Stories

Ten years ago I watched television with my wife, the program ‘Spoorloos’ (‘Without a trace’). We always liked watching that program. My wife made a cup of coffee in the kitchen. When she came back in the living room, there were two guys on TV, a twin of almost 50 years old, who sought their father. The boys were born in Surabaya. My wife looked at me and said: 'that boys could be yours...'. In some way or another she saw a resemblance. And then suddenly, my name appeared on screen ...

The story of warlovechild Lenny

While Lenny tells her story, every now and then her eyes fill with tears. Her house in Jakarta is full of memorabilia from the Netherlands: the famous Delft Blue kissing Volendam couple, the colored wooden tulips in a Delft Blue vase, a coffee cup with Amsterdam canal houses painted on it, Delft Blue plates on the wall with windmills or an Islamic text in Arabic script. Even the studio photo, shot in an old-fashioned Volendam kitchen in Volendam traditional clothes, is not lacking. But the looks of her own father are unknown to Lenny.

Half July 2014 Anne-Marie will meet with the family that contacted her following her quest she posted on Warlovechild.org. (read the story ‘A coffin full of secrets in the wardrobe’). She finds it very exciting and surely looks forward to it. The mysteries surrounding her birth, her biological mother and her adoption will probably never be unraveled, but maybe she finally learns something more about her biological father. That would mean that again a Dutch-Indonesian family is brought together. We’ll keep you updated!

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.

It began with compassion for a pregnant girl who was abandoned by a soldier. But one thing led to another, and history repeated itself. Now, 60 years later, he has a hard time. He would love to get to know his abandoned daughter. But where is she?

The confession of a secret

The story of son Jan Tigchelaar

Our story is the reverse of that of the Indonesian warlovechildren. When my father went to the Dutch Indies as a young soldier at the end of 1945, my sister and me were already born. Maybe my father met a girl overthere, because he has never come back to the Netherlands. My mother was left alone with two young children. I've never seen my father ever since.

Josta Rumahlaiselan and Wilma Pattinama, both employees of the organization HALIN in Jakarta, grew up in Jakarta in the fifties and sixties. One of their fellow school girls was Betty. Betty was, so it turned out much later, the child of a Dutch soldier. Wilma: “She was so beautiful that everyone at our school called her ‘Elizabeth Taylor’.”

The story of warlovechild Anne-Marie

At my parent's home in the hall closet there was a green military bag from my father from his service in the Dutch-Indonesian Army. It was strictly forbidden for me to take a look in that bag. If as a child you are not allowed to do something, it only gets more attractive, and I've obviously tried to find out several times what secret stuff was hidden in there. But my parents always noticed it, maybe I shifted something by accident or so. Then it was again made ​​clear that it really was forbidden to do so.

A week after he and his fiancee had broken their engagement by mail, Henk took a stroll through the streets around the barracks in Semarang. Suddenly he stood face to face with a nice girl. Less than an hour later they were together in bed in her shack.

A week ago, in August 2011, my mother called me with the words: "There is a child in Indonesia, from your father." She had just heard it from a cousin who was visiting her. I've always felt that there was something peculiar about my father’s military service period in Indonesia, and now it suddenly became a reality. It probably is a boy. Since this telephone call, I am looking for my half-brother.

The story of Dora and the search for her half-brother