Two military fathers instead of one and an unknown half-brother

The story of Warlovechild Dien Faessen

Dien grew up in Semarang with her mother until her 4th and spent the rest of her childhood in the orphanage of the Franciscan Sisters. She worked as a nurse at the Elizabeth hospital, until she left for the Netherlands on her thirtieth. There the search for her Dutch daddy soldier started. Instead of one, she found two fathers, and also an unknown half-brother who did not know of her existence either.

Dien was born on November 15, 1948, in the Indonesian town Semarang. Her mother, the Chinese Kauw Lies Nio (1918), married a Chinese husband before World War II. The couple had a son, but during the Japanese occupation, the husband died. Mother and son took up residence with her sister. The family lived opposite the Lemah Gempal barracks in Semarang, in use by the Dutch army. The sisters ran a grocery stall on the street. Thus, Lies regularly got in touch with Dutch soldiers who were stationed at the other side of the street.

Halfway through 1947 Lies started dating the Dutch Herman Heemskerk, a soldier in the Laundry Brigade Unit stationed in the barracks. Nine months later Elisabeth got pregnant. The future father Herman would never see his unborn child, because out of a sudden he was transferred elsewhere: from one moment till the other he disappeared out of the life of Lies. Did he ever know his girlfriend was pregnant? Lies tried to figure his new residence, but it seemed as if Herman had vanished from earth. Lies is thirty years old, and left behind with a child and pregnant with the second.

A new father

Not long after the birth of the little girl Dientje, Lies met another Dutch soldier, Peter Francis Faessen. Soldier Faessen took care of the family and came along as often as he could. He even contributed sometimes financially. After the independence of Indonesia at the end of 1949, he remained in Indonesia to start a truck company with a partner.

In the early fifties the relationship between the Netherlands and Indonesia early deteriorated, and the Dutch who were eventually allowed to stay in Indonesia after the war in the interest of economy, yet had to leave the country. Also Faessen had to leave. He desperately wanted his family to come with him to the Netherlands and adopted Dien just before his departure: on March 3 the adoption document was signed and on March 5 the boat with Faessen left for the Netherlands.

The intention was that the family will follow later, but one problem is that Faessen did not want to take responsibility for the Chinese son of Lies. As much as she wanted to leave Indonesia, she did not have the heart to leave her young son behind. The money Faessen sent for the crossing of mother and daughter, went to the house rent. The contact flattened. A few years later Faessen left for Brazil to build a new future. Dien's mother will not marry again or have a relationship.

The Franciscan orphanage

As Lies could not earn a living for two children, she decided in 1954 to accomodate her youngest child in an orphanage run by the Franciscan Sisters. It was not unusual for needy single-parent families from sending children to the orphanage. The son of an elderly aunt lived in an orphanage with the Franciscan Brothers, as was a cousin of Dien: Marianne. Marianne is, like Dien, the child of a Dutch soldier and a Chinese woman (the sister of Dien's mother). In the orphanage, the children got care and education.

In Dien’s memory there was a strict regime with many rules. The children were not very often outside the complex. Dien was allowed visiting her mother once a month and can still remember how sad she was every time she had to leave. Another memory is still in her mind: sometimes her mother, along with other mothers, was standing at the gate of the school during the break to see her daughter and hand over a delicacy. Then she returned to her work as a seamstress.

After primary school Dien did not go to the girls' school in the monastery itself, because even though she has never been ill-treated by the Franciscan Sisters, she was eager to leave the orphanage. She chose the high school in Semarang, the Sekolah Menengah Pertama Putri, so she could live with her mother again.

Dien made her great desire come through and became Operating Room nurse in the Elisabeth Hospital. To her great sorrow her mother died at the age of 50. Dien was then twenty years old. Her mother has had a tough life: always working, yet always full of poverty and care for her two children.

In the hospital Dien worked under the inspiring leadership of Sister Lucienne, who knew that Dien had a Dutch father somewhere in Holland. Sister Lucienne thought that Indonesia had no future to bring for Dien because she was 'different'. In 1977 she took care that Dien could leave Indonesia and work as a nurse in the Netherlands.

The search in the Netherlands

Dien had all this time cherished the desire to once meet her father. She undertook several attempts to contact him. Once in the Netherlands, she managed to launch a correspondence through the successful mediation of veteran Olieman, enabled by the Red Cross, with her supposed father Faessen in Brazil. She also got in touch with his family in the Netherlands, who initially responded very upset that their brother had an unknown family in Indonesia. Yet the family lovingly received Dien.

It was only then that Dien got the information from her aunt that her biological father was not Faessen, but Heemskerk. In her birth certificate she saw that her mother - the handwriting is recognizable – had crossed out the name Faessen and replaced by the name of Heemskerk. On her question to her aunt why this never had been raised, the aunt told that her mother was afraid little Dien would have found difficulties in accepting Faessen as a father.

Dien married in the Netherlands and got three children. But all emotions about her unknown father came back while looking at the broadcasted ‘Spoorloos’, in which a veteran was searching for his unknown daughter, that he fathered as a servicemen in Indonesia. She got in touch with Spoorloos too and eventually found the trail of her own biological father, Herman Heemskerk. Heemskerk had long before deceased, but his son was found. This half-brother had no idea that there was a secret sister. They now see each other occasionally. Also Faessen, whom she initially regarded as her father but never met in person, is now deceased. The strongest bond she developed with a veteran who had known her biological father Heemskerk as a soldier buddy. Through him she has learned much about her father. Thus Dien has been able to end the search for her father.

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