The account of one East Dutch Indies family’s survival during World War II and the Indonesian Revolution is the subject of this edition of Dialogue.

Joan Cartan-Hansen interviews sisters Ilse Evelijn Veere Smit and Edith Evelijn Veere, who survived the two atrocities, as well as author Dorothy Read, who helps Ilse tell her family’s story in the new book End the Silence.

The sisters lived through the Japanese invasion of the Dutch East Indies in 1942 and the revolution in the war’s aftermath and talk about their lives during those turbulent times.

After the Japanese invasion of the Dutch East Indies in 1942, 9-year-old Ilse, her mother and siblings were sent to a concentration camp. Tortured by her captors, Ilse survived the war only to see her family become targets of Indonesian revolutionaries determined to wipe out Dutch colonialists. How Ilse survived a war and a revolution became a family secret, not to be discussed until now as Read documents the story in their book.

The story told in End the Silence is a little known yet relevant piece of World War II, an addition to the tragic sagas of Europe’s concentration camps and the interment of Japanese Americans in the U.S. It is a piece of history that belongs to a world audience, as it exposes the iniquity and indignities suffered by people interned in the Dutch East Indies, now known as Indonesia.

Please visit this page to download the video/audio file.

Halfway around the world from Indonesia, you can enjoy a sumptuous plate of nasi uduk and sip es cendol while taking in the melancholic sounds of a keroncong band. Tese tastes, sights and sounds come to life once a year in the Dutch city of The Hague during the annual Tong Tong Fair.

For many members of the Netherlands’ Indo community — persons with mixed- Indonesian ancestry — the event, more popularly known as the Pasar Malam Besar (Grand Evening Fair), is a chance to celebrate their Indonesian heritage.

“Many Indos have a sort of unofficial agreement: ‘see you at the Pasar Malam,’?” said Paul Isaak, whose Eurasian father was born in the Central Java town of Klaten. “It’s a very important event for them to maintain social contacts and reminisce about the past.”

The Pasar Malam Besar, held during the last two weeks ofMay, is housed in giant white tents filling 20,000 square meters of The Hague’s biggest plaza, Malieveld. The festival features cultural performances and lectures, a market filled with wares ranging from trinkets and batik to fresh durian, and, naturally, an overabundance of Indonesian food.

“In a nutshell, the Tong Tong Fair is a meeting between East and West, in the form of culture, food and trade,” said Florine Koning, a historian and spokesperson for the fair.

The first Pasar Malam was held in The Hague in 1959, initiated by a group of Indos who were sent back to the Netherlands following the end of Dutch rule in Indonesia.

Under colonial rule, legal status in Indonesia was based on ethnicity, with the Europeans on top of the heirarchy, the Chinese, Arabs and others of Asian or Middle Eastern descent in the middle, followed by the indigenous Indonesians. While many Indos were officially classified as Europeans, others were identified with the archipelago’s natives.

“Indos are a true mix of Asia and Europe. We sort of lived between the classes, and formed our own culture. We feel both Eastern and Western, but mostly we are our own people,” Koning explained.

When hundreds of thousands of Indos emigrated to the Netherlands after World War II, people there knew very little about them. “Some didn’t even know that we spoke fluent Dutch,” Koning said.

In the 1950s, Indo writer and intellectual Tjalie Robinson set up a group to organize events to celebrate Indo culture and make it wider known in the Netherlands.

“The group had no money, so the idea of a Pasar Malam was hatched to raise funds,” Koning said.

The first Pasar Malam, was held at the city zoo for three days and attracted some 3,000 visitors. “It was an instant success. People were thronging to get in,” Koning said.

Since then the Pasar Malam has blossomed into a two-week event with as many as 133,000 visitors. The festival is now one of the largest annual fairs in the Netherlands. The event has attracted prominent officials, including Queen Beatrix who opened the Pasar Malam for its 50th anniversary in 2008.

Over the years, the festival has grown much closer to its Indonesian roots. “In the earlier years, the fair was more Western, with stands one might see in boardwalks or fairgrounds, such as cotton candy and shooting hoops,” Koning said.

“Many people now forget that the relationship between the Dutch and Indonesian states only started normalizing in the late 1960s. Aside from that, overseas travel only became affordable in the 1970s.”

In 1973, the fair’s first Indonesian performer, Balinese dancer Djoni Ginsir, was invited to Pasar Malam. The event has since introduced more Indonesian culture and now showcases rock groups such as Slank, along with traditional dance troupes from across the archipelago.

The event also features theater as well as literary and historical discussions. This year the fair will host 400 performances, workshops and discussions in five theaters. Among the highlights are a photo essay exhibition, “First Generation Show: We Still Remember Everything,” a wayang (shadow puppet) performance from West Java and gamelan ensembles .

The stalls offer a variety of Indonesian textiles, crafts and snacks, including fresh mango juice and coconut cakes. And in the most-packed pavilion in the fair, the food court, there is sate, countless varieties of noodle and rice dishes, and tables filled with Padang delicacies.

In one room elderly Indos are singing along to “Bengawan Solo,” a keroncong classic by Gesang Martohartono about Java’s longest river. Watching them one can easily imagine an era long gone, but which is clearly still fresh in the memories of the graying audience.

Paul Isaak, 53, is among the youngest in the audience. “I know these tempo doeloe [old times] songs from my father,” he said.

Reflecting on what might happen to Indo culture once his father’s generation has passed on, he said: “Actually, apart from the songs and the food, my father told us very little about his Indonesian past.”

Isaak said he was still left with many questions of what his father’s generation experienced in Indonesia.

“Many Indos of that generation, including him, were traumatized. They were interned in camps during the Japanese occupation in Indonesia, then forced to leave their birth country and felt misunderstood in Holland,” Isaak said.

But even for the next generation, Isaak’s children, the emotional ties to their Indonesian heritage are still palpable. He said his daughter was 8 years old when he first brought her to Pasar Malam. He said that when she got there she told him, “I feel like I’m among family.”

According to Koning, worries that the Indo culture might fade away are unfounded because even third-generation Indos, many now in their 20s, are very aware of their heritage, though without the emotional traumas of their elders. “They are proud of being Indo,” he said.

Dylayna Awondatu, 20, said Pasar Malam had become an annual family ritual.

“I’ve been going here every year, since as far as I can recall. There were times when I was younger that I found it boring, but now I really like it,” she said.

Her eyes widened when asked whether she could see herself in the future taking her own children to the festival.

“I’ve never thought about that, but the answer is probably yes,” she said.
Tong Tong Fair For more information, go to www.tongtongfair.nl and www.tongtongfestival.nl

New Film Project “Buitenkampers”. The Dutch Film Foundation that produced the documentary of interviews of people that were in the Japanese Concentration Camps 1942-1946. http://japanseburgerkampen.org is now looking for stories of individuals that spent the war years in Indonesia OUTSIDE the camps during the war years. If your parents and/or grandparents were any of these people and are interested, go to this page. If pages are in Dutch, click on the British Flag for the English version.

The site is unfortunately has not been finished. There are several problems but hopefully could be launched at January 2010.

Anyway, MetroTV interviewed Mike Hillis at 15 December 2009. You could see the video here. Please wait about 9-10 minutes after the video running.

The original news could be read here. This is post is an archive from the original news.

Michael Hillis (with boom mike) and filmmaker Marlin Darrah (with camera) interview Josephine and Ulrich Wollrabe (right) outside the U.S. Custom House in the North Park Blocks. The documentary being filmed will tell the story of Dutch Indonesians, such as the Wollrabes, who were imprisoned during World War II. Priscilla McMullen (left of the Wollrabes) and Bianca Dias-Halpert are involved in fundraising for the project.

Josephine Wollrabe’s smile drops as her husband, Ulrich, recounts their imprisonment in Indonesia by the Japanese during World War II.

Hard labor. Disease. Never enough food.

“They gave us a baby bottle filled with rice as a day’s ration,” said Josephine Wollrabe, 71, who became a prisoner of war at age 4. “It was crowded and we were always hungry.”

Friends and relatives fell ill. Many died. But the pair were young and strong and survived.

More than 60 years later, married and living in Gresham, the Wollrabes and others around the United States are taking part in a documentary about the little-known story of people known as Dutch Indonesians, or Indos.

Last year, the Wollrabes met Michael Hillis, a part-time teacher and history buff whose wife is Indonesian. Hillis, of Portland, wanted to preserve the Wollrabes’ story.

“I didn’t have any film experience but thought this account and dozens like it needed to be told,” Hillis said.

Marlin Darrah, a Portland documentary filmmaker whom Hillis met through a mutual friend, said he was drawn to the powerful stories.

“You’ve got this wonderful mix of legacy, travel film and something right off the History Channel,” Darrah said.

Next month, Darrah and Hillis will travel to Indonesia, The Netherlands and within the United States to shoot interviews and scenic footage while lining up sponsors and contributors. Plans call for completing and distributing a 90-minute film by 2011.

The filmmakers say about 300 first-generation Indonesians and roughly 2,000 to 3,000 children and grandchildren live in the United States.

When the Japanese invaded Indonesia, Ulrich Wollrabe, who has Indonesian, Chinese and Dutch heritage, was 9 years old.

His and his future wife’s families were part of the ruling class in what was then called the Dutch East Indies. But war and the horrors of prison camps changed their privileged way of life.

Two years after the Japanese surrendered, the Wollrabes’ families were rounded up again in a vicious civil war.

In 1950, the two joined boatloads of other Dutch-speakers expelled to their ancestral homeland.

“We were Dutch citizens but treated like outcasts when we arrived,” said Ulrich Wollrabe, now 76. “We were definitely not wanted.”

Wollrabe became an aircraft mechanic and married Josephine in 1960. But they faced continued discrimination and two years later, with their 6-month-old son, they joined other refugees fleeing to the United States.

The young family struggled through odd jobs until Ulrich Wollrabe finally landed work as a machinist in Fairview.

For years, they lived quietly and raised their four children. Few friends or co-workers knew of their past.

“People thought that I was a Native American or Mexican,” Wollrabe said. “Indos don’t go around announcing who they are — it’s not part of our DNA.”

When they discovered other Indos in the metro area, the couple organized a reunion of more than 300 people. In 1986, they started the Insulinde Club.

“We wanted our heritage to go forward and to help our children understand and be proud of their Dutch and Indonesian roots,” he said.

So do others involved in the film project. Bianca Dias-Halpert, part of the Indo diaspora in Seattle, wants to help build school curriculum around the film. Priscilla McMullen, an Indo from Boston, is trying to raise money for it. She said many first- and second-generation Dutch Indonesians suffer from “heimwee” or homesickness.

“There’s great melancholy among our parents and grandparents because they were forced from their motherland,” McMullen said. “This could help them not feel so lost.”

2–4 p.m.
Iris and B. Gerald Cantor Auditorium, 3rd Floor
This panel calls on the experience of South Africans, a Dutch family in Indonesia, an immigrant from St. Maarten, and a Dutch playwright to consider the effects of Dutch colonialism. New School Professor Sean Jacobs moderates a lively discussion with author and Berkeley professor Inez Hollander, artist and poet Deborah Jack, poet and scholar Marlon Burgess, and playwright and actress Adelheid Roosen.

Location: Brookylb Museum, 200 Eastern Parkway, Brooklyn, New York 11238-6052
Telephone: (718) 638-5000; TTY: (718) 399-8440