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The story of halfbrother Hein Kleinleugenmors
As an eight year old I heard an argument between my father and mother. It seemed to be about a child and a woman in Indonesia. In my memory, that fight dealt about whether my father would take care of that child and the woman or even would bring them over to the Netherlands. I was so young that I did not really catch the impact, and I never heard about it afterwards. But it has always been lurking on my mind.
Shortly after our mother died at the age of 80, my sister said to me: we probably have a half-brother. Fathered in Indonesia around 1947-1949, while our father had been stationed there in the army as a sergeant. My sisters statement did not come as a surprise. I’ve actually always known. My sister is five years older than me and she seems to have talked about this Indonesian child with my mother. How much my sister really knows or guesses, I have no idea. But they did not want to burden me with the existence of this child, my sister says.
In the army
My father Hein Kleinleugenmors, born in January 1918, was a professional soldier when World War II broke out. My parents were already married, but my father has been in German captivity as a prisoner of war for some years. After the war he returned home and in 1946 their first child was born: my sister.
My father being a professional soldier, he thought it was his duty to go the the Dutch Indies when Dutch troops were sent to go. My mother seems to have been quite angry when he wanted to go: she had lived for years without a husband. But he left for the Dutch Indies anyway.
In love
He probably has fallen in love overthere. And fathered a secret child. My father was a very responsible man. He must have been torn apart by his sense of responsibility for the woman with child there and at the same time his sense of duty to my mother and his daughter in the Netherlands. What should he do? I suspect he has been in a tremendous emotional dilemma.
But anyway, my father returned to my mother and I was born in 1951. My parents have not had a good marriage after all and I am convinced that this situation has largely been the cause of it.
When my father was 51 years old, he took early retirement from military service and started working in the Zwitsal factory in Apeldoorn, until he died on his 57th. One way or another, I remember my sister saying that our father would have settled a job there for his Indonesian son. That would mean that his son in one way or another was living in the Netherlands.
The start of a quest
After my father's death, my mother has been together with a former war buddy of my father for 25 years. I have a good contact with him, he is still alive, aged 94. But he knows nothing. Not by my mother, and not by my father. As a veteran he reads the magazin Checkpoint and he came across the review of your book. I already knew about the existence of your project Warlovechild, but I kept on circling around the matter without deciding what to do. And now, finally I ended up to the decision to post a call.
Who knows, maybe my half-brother lives in Apeldoorn or environment. I'd like to find him, but I do not know where to start. Now that I've had this conversation with you, I think that I can walk a few initial steps to start searching. I will try again to talk with my sister, I'm going to check his photo albums looking for clues about the places where he has been stationed, and go see if I can figure out the name of his unit. I am open to to get in touch with my half-brother. If he knocks on the door, this will not remaind closed. My door will be wide open to receive him.
Hein Kleinleugenmors, July 2014
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The documentary
