malaria."
His death left a painful void. But there was little time to mourn. The stories from the kampong behind their house were growing grimmer.
"As girls of sixteen, seventeen you were naturally curious. You heard such frightening stories about the kampong behind us, that one evening I went to look for myself. It was eerie. Mutilated bodies everywhere. I never went back. I got a clip round the ear from Mum."
The harsh reality of a country in chaos penetrated even into their home. Rien, her mother, was growing ever sicker and Ans felt helpless. "Mum was so dreadfully ill at that time. She had a hole in her lung—when you are told that as a child, you are utterly desperate. Nobody who could help." The days were heavy, but Ans held on to everything she could still do. Together with her brother Jim she worked in the hospital—not out of vocation, but simply to survive. "At least we had food," she thought. But even this did not last long.
Jim was compelled to leave for Dutch New Guinea—far beyond the reach of the republic, for his own safety. And so Ans was left alone. Despite everything she looked ahead and resumed her studies at the MULO, where she excelled in shorthand, typing and the Dutch language. Geography, mental arithmetic and bookkeeping suited her less. She dreamed of becoming a nurse, but as she herself later wrote with an affectionate wink: "I became Charles's nurse."
Marks sheet on the final diploma of Angeline Amaly Jacobsz, issued by the Department of Education, Arts and Sciences in Batavia.
A new life with Charles
When their neighbours Lis and Maurits got married, she saw him for the first time: Charles Jozef Thümann, living two houses along at Jalan Dinojo 82. Their glances met cautiously. A glimpse of hope.
"We got to know each other at Lis and Maurits's wedding. How shy we were. We looked at each other with furtive glances. Two weeks later Charles came home to be introduced to grandma Claesz (she was called the white grandma, our great-grandmother), Mum, Dad, Auntie Non and the whole family. It was lovely. After that he asked if he could take me out. That was allowed, but home by eleven, ha ha. Of course we were late. We came back at half past eleven. Well, Charles knew about it then. White grandma gave him a telling-off. After that we were always home on time."
In a land full of uncertainties, Charles was perhaps the only certainty. Her mother Rien approved—a soldier with a steady income, that was at least something to build on.
"We had great fun eating out every evening, until one time we had eaten something bad and got the runs. That put an end to the fun."
But the threat remained. Charles was on the death list of the army of the new Indonesian republic. He was being sought because he had fought in the Royal Netherlands East Indies Army (KNIL).
"He received a call-up to go to Holland. What now? He did not want to leave me behind. So we married. 16 Jan 1951. A very simple wedding, for which he sold his old faithful bicycle. The bicycle that had taken us everywhere."
Wedding of Ans and Charles on 16 January 1951, at home on Jalan Dinojo 80 in Surabaya. Ans walks with Uncle Baier from the house, on her way to the registry office.
At the registry office, Charles walks behind Ans and Uncle Baier.
After the ceremony the newly married couple walks home side by side.
Behind the large bouquet sits the bridal couple. Visible in the photograph are, among others: mother Rien with her second husband, grandma Claasz, and children from the Baier family. The photographs are from the collection of Ans's daughter Sonja and were made available by her grandson Rutger Dercks.
The crossing
When Ans stood on the gangway leading to the ship, she turned around one last time. Surabaya lay behind her, bathed in the warm light of the morning sun, as if the city did not wish to let her go. This was the land where she was born, where she had laughed, wept, loved and lost. Her youth lay there, between the scent of flowers after a tropical downpour and the soft murmur of family on the veranda. This was her home. But home had cast her out.
She gripped the railing. Her heart pounded in her chest. There on that quayside she was leaving behind not only her city, not only her country. She was leaving behind her mother, her brothers and sisters, her family—the voices that had shaped her, cherished her, carried her. She did not know if she would ever see them again. Everything felt irrevocable. As if a part of her would for ever drift between two worlds, without anchor, without direction.
The journey began with a KPM vessel, the Oudshoorn. After one day at sea the ship docked at Semarang, where many fellow travellers came aboard—mainly soldiers with fixed stares and heavy luggage. Two days later, on 29 January 1950 at half past seven in the morning, they reached Jakarta. There she followed Charles ashore to settle with him in the transit camp Tjililitan, where they would wait for the ship that would take them to the Netherlands.
The camp was no place of rest. The taps were turned off between eight and twelve in the morning due to low water pressure. Theft was common and usually went unpunished. Anyone who ventured beyond the main entrance risked being shot. Even football was forbidden. That the camp had once been called Kampong Makassar, and during the Japanese occupation had served as an internment camp for women and children, made the atmosphere all the more oppressive for Ans. The walls seemed to breathe with memories.
After nearly two weeks in that stifling no-man's-land, Ans and Charles were called up. They travelled to the port of Tanjung Priok. There she lay already—the Johan van Oldenbarnevelt, massive and still, bobbing in the water like an animal uncertain whether it wanted to undertake the crossing once more. The ship towered high above the quayside, its hull black and weathered from earlier voyages. The metal skin bore the scars of time and salt. As if it too knew how many families it had already torn from their native land.
At around four o'clock in the afternoon Ans and Charles stepped onto the gangway. Not long afterwards the departure signal sounded. The mooring lines were cast off. The ship glided slowly away from the quayside, as if the farewell itself were a movement—slow, inevitable. The long, unhurried crossing towards a new life began.
Dutch passport in the name of Angeline Amaly Jacobsz, issued by the Kingdom of the Netherlands on 1 November 1950.
Between heaven and sea
One morning, somewhere in the middle of the Indian Ocean, Ans stood at the railing. The wind tugged at her skirt and blew her hair loose, while the early sunlight slid across the water like liquid gold. Everything around her seemed to dissolve into movement and stillness—the swelling sea, the vibration of the engines beneath her feet, the creak of rope against wood. The air was salty and thin, steeped in rust, oil and distant moisture.
She half-closed her eyes against the light. The emptiness of the ocean folded around her like a veil. And with that emptiness came the memories. Not because she wanted them, but because the body sometimes remembers what the mind would rather forget.
She saw the camp fences again: rusted, claustrophobic, with women who kept their fear folded between their ribs. Bodies in the kampong, covered, mutilated. The voices of guards, grating like sand in the throat. And the clicking of knitting needles—stitch after stitch, in Blitar, her back bent, her fingers painfully stiff, in exchange for a handful of rice and a lost piece of childhood.
And now there was only wind, water and light. No orders. No shots. No grip of fear. Only the soft rush of waves against steel. The monotonous drone of an engine. And the creaking wood bracing itself against the movement of the world.
She placed her hand on her lower abdomen. Not because she was thinking about it, but because her body knew: something was growing inside. A child. A future. A promise without voice, but already speaking in silence. No tropical sky would welcome this child. No scent of jasmine, no soft sounds of a baboe singing it to sleep. It would grow up in the cold. Among unfamiliar voices. Between stone walls that were still strange to her.
And yet, in that one moment—between heaven and sea—she felt something shift. Something that breathed, still without form or name, but unmistakably alive. No replacement. No forgetting. Only something new that was permitted to exist alongside everything she carried with her. Something small, perhaps. Something like hope. And perhaps that was enough.
Land of cold
It was half past three in the morning on 6 March 1951 when they arrived in IJmuiden. The dry, thin air hit her like a wall when she stepped off the ship. Her breath came out in white clouds, as if even her warmth wanted to leave her. She had known it would be cold, but nothing could have prepared her for the all-pervasive chill. Minus three degrees, someone had said. But what did that mean, for someone who had only ever known cold as overnight rain?
They were taken to Middelburg, to Hotel Pax—a reception centre for newly arrived Dutch-Indonesian families. The word Pax, peace, rang hollow, like a promise never quite intended for them. The hotel felt like a waiting room, a place where time accumulated but nothing happened. No home, no destination. Only waiting. Waiting for work, for a house, for recognition—something that would make them feel they belonged here.
View of Hotel Pax in Middelburg, Zeeland, as it looked in the 1950s. The photograph is from the collection of Ans's daughter Sonja and was made available by her grandson Rutger Dercks.
She quickly learnt that the Dutch did not receive them with open arms. People here spoke in a way that cut her off—cold, direct, as if courtesy were a burden. She understood their words, but not their tone. In Indonesia gentleness was present in every gesture, in every silence. Here people cut with their sentences, without realising it.
There were even moments when they tried to scrub her skin clean, as if that brown colour were merely dirt that could be washed away with enough soap and water. As if her origins were a mistake, something that needed to be quickly corrected.
And when she cautiously tried to say something about the war, about the camps, about the nights of fear and days without food, her voice was stifled by incomprehension: "But you weren't in a concentration camp, were you?" As if her memories were worth less and her pain did not count because it had unfolded beneath a different sky.
After months of waiting, news arrived: they were allowed to move. On 5 November 1951 they arrived at Landgoed De Oldhorst in Wezep. It lay at the end of a long driveway, between tall oaks and linden trees that kept the world out like soldiers in formation. The manor house stood white and proud with tall windows and a small tower from which maidservants had once reached their rooms.
To an outsider the estate looked almost like something from a fairy tale—streams glittering between the foliage, a tunnel of rhododendrons folding like a green arch over the path, an old stone grotto hidden in the park. But for Ans it felt like a play without actors. A carefully constructed set, but without a story. Without a soul.
There was no murmur of voices on a veranda, no scent of fried bananas, no soft rhythm of gamelan accompanying the evening. Only silence. Only cold. It was not the Indies.
Each evening, when she closed the windows and heard the wind whistling through the gaps, she thought of the warm nights of her youth. Of the crickets, of her brothers laughing in the garden, of her mother softly singing while busy in the kitchen. Her past still rustled on, like leaves in a wind that never blew here.
She held her daughter close against her, the warm little body sleeping on her chest. Sonja, born in Middelburg, grew with the seasons. And as autumn slowly coloured the linden trees and covered the ground with leaves, Ans again carried a life within her. As if her body were whispering to her that there was a future, even here. She closed her eyes. And for a brief moment, in that still, fragile instant, there was something that felt like coming home.
Landgoed De Oldhorst in Wezep in the 1950s.
Ans with baby daughter Sonja in her arms at Landgoed De Oldhorst in Wezep, winter 1951. They stayed there in room K10.
Ans with her daughters Joyce and Sonja at Oldhorst, 1953. The two photographs above are from the collection of Ans's daughter Sonja and were made available by her grandson Rutger Dercks.
A new life in Oldebroek
In 1953 they moved again. This time to Oldebroek, a nearby village surrounded by extensive meadows, pine forests and sandy tracks that threaded like veins through the landscape. They ended up here because Charles worked at the barracks in 't Harde, as a soldier in the service of the Dutch Army.
Oldebroek was a village where everyone knew each other. New faces stood out—certainly Ans's. She was generally greeted in a friendly manner, with a nod or a brief word, but always in a dialect that made her prick up her ears, without ever quite getting to grips with it. It sounded like something between grumbling and barking—rough, fast, under the breath. As if even the language wanted to tell her: you don't belong here.
They ended up in a terraced house on the Van Sytzamalaan, just behind the Hollanderstraat—the street in Oldebroek known as the 'Dutch-Indonesian neighbourhood'. Their neighbours behind were Indo people—people who knew the same smells, carried the same stories, held the same memories of a land that had cast them out. Yet Ans and Charles chose to live just outside that block, with Dutch neighbours on either side.
June 1958. Out and about in Oldebroek together. Charles, Ans, Lucy (Boy's wife) and the children during a walk. The photograph is from the collection of Ans's daughter Sonja and was made available by her grandson Rutger Dercks.
Everything within the lines
"We are in the Netherlands now, so we behave like Dutch people," they promised each other. Not out of shame—but out of necessity. They wanted to move forward, build a new life and leave the painful past behind. They wanted to protect their children from exclusion and the feeling of being different. Assimilation was not weakness, but a weapon. If you behaved like them, you might also become like them: accepted, seen and recognised as a fully-fledged Dutch person.
Malay disappeared from daily conversation. Or rather: it became a secret language. Something that only she and Charles still spoke—softly, briefly, and in a whisper, the moment the children came into the room. For they had to do well. They must not have an accent, no unusual words, raise no questions. The youth of their parents—filled with war, trauma, and a vanished family history—was kept silent. Not because it was unimportant, but because in this new life it no longer seemed to fit anywhere.
In the house only Dutch was spoken. Clear, correct, controlled. Standard Dutch—as people here liked to hear it. And with the language, behaviour shifted too. Everything within the lines. No emotions that spilled over, no stories that reached back to a past nobody wanted to hear. Everything that stood out too much—the half-sung sounds of Malay; the unspoken memory of home—was quietly pushed aside. Hidden. Made invisible. Not to forget it, but to keep it safe. For those who stood out were questioned. Stared at. Judged. And often misunderstood.
Beneath that lay something deeper, something they rarely spoke about: the feeling that they had to justify themselves. As if their presence were only warranted if they showed themselves to be grateful. As if they had to prove, with bowed heads, that they were worthy of being here. They had done nothing wrong, nothing amiss. They were victims of history. And yet they felt guilty. For the land they had lost. For the land they had stepped into. For everything in between.
And so they learnt to make themselves smaller than they were. More invisible. Neater. A window closed just in time. A little more polite in the shop. A little less themselves. Going with the flow, so as not to have to swim against it. For resistance meant tension, suspicion, and they could not afford that. It was that old Dutch-Indonesian reflex—that deep-rooted muscular tension of generations: bow before the storm, remain silent to survive, adapt until you barely knew who you actually were.
A silent legacy
In Oldebroek, alongside Sonja and Joyce, four more children arrived: Winny in 1954, Anneke in 1956, Carla in 1959, and finally Rudy, their only son, in 1962. Six children, each with their own voice, their own dreams, their own path.
The house was never quiet. There was always movement. Shouting, laughter and barking. As a young mother Ans kept herself constantly busy. She cooked. She baked. She peeled, chopped and stirred. In her kitchen she found her footing—a place where past and present could briefly coexist. The cooking and knitting skills she had acquired as a girl during the war years now came in useful once more. The smell of fried garlic, the warmth of a pan of soto on a rainy day, the soft steam on the kitchen window from freshly cooked rice. And when she was not cooking, she knitted, with every stitch reclaiming something that threatened to be lost. Warmth for her children. Later for her grandchildren. Love, stitch by stitch. Her hands told her story—soft and patient, but stiff from the cold that had settled deep in her bones.
Her children grew up on milk, sandwiches, stamppot, hundreds and thousands and St Nicholas songs. They sang along with the television, played with Dutch children in the street and grew up with the idea that they were simply Dutch. At home they were also seen as such. But sometimes, when Ans looked at their shining, dark hair, at their warm skin colour, she felt something grate. As if a line ran through their lives that she could see, but her children could not.
For outside, on the school playground, they never quite belonged. They were stared at, sometimes laughed at, sometimes ignored. And however well they did at school—however neatly they spoke, however properly they behaved—they would never become truly Dutch children. They were just a little too different for that. But they did not always know why. For at home there was silence. Not out of unwillingness, but out of love. Out of protection. Out of hope that it would disappear of its own accord. But in that silence a part of their story was lost—and with it the key to their own identity.
Memories of Ans
A kitchen full of love
Ans loved cooking. Not a little, but passionately. Despite her rheumatism—which stiffened her joints and often made her movements painful—she would stand for hours in the kitchen with her bent hands. Without complaining. Without hurrying. Always attentively. Whatever her children and grandchildren wanted to eat, she would make it. Potatoes? No problem. Something from the Dutch-Indonesian kitchen? With pleasure. But most often she cooked what she herself enjoyed most: all manner of little dishes, each with their own smell, colour and taste, that together filled a table like a feast—an unforgettable explosion of flavour that few could equal.
The kitchen became her domain. Pots and pans stood everywhere. On the hob, on the worktop, on the freezer. And on top of that freezer lay a colourful little blanket—not for decoration, but as a platform for yet more pans. Charles, her husband, regularly needed to get something from the freezer. But that was not straightforward. First all the pans off. Then onto the worktop. And when that was full, they moved to the sitting room. Only then could the lid be opened. Get something out. Lid closed. And then the whole process in reverse: stack the pans, balance them, straighten the little blanket. Only then could Charles, with a deep sigh, retire to his chair.
That is, until Ans suddenly called out: "Hey Charles, you've forgotten to get something out of the freezer!" Whereupon Charles, with a despairing sigh and flailing arms, cried: "Aduh, honestly... I've only just sat down!" And yes indeed, the whole thing all over again.
But they laughed. For that was how they were together: they teased, they bickered, but above all they enjoyed each other's company. Like that time Ans played a trick on him. She called from downstairs: "Charles, dinner's ready!" He came down the stairs, sat at the table... and found a plate of warm water. Ans could not contain herself for laughing. "No, silly, just a joke. Dinner will be ready in a moment." And Charles laughed along with her.
When the children came to visit—with partners, with grandchildren—Ans sometimes started cooking days in advance. She made so much that the table barely had room for the plates. Everything was covered. Smells filled the house. Flavour filled the memory. And love filled every dish.
For that is how Ans cooked: not only with spices, but with heart.
December 1995. In her self-knitted jumper Ans serves the food for Charles and Boy (left), with Jim and his wife on the other side of the table. The photograph is from the collection of Ans's daughter Carla and was made available by Angela Verheul.
Stitch by stitch
When she was not cooking, she was knitting. Or crocheting. Or both at the same time. Ans had learned that skill during the war years, when as a young girl with few resources she still wanted to make something. Something warm. Something beautiful. And well she was at it—she could knit patterns from memory, count stitches without looking, combine colours as if it came naturally.
Despite the fact that Charles almost always wore his military clothes, Ans knitted jumpers for him. Beautiful, thick woollen jumpers with colourful patterns not sewn on afterwards, but woven entirely into the knitting itself. With her bent fingers and stiff joints she did it all out of love. For Charles. For her children. And for her grandchildren.
Sometimes one of the little ones would point at something on television. "Grandma, that jumper is lovely," one of them would say. Ans looked along, nodded, took it in—the colour, the shape, the pattern. And at the next visit there was suddenly a jumper that looked exactly like it. "Here," she would say with a smile, "your jumper."
She did not only knit jumpers. She made thick winter roll-neck jumpers with stand-up collars you could pull up over your head. Wonderfully warm, just like a blanket draped around your shoulders. She knitted socks, mittens, home-made dresses from fabrics she had chosen herself. The chest of drawers was full of balls of wool in every colour imaginable. Even old washing powder tubs were stuffed with it. You never knew when they might come in handy.
And then there were those three-dimensional pan trivets: round, thick things with a soft triangular pattern along the side. When a hot pan was placed on one, the trivet would dent completely inward. And the moment the pan was lifted from the table, she would give it a squeeze, pull it gently, bend it back into shape. Ready for the next meal.
For what Ans made was not only practical. It was durable. Reusable. Steeped in care. Every stitch a gesture. Every thread a memory.
Ans, at home on the Van Pijkerenlaan, surrounded by children and grandchildren on the day of her 25th wedding anniversary with Charles. On her lap: Nathalie and Robbert. Photograph taken on 16 January 1976. Standing, from left to right: Eddie, Sonja, Winny, Carla, Benny, Anneke, Bert, Joyce with Chantal, and Rudy.
What she saw
Ans had a gift. Not a trick, not superstition, not an invention—but a real, quiet gift. She saw things others did not see. People, above all. People who were no longer here, but who still came to say something. To ask something. And Ans listened. Sometimes she spoke back softly. To the wall, it seemed. But for her there was someone standing there. And that someone wanted to be heard.
When she stood talking like that in the sitting room, some might have thought she was muttering to herself. But Ans knew better. And those who knew her well felt it too. People came to her, even when they said nothing. As if her very presence opened something up, touched something that was not accessible to everyone.
When she was young, she had had to keep that gift quiet. In the Indies of her youth, in a Christian-European household, such things were taboo. Her mother strictly forbade it. Such 'things' had no place with respectable people. It was heathen, devilish, something for 'natives', it was said. No place for voices from the invisible in a world that did not wish to lose control.
But Ans later refused to let anyone silence her any more. She learnt that her gift was not a burden, but a strength. Not a sin, but a sense. And the most beautiful thing was: she passed it on. To children. To grandchildren. Not as something that had to be imposed, but as something that you could recognise in yourself—if you listened carefully. Each in their own way learnt to deal with it. Sometimes openly. Sometimes quietly. Sometimes with questions, sometimes with calm.
For what Ans saw was greater than words. But those who knew her were aware: her world was deeper than most. And she was never entirely alone in it.
Summers full of life
The summers in Oldebroek were anything but quiet. Since Ans had been the first of the family to leave the archipelago, her brothers Jim and Boy, and her sister Klein, followed years later. The situation in the young republic had become untenable. And so they came—with suitcases full of memories and children in tow—heading for the Netherlands.
Every summer they arranged to meet at Ans's home. First staying at the campsite, but before long the loft of the house in Oldebroek was transformed into one enormous mattress, where the whole crowd slept. Uncle Jim came with Aunt Clara and their children Chris, Alice and Mike. Aunt Klein with Uncle Peter and their brood: Henk, Barbara and Angela. And Uncle Boy with his wife Lucy and the children Bianca and Ruud.
While Ans sat chatting with her brothers and sister, the children flew outside—romping in the grass, shooting arrows, or sneaking off to play on the building site behind the Kloklaan, where new houses were being built at the time. A paradise for adventurous little ones. Uncle Peter always went along, just as enthusiastic as the children themselves. Until one day a security guard appeared. "Off with you!" he called. But Peter, always with a twinkle in his eye, reached into his coat pocket. "What if I give you a sweet?" he tried with a mischievous grin. The guard stared stonily. "No, and now get going!" Somewhat taken aback but giggling, the group began the ten-metre-long march home. And sure enough: Uncle Peter got a telling-off from the ladies once more. As always.
Children of Ans and Charles. Standing at the back, from left to right: Sonja, Winny, Anneke and Joyce. In the front: Carla, Henk and Angela (Klein's children), and Rudy. The photograph is from the collection of Ans's daughter Carla and was made available by Angela Verheul.
In the evenings the children were bathed, washed and put in front of the television in their pyjamas. At seven o'clock precisely Charles switched the television on, and everyone gathered on the sofa or on the floor around the coffee table. At weekends they were treated to a nice bowl of crisps. When TopPop was on, the chairs were pushed aside and the aunties began to dance—to the giggling of the children and the approving gaze of Charles and Ans. Nobody thought it odd to watch Sesamstraat or Fabeltjeskrant all together. The grown-ups joined in too. And when the children went to stay with Aunt Klein in Spijkenisse, after coming out of the shower there was always a bowl of tjemilan and a drink waiting for each child. Always. Unchanged. And so a tradition built up—of shared time, of repetition, of warmth.
Until that tradition suddenly came to an end.
Aunt Klein and Uncle Boy decided with their families to leave for the United States for good—to Vermont and Illinois, where a new life awaited them. Ans remained behind. From that point on, only her brother Jim was within travelling distance, in Heemskerk.
Jim had been forced to flee when Dutch New Guinea was seized by Indonesia in the 1960s. When he wanted to apply for a Dutch passport, he had to prove that he was 'European'. But how do you prove something that others have the right to deny? He had to search for a father he had never known. And it was only through his half-brothers and sisters that he received confirmation of his origins. A man who had once been their father, but nothing more than that.
Ans herself had some contact with her half-brothers and sisters in the Netherlands, but never felt truly connected to them. The distance of their childhood was unbridgeable, however often she tried. The unspoken family history hung between them like a mist. They were strangers, and yet bound by the same blood. Two worlds, and she sat between them.
Ans and Charles behind the house at Van Pijkerenlaan 29 in Oldebroek in the 1990s.
Grandmother's flower meadow
"From a young age I have had this: the quiet longing, the aching homesickness for something I cannot describe. The lost paradise, perhaps?"
Towards the end of 1996 the cold in the Netherlands was becoming ever more palpable for Ans. Her rheumatism, borne for years with quiet determination, worsened with every winter's day that passed. The damp walls, the draughts that never disappeared, the cold that crept through her joints—everything reminded her of how far she was from the warmth of her youth.
Pain became her faithful companion. Her hands, bent by years of knitting, cooking and caring for her loved ones, now moved only with difficulty. The medicines that had once given her relief were silently exacting their toll: slowly her blood vessels were becoming blocked. Arteriosclerosis concealed itself deep in her heart, unseen by anyone.
"I am homesick for my flower meadow—it is beautiful there and so wide that you cannot see the end of it, grass everywhere and flowers among it and a rushing wind playing with them. That enormous peace and quiet and the murmuring of the wind all around. Simply heavenly. I want to go there with my darling grandchildren, I am certain they will love it there."
She knew how complicated it was—how difficult it would be for her children to feel something for a homesickness they had never fully known.
"Ruud has that too, he will find it hard. Don't search too far, your roots."
Farewell
On 3 January 1997 Ans was admitted to De Weezenlanden hospital in Zwolle. Surrounded by family, though each carried their own grief, anger or a silence that had never been broken. But she remained silent about it, as she always had. Her healing stones lay on the bedside table beside her bed, untouched. Sometimes they had helped, sometimes not, but now even they could no longer bring her back.
She slowly drifted into a deep sleep, for ten days balancing between consciousness and oblivion. Her breathing grew ever softer, as if she were cautiously withdrawing from a world that had seldom granted her rest.
"With their beautiful eyes they can look at you so openly... It is a pity that that openness disappears with age. Many things, you know, that you have as a child, disappear when you grow up. You are shaped by home, by circumstances, by what surrounds you, over which you sometimes have no say yourself."
On 13 January 1997, three days after her sixty-sixth birthday, Ans died. In silence, as she had lived. With her passing went not only a mother and grandmother, but also a piece of an identity that had always been difficult to name. A Dutch-Indonesian past that largely remained unspoken, a history that could never quite be passed on.
"There you stand, powerless and bewildered. It is hard. Don't always look for the blame in others first. Take a large mirror and look into it."
And yet Angeline Amaly Jacobsz had done precisely that. She had looked into her mirror and shaped herself, time and again. She had left her past behind in Indonesia, painstakingly built her future in the Netherlands. She had cared, fought, laughed and loved, always in her own way.
And now—now she was finally free.
Perhaps she stood there, in her flower meadow. Where the wind played gently with the grass and flowers swayed in the light. Where the past no longer hurt, where silence was peace, and where her homesickness could finally find rest. She was home again.
