The project “Javanese in the (Dutch) Polder” (JIP project for short) is an ongoing project that started in December 2012. In the project, STICHJI, in collaboration with trackers, searches for tangible traces of Javanese Surinamese in the Netherlands. Using personal photographs and personal stories, the process of migration and settlement of interviewees is documented. Automatically, these interviews include work life, social life and involvement in social initiatives. Together, the collected material forms the tangible and intangible heritage of Javanese Surinamese in the Netherlands, which is deposited with local archives with which STICHJI collaborates.

The project started in North Brabant and The Hague and is being expanded to other places where many Javanese live. The material collected by trackers of the JIP project has been used for various exhibitions, lectures and publications.

Warung Mini XL Den Haag. Fotograaf: Matte Soemopawiro

The Chinese Indonesian Heritage Center (CIHC) was founded in 2011 with the goal of preserving the cultural heritage of Indonesian Chinese in the Netherlands and recording and promoting knowledge of their (migration) history. Since 2016, the CIHC has been an independent foundation. In 2012, the Oral History project started in collaboration with the KITLV. The main questions were: What kind of life did the interviewee have.
What was the motive for leaving Indonesia and (eventually) going to the Netherlands? How do you look back on that decision within the larger context of your life journey? How do you look back on your life after your migration?

The interviews focus on events and experiences in the years 1920 – 2017.
They primarily discuss Indonesia, the Netherlands and occasionally Suriname and China.
Themes include personal background, World War II/Japanese era, Indonesian revolution,
anti-Chinese living environment and violence 1960s, education and student days, traumas, migration

The Oral History (Mongesch) project aims to record life stories of Chinese people who migrated to the Netherlands from Indonesia. It was created in collaboration with the Royal Institute of Language, Land and Ethnology (KITLV).

Between 2013 and 2017, the CIHC’s Mongesch team found 39 individuals -22 men and 17 women- willing to be interviewed. It resulted in a collection of 110 hours of audio material.

The interviewees come from different professional sectors and are mostly well educated. Most of the participants came to the Netherlands after 1960. The others came mostly between 1945 and 1950.

The vast majority of the interviewees are over 70 years of age at the time of the interview so the life stories collected span a long period of time. Stories can be heard from the last decades of the Dutch colonial era to the early years of President Suharto’s government. As a whole, the collection provides a picture of the various circumstances that led to emigration from Indonesia.

The collection of interviews was transferred to Leiden University Libraries in October 2019 as “Oral History Archive CIHC.

In November 2020, the archive was made digitally accessible by the University Libraries Leiden (CIHC Oral History Archive). Due to privacy regulations, the archive can be accessed for research purposes only upon request.

With the transfer of the collection of interviews to the Leiden University Libraries, the first phase of the Mongesch project has been completed.

Not all aspects in the history of the Chinese from Indonesia have yet been recorded in the first phase of the project. The CIHC would therefore like to add to the Mongesch collection. The possibilities and feasibility of a follow-up project are being investigated.

For the economic goals of the VOC and the colonial government in the Indonesian archipelago, the Chinese were indispensable from the beginning. Their role in the economy remained important through the centuries. After the Chinese gained equality in the colony at the beginning of the 20th century and legal regulations discriminating against them were removed, they had to fight for their rights again in the Indonesian Republic. It proved an arduous process fraught with tensions surrounding issues of culture, ethnicity and nationality. …

Patricia Tjiook-Liem takes the reader through the main periods in this hitherto underexposed history and shows the struggle of the Chinese in and out of Indonesia.

The Chinese from Indonesia in the Netherlands and their heritage -Patricia Tjiook-Liem

DOI:10.17510/wacana.v18i1.571

Between ideology and experience – Maya H.T. Liem and Ing Lwan Taga-Tan

DOI: 10.17510/wacana.v18i1.584

https://www.bibliotheek.universiteitleiden.nl/nieuws/2022/01/beelden-van-de-indonesische-onafhankelijkheidsoorlog-1945-1949—online-tentoonstelling

https://webpresentations.universiteitleiden.nl/s/indonesianl/page/beelden-van-de-indonesische-onafhankelijkheidsoorlog-1945-1949

Wim Pelt (born Heerlen 1947) learnt the pastry trade and worked in his father’s bakery from 1965-1970. He studied history at the University of Utrecht and the University of Amsterdam in the 1970s and was active in the CPN in the 1970s and 1980s, including in the daily management of the Limburg and Utrecht districts, instructor for the CPN in the Vecht-IJsselstreek district, co-responsible for subscriber recruitment and delivery of De Waarheid in the Rotterdam district, member of the coordination group of the IPSO history group, member of the editorial board of Komma. Pelt worked as a teacher in vocational education.

Wim Pelt received his PhD with Peace through Revolution. The CPN during the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact (1939-1941)

The role of the CPN in the first year of the occupation has long been a fraught topic, which supporters and opponents of that party could not reasonably discuss. A truly detached scholarly treatment did not come until H. Galesloot and S. Legêne’s book, Partij in het verzet (1986), which devotes just under 100 pages to the controversial period. Again, almost half of W. F. S. Pelt’s dissertation deals with that first year of occupation, though no longer as part of the history of occupation: Pelt’s subject is the period from the conclusion of the German-Russian pact of 23 August 1939 until the German invasion of the Soviet Union and the politics conducted by the CPN during that period. So it is not the domestic political situation in the Netherlands that determines Pelt’s periodisation, but the foreign-political position of the Soviet Union.

Eric de Lange (1947-2003), sociologist, researched Socialist Youth of the Netherlands founded in 1960.

From the contact between the Zaanse PSP youth and members of the radical Politeia branch in Rotterdam; movement for young people that had to fill a gap after the disappearance of traditional socialist youth movements. SJ had revolutionary socialist foundations and sought a better society through actions and study circles. In this new movement, Politeians dominated. SJ became a small but very active and disciplined organisation. It tried to uphold the traditional ideals and symbols of the socialist labour movement. Examples included Pentecostal camps, the address title of ‘comrade’ and the wearing of blue shirts.

Gerrit (Ger) Johannes Verrips; born in Amsterdam 18 December 1928, died in Amsterdam 31 August 2015; active member of the PvdA 1948-1952; member of the CPN 1953-1975; editor of the communist daily De Waarheid 1960-1968; member of the party executive of the CPN 1958-1964 again member of the PvdA from 1985; member of the editorial board of the monthly Socialisme en Democratie; chairman of the Fonds voor de Letteren 1980-1987; published a number of novels, of which Nathalie is probably the best known, and biographies of Albert Camus and Karel van het Reve.

In 1995, his magnum opus Dwars, duivels and dreaming appeared. The history of the CPN 1938-1991.

Interviews with Harry Verheij, Marcus Bakker, Henk Goudkuil, Duco Hellema, Henk Hoekstra, Hanneke Jagersma, J.C.W., Esther de Jong, Bertus Brandsen, Gerrit Kleinveld, Gerard Maas, Geert van der Molen, Frans Molin, Koert Stek, Jan Vlietman, Jaap Wolff, Joop Morriën.

CPN-conference in Amsterdam, Paul de Groot (left) and Marcus Bakker. 22 December 1973, Amsterdam

Dwars, Duivels en Dromend is a 1995 book by Ger Verrips that deals with the history of the Communist Party of the Netherlands (CPN) from 1938 to 1991.

Verrips, himself a member of the CPN for 20 years, based the book on never-before-examined documents, in the hitherto closed archives of the CPN in Amsterdam, the Communist Party of the Soviet Union (CPSU) in Moscow and the Internal Security Service. He spoke to several prominent members of the party, including Annie van Ommeren-Averink, Bertus Brandsen, Harry Verheij, Jan Vlietman and Huib Zegeling.

He sketches a portrait of Paul de Groot, forty years the leader of the CPN. He describes the functioning of the illegal CPN during the war years and the communists’ resistance. He also describes the Cold War, the reactions to the Hungarian Uprising, the break with Moscow and the internal party struggle. Also described are the final period of crisis, intellectual revival, feminisation and the eventual decline that led to the dissolution of the party, which eventually led to its merger with other parties into GroenLinks.

The February Strike was held during World War II in protest against the many anti-Jewish measures and persecution of Jews. Thousands of workers laid down their work. The strike began on 25 February 1941 in Amsterdam and spread a day later to the Zaanstreek, Haarlem, Velsen, Hilversum and the city of Utrecht and immediate surroundings. It was the first large-scale resistance action against the German occupiers in Europe. Since 1946, the February Strike has been commemorated annually on 25 February on Jonas Daniël Meijerplein in Amsterdam, near Mari Andriessen’s statue “The Dockworker”. The collection includes interviews conducted by Jan Dop, Simon Korper and Gerard Maas, among others, with February strikers.

The Foundation Comité Herdenking Februaristaking 1941 was established in 1990 as a successor to the Februariherdenkingskomité.

The interviews were conducted by Jan Dop (1943), (filmmaker who, together with Kees Hin (1936-2020) and Frans van der Staak (died 2001), made the feature film about the February Strike Soldiers without Guns (1985). Jan Dop made some interviews alone, some in collaboration with Simon Korper (1907-1988) and later most with Gerard Maas (Zaandam, 1913 – Amsterdam, 1988) communist, resistance fighter and politician.

Maas wrote about the February strike, a.o. Kroniek van de Februari-staking 1941, Amsterdam, 1961 en 1941 bloeiden de rozen in februari, een korte historische schets, Amsterdam [1985].

Black Front and National Front. In May 1934, Brabant Catholic journalist Arnold Meijer founded the fascist-oriented and clearly anti-Semitic movement Black Front. From the outset, the new organisation tried to outdo the NSB in radicalism. Black Front wanted to conquer power by the path of revolution. In April 1940, Arnold Meijer converted his movement into the law-abiding National Front for tactical reasons. During the occupation, the organisation grew to 12,000 members. In late 1941, the National Front had to be disbanded by order of the German occupier.

Some time before National Front was disbanded in December 1941, they stored a large part of the archive for security reasons. First in a vault, briefly in the ground and then Arnold Meijer’s home. After the death of Arnold Meijer, the archives came under the management and ownership of Mr J.Th. Stakenburg of Oisterwijk. At the end of 1970, Mr Stakenburg was prepared to transfer ownership of the entire archive to the State Archives in North Brabant. Special conditions were that the archives were not accessible until 1 January 1976, that undisclosed documents had to be lifted from the archives and kept secret until the year 2000, and that after 1 January 1976 the archives were only accessible for purely scientific research.

During the period of the preliminary inventories, numerous interviews were conducted to get more background information on the period 1930 – 1948. Some people interviewed had been members of Black and/or National Front, others had been opponents, and still others had been in the resistance or had had relationships with the person of Arnold Meijer. 

11 Interviews

1. Text of the interview with Ch.H.D.M.J. Russel, former notary public, living in Maastricht. Recorded by J. Vriens and Drs H.M. Brokken in Maastricht on 16 November 1971.
   N.B. See tapes 1 and 2 of the sound archive. 
2. Text of the interview with Louis Knuvelder, journalist and publicist, living in Amsterdam. Recorded by J. Vriens and Drs H.M. Brokken in Amsterdam on 14 December 1971. N.B. See tapes 2 and 3 of the sound archive. 
3. Text of the interview with Prof. Dr R.G.E. van Roosbroeck, publicist, living in Oosterhout (N.-Br). Recorded by J. Vriens and drs G.J.W. Steijns in Oosterhout on 21 June 1972. N.B. See tapes 3 and 4 of the sound archive.
4. Text of the interview with B.J.W. Arts, town clerk of Ravenstein, living in Herpen. Recorded by J. Vriens and Drs G.J.W. Steijns in Herpen on 22 June 1972.
   N.B. See tapes 5 and 6 of the sound archive. 
5. Text of the interview with P.P.M. Denis, living in Breda. Recorded by J. Vriens and A.M.C. Zom in Breda on 28 June 1972. N.B. See tapes 6 and 7 of the sound archive. The books donated by Mr Denis are included in Arnold Meijer’s library. 
6. Text of interviews with J.A. Baars, living in Blarieum. Afgenorrlen by J. Vriens, drs G.J.W. Steijns and drs H.M. Brokken on 9 August and 19 September 1972.
   N.B. See tapes 7, 8, 12, 13 and 18 of the sound archive. See the inventory of the Baars collection.
7. Text of interview with Staf Vermeire, publicist, living in Neeroeteren (Belgium). Recorded by J. Vriens and Drs G.J.W. Steijns in Neeroeteren on 8 September 1972.
   N.B. See tapes 8 and 9 of the sound archive.
   See: ‘Catalogue of the library of the Vermeire collection’, by Alma Loupias. Published by the State Archives in North Brabant, 1976.
8. Text of the interview with Wies Moens, author, living in Neerbeek.( Beek L.) Conducted by J. Vriens and Dr L.P.L. Pirenne, State Archivist in North Brabant, in Neerbeek on 13 September 1972. N.B. See tapes 9 and 10 of the sound archive.
9. Text of interviews with mr H.B.S. Holla, lawyer and procurator in ‘s-Hertogenbosch, living in Vught. Conducted by J. Vriens and C.A.J.M. Snijders in ‘s-Hertogenbosch on 29 November and 6 December 1972.
   N.B. See tapes 13 and 14 of the sound archive. 
10. Text of interview with Arthur de Bruyne, author and journalist, living in Mortsel (Belgium). Recorded by J. Vriens and mr C.A.J.M. Snijders in Mortsel on 13 February 1973. N.B. See tapes 15 and 16 of the sound archive.
11. Text of the interviews with H. Pétillon, living in The Hague. Recorded by J. Vriens and mr C.A.J.M. Snijders in The Hague on 6 September and 4 October 1973.
    N.B. See tapes 16 and 17 of the sound archive.

Atria has recorded the life stories of female professors.

2017 marked the 100th anniversary of the appointment of the first female professor in the Netherlands, Johanna Westerdijk (extraordinary professor of plant pathology (phytopathology), Utrecht University) (see photo). Every reason to pay ample attention to the current position of female professors just now. The advance of women in universities is still slow. With 18% female professors, the Netherlands ranks fourth lowest in the EU.

Women professors’ stories

Atria portrays the careers and life histories of a number of professors. Their stories reflect a unique part of the history of women in the 20th and 21st centuries. Five female emeritus professors, from different universities and different disciplines, were interviewed according to the scientific oral history method. They were asked about the course of their careers and how they look back on them as women and professors.

The integral interviews can be accessed through Atria.

Onder professoren

This Oral History project interviews five women who have left their mark on the 40-year history of women’s shelters in the Netherlands.

The role of the Blijf-van-m’n-Lijf shelters and the women who founded the first shelter and who have been directors of the growing organisation at decisive moments, or who have otherwise had a great influence on the development of the women’s shelter. Their personal and professional story complements the sources in the literature and archive on women’s shelters (i.e. Blijf-van-m’n-Lijf).

The interviews also focus on the significance of the self-help principle as initially developed in Blijf-van-mijn-Lijf.

ATRIA – blijf van m’n lijf

Dolle Mina was a left-wing, radical feminist action group. Despite the formal rights women had, there was still a lot of injustice and disadvantage. Through playful actions, they wanted to improve women’s rights. Their sources of inspiration were campaigning women in the US and the Maagdenhuis occupation in Amsterdam. The action group took its name from the nickname of women’s campaigner Wilhelmina Drucker. This combative feminist of the first hour was nicknamed ‘Iron Mina’. Wilhelmina Drucker pursued the same goals as the action group a century earlier.

ATRIA -> Dolle Mina