Journalist and author Boi Antoin has built up an extensive collection of Bonairean cultural heritage on Bonaire in recent years. Oral history has been recorded primarily through the program “Herensia” (Heritage). Many of these recordings are online.
Interviews have been conducted in Papiamentu. Dutch interviews were conducted in the collection Makambanan na Boneiru (Dutch on Bonaire). More information about the various collections recorded by Bòi Antoin can be found here.
The material can be requested via the online catalogue of UB Leiden. The recordings can be listened to in the Special Collections Reading Room.
IJzereef, W.T., De wind en de bladeren : hiërarchie en autonomie in Bone en Polombangkeng (Zuid-Sulawesi), 1850-1950. Proefschrift Groningen, 1994.
De Zuid-Celebes affaireKapitein Westerling en de standrechtelijke executies
Willem IJzereef
Uitgeverij de Bataafsche Leeuw B.V.
For his research on the history of South Sulawesi, in particular political-military developments during the Indonesian revolution, Willem IJzereef conducted some 15 interviews with former government officials and former military personnel.
Records of the interviews and research correspondence are also included in the archive.
The interviews focus on events and experiences in the years 1905 – 1986.
They mainly discuss Indonesia, South Sulawesi. Themes include World War II, Indonesian revolution, Domestic Administration, government officials, South Celebes affair.
Publications linked to the collection: IJzereef, W. (1984). The South Celebes affair: captain Westerling
and the summary executions. Batavian Lion.
Archive and inventory no: D H 1284. Thirteen cassette tapes have been transferred to the AV collection of the KITLV (D AUD 1085 – 1097)
The collection has not yet been digitized and therefore cannot be viewed directly at Sound & Vision. Digitization, however, can be requested through Sound & Vision.
The following items cán be found in DAAN, the digital archive of Sound & Vision:
The interviews were made on behalf of Verhoeven’s film Portret van Anton Adriaan Mussert (1968, 16mm, 55′), in the composition of which Hans Keller and Leo Kool also collaborated.
It was broadcast by VPRO television on 16 April 1970 and repeated on 20 August 1989 as part of the series TVTOEN. or: How Dutch television writes history, which also covered the problems surrounding the first broadcast. These are also described when discussing the film in Chris Vos, Television and Occupation. A study of the documentary portrayal of World War II in the Netherlands, Hilversum: Verloren, 1995, pp.126-127.
Film and the interviews outline the life course of Mussert (1894-1946): his HBS days; studying civil engineering at the Technical High School in Delft; his work at the Provincial Water Authority in Utrecht, since 1921 as engineer and later as chief engineer director until his resignation in 1934; the importance of his activities as secretary of the committee against the 1925 Belgo-Dutch Treaty for his further political ambitions; the establishment of the NSB in 1931; his role within the NSB and that during the German occupation; his arrest in May 1945; his internment in the penal prison at Scheveningen; the trial in November 1945; his execution on 7 May 1946.
Dibbits was a colleague of Mussert’s at Rijkswaterstaat.
As chief inspector after the war, Van Dien was in charge of supervising Mussert during his internment.
Hartman was an admirer of Mussert and fought on the Eastern Front during World War II.
Kleijn was a classmate of Mussert’s.
Knigge, De Lange and Lemoin[e] had joined the Dutch SS, founded by Mussert, during the occupation. Knigge and Lemoin[e] also fought on the Eastern Front.
Koren was a colleague of Mussert’s at Rijkswaterstaat. Among other things, he talks about the relationship between Mussert and Van Geelkerken, with whom Mussert founded the NSB in 1931 and who also worked at
Rijkswaterstaat.
Krabbendam was the commander of the arrest teams of the Internal Armed Forces (BS), which arrested Mussert on 7 May 1945.
Van der Laan was a teacher of Mussert at the HBS in Gorkum.
Roskam was the peasant leader of the NSB.
F. Rost van Tonningen had been a member of the NSB since 1936 as youth leader and, since 1941, the wife of Mussert’s rival the NSB leader Meinoud Rost van Tonningen. She talks about Mussert’s motives and the relationship between him and her husband.
Schermerhorn studied at the TH in Delft at about the same time as Mussert; both graduated in 1918, albeit in different fields of study. In the interview, Schermerhorn talks about the student and engineer Mussert and about the letters the latter wrote him from captivity concerning their personal relationship. Schermerhorn was prime minister of the first post-war national cabinet at the time of Mussert’s execution.
Smit recounts Mussert’s execution.
Van der Vaart Smit was a leader of a Christian circle and secretly a member of the NSB. However, he opposed the German occupier’s equalisation of education and the persecution of Jews and eventually dropped out. Incidentally, he talks about the relationship between Mussert and Rauter.
Mr Zaayer had already met Mussert in the 1920s in connection with the organisation of the protests against the Belgium-Netherlands treaty of 1925 (cf. also the interview with Zaayer in: SFW work issue no. 8, p.53). After World War II, he was one of Mussert’s accusers as procurator fiscal of the Special Court in The Hague.
Interviewer: Paul Verhoeven
These interviews were made by Hedda van Gennep in 1976 and early 1977 for the nine-part VARA television series (on 16mm film) Voorwaarts en niet vergeten, broadcast between 11 January and 5 May 1977. The series covers the history of the socialist movement in the Netherlands from 1850-1918, with the last part extending the line to 1976. It lasts a total of 5 hours and 45 min. The start of the series was accompanied in the VARAGids (8 January 1977) by an article on the background to the project, which included interviews with the project’s scientific advisor Johan Frieswijk.
The people with whom the interviews were conducted range from all kinds of ‘nameless’ fighters of the socialist labour movement from all over the country – including some of the workers from Friesland already interviewed for the film on Imke Klaver, such as the Brandsma couple and Douwe de Wit – to children of socialist forerunners of the first hour such as Schaper, Vliegen, Troelstra and Domela Nieuwenhuis. Discussions include: the Railway Strike of 1903; the Seamen’s Strike of 1911; the Potato Revolt of 1917; Troelstra’s revolt attempt in 1918; the Algemene Diamantbewerkers Bond (ANDB) and Henri Polak; women’s suffrage; Wibaut and social housing; the SDAP; the trade union movement, including the NVV and the NAS but also the Catholic and Christian organisations; the CPH and David Wijnkoop; the Social Democratic Union (SDB); the Maast
The collection has not yet been digitized and therefore cannot be viewed directly at Sound & Vision. Digitization, however, can be requested through Sound & Vision.
The following item can be found in DAAN, the digital archive of Sound & Vision:
Imke Klaver, diary of a Frisian agricultural worker, broadcast 13-04-1975 by VARA, part of the Signalement series.
The interviews were made for the film Imke Klaver, memories of a Frisian farm worker (16mm, 35′, Hedda van Gennep and
Henk de By, 1975), broadcast by VARA television on April 13, 1975. In the VARA-gids of that week, an article provides context information about the film and the people featured in it; it also contains the results of (another) interview with
Roorda: ‘Gerrit Roorda, do you tell me who Imke Klaver was’, by Marinus Schroevers.
The project was started against the background of the ‘discovery’ of Imke Klaver’s diary by the historian Ger Harmsen, who
also speaks the commentary in the film. The diary has appeared in print: Imke Klaver, Memoirs of a Frisian
farm worker. Some chronicled cases from the youngest past to 1925 (introduced by Ger Harmsen and with notes by
Johan Frieswijk), Nijmegen: SUN, 1974.
The interviews discuss the person of Imke Klaver, the often miserable living and working conditions in the Frisian countryside at the end of the 19th and in the first decades of the 20th century, and the (free) socialist movement in that period. Like Klaver’s diary, the conversations end at the workmen’s strike of 1925. Otje and Jelle Klaver are respectively wife and son of the main character. Talking with Hiltje de Vries-Hogerhuis is exclusively about the infamous “Hogerhuis case,” in which the brothers Wiebren, Marten and Keimpe Hogerhuis were arrested and convicted of burglary with assault in 1895, allegedly unjustly. As supporters of Domela Nieuwenhuis, they would have been hopeless at trial. Mrs. de Vries was a cousin (uncle’s cousin) of the brothers.
Interviewees:
Herinneringen van een friese landarbeider
Imke KLaver
Sunschrift 71, 1971
Herdruk: Boom uitgevers Amsterdam
ISBN: 9789061686552
In 1971 Ger Harmsen came across a thick school notebook in Friesland, which turned out to contain the life memories and musings of Imke Klaver. The latter had died in 1967 at the age of 87. In 1971, these memories were first published in book form, bilingual: Frisian and Dutch, by SUN. Much read and praised at the time. The editions from the 1970s have been out of print for years. Because they were still in high demand, a reprint appeared, with a new afterword by Johan Frieswijk.
In Coal Pits, a number of carefully selected ex-miners dig deep into their memories, where they have stored a wealth of colourful stories about the mine. In juicy and plastic fashion, they tell moving, funny and exciting anecdotes about the dangerous and unhealthy work ‘in the pit’, about daily life in the cités, about the struggle for social rights, the arrival of the ‘guest workers’ and about the rise and fall of heavy industry in Limburg.
The series mainly lets workers have their say: men (and women) who grew up in poverty, usually had not studied and hoped for a better future by working in the pit.
Their stories form the basis of the series and are complemented by historical film material from various archives and atmospheric images of the still-existing industrial architecture and the original miners’ committees of the time.
The series is timely. Not only because it is 30 years since the last Limburg coal mine, that of Heusden-Zolder, was closed. But also because the generation that can still tell the story of the mines from their own experience is disappearing. This is shown, among other things, by the unfortunate fact that four of the 13 key witnesses have died since the filming.
Most of the witnesses are in their 70s and 80s, some even well into their 90s. These are the names:
Agostino Mele – 83 years old
Franco Mirisola – 69 years old
Ismail Erdogdu – 72 years old
Jan Kocur (+) – 79 years
Jean De Schutter – 76 years
Jean Peeters – 69 years
Louis Snoeks (+) – 91 years
Mai Van Houdt – 82 years
Mil Coenen – 63 years
Rocco Berterame (+) – 95 years
Sandrettin Koçak – 80 years
Sophie Gruszowski – 76 years
Stephan Bratus (+) – 96 years
The episodes
Three episodes cover the many facets of underground life, a fourth deals with life above ground and the fifth outlines the story of the closure of the mines.
Episode 1 – Underground
In the first episode, the coal miners take us into the mysterious world underground. In smells and colours, they recount their work and habits among the stones and dust.
Episode 2 – On life and death
In the second episode, the coal pits highlight the dangers of working in the mines. They reminisce about exciting moments and tricky situations that fortunately usually ended well for them. Although that was not the case for everyone.
Episode 3 – The promised land
There was a shortage of hands in the mines. Workers were therefore recruited from other countries. This third episode tells about the experiences of the newcomers in our country and sketches the multicoloured camaraderie underground.
Episode 4 – The cité
In the fourth episode, the coal pits take us to the cité. After all, the mine was much more than the dark corridors underground. Family life above ground was also completely controlled and organised by the mine, in districts and neighbourhoods where the miners lived together.
Episode 5 – The closure
The final episode looks back at the closure of the mines in Limburg. The coal miners recall the actions and strikes they undertook and outline the feeling they still struggle with to this day.
Te beluisteren in de Bibliotheek van Zeeland
OOGgetuigen van de 20ste eeuw
The memories of just about two thousand (older) Zeeuwen have been recorded on tape. A cross-section of the population, from high to low on the social ladder, cooperated in the interview project Eyewitnesses of the 20th century.
The interviews recorded through the project are on CD and have been collected in the Zeeland Library and can be listened to there. In this way, a lot of information is available about professions, some of which have disappeared, important events of the 20th century, leisure activities and developments in ten villages.
Most of the interviews were recorded on Walcheren and in Zeelandic Flanders.
A selection from the collection of 816 interviews in the sound bank:
Kees Slager wrote several books based on oral history:
Landarbeiders (1981), hertiteld tot Armoede treedt binnen, levensverhalen van landarbeiders
auteur: Kees Slager
ISBN: 9789076815206
This book tells the story of an occupational group that is now extinct but for centuries formed the largest in the Netherlands: the agricultural workers. Poorly paid and treated by farmers, they traditionally stumbled behind the rear ranks of the proletariat. Until – in the 1950s – machines began to take over their work. Barely 20 years later, they had become redundant and there was hardly a farm worker left.
De ramp, een reconstructie, 1992
auteur: Kees Slager
ISBN: 9789046707968
(op basis van interviews met ruim 200 mensen)
What happened on the night of 31 January to 1 February 1953, when large parts of our country flooded as a result of an unprecedented spring tide.
On the night of 31 January to 1 February 1953, the Netherlands was hit by one of the biggest natural disasters in its history. A spring tide combined with a severe north-westerly storm flooded Zeeland and parts of North Brabant and South Holland. 1,836 people and tens of thousands of animals drowned, 4,500 houses and buildings were destroyed and 200,000 hectares of land were flooded. Kees Slager did extensive research in archives and spoke to over 250 eyewitnesses for The Disaster. The result is a gripping and revealing account of what happened hour by hour and place by place during those fateful days in the winter of 1953.
Zeven Zeeuwse vrouwen, 1995
auteur: Kees Slager
ISBN: 9789072138491
In this book, seven women from Zeeland, ranging in age from seventy to eighty, tell the story of their own lives in a penetrating way.
They are all very ordinary women; most of them grew up in families of labourers and middlemen and none of them attended secondary school. But they are women to whom life has not passed unnoticed. They have been scarred and sometimes bruised by it, but they have not succumbed to it. Most have become strong and militant because of it. They have dared to tell the many emotional and harrowing, but sometimes joyful and endearing moments of their lives honestly and openly. As a result, these ‘ordinary’ women grow into extraordinary women in their self-portraits.
Visser verhalen over hun leven in de delta, 1990
auteur: Kees Slager, Paul de Schipper
ISBN: 9789072138088
(op basis van interviews met 60 vissers)
This book is about the fishermen of the south-western Delta region in the first half of the last century. About the men who tried to earn a living on the Oosterschelde and Westerschelde, Grevelingen, Hollands Diep and on the coastal waters of the North Sea with their longboats and studs, their blowers and lemmer yachts. Sailing, they were hunting for shrimp and flatfish, oyster spawn and mussel seed. But also about their wives who worked in mussel sheds and oyster pits, lugging heavy baskets of fish and also spending many lonely hours at home.
En m’n zuster die heet Kee
Author: Kees Slager
Publisher: Boer, Den / De Ruiter
ISBN: 9789079875351
This book contains thirty-three self-portraits of the last Borsel farmer’s wives, women who spent their lives wearing the beautiful regional costume.They not only tell about lace hats and golden earrings, but with their life stories they give an insight into the position of women in the Zeeland countryside in the first half of the 20th century. This is a book of harsh stories about poverty and hard work in the fields or in the household, about marrying early and having children quickly. Stories of a time and a region without water supply, electricity and cars, a time of cycling and walking along muddy polder roads and windy dykes to school and work. This is also a book of happy tales of old-fashioned villages full of shops and conviviality, of the feast of the annual fair and summer evenings on the dyke with knitting and chatting neighbours. Thirty-three life stories. Not spectacular perhaps, but warmly human, engaging and poignant. ‘An impressive portrait of peasant life on South Beveland in the first half of the last century. An exemplary book’ (PZC)
Copies of the collection are managed by Jewish Cultural Quarter. The original is managed by Netherlands Institute for Sound & Vision.
The interviews were made for Bregstein’s film “In Search of Jewish Amsterdam”, created at the initiative of the City of Amsterdam on the occasion of the city’s 700th anniversary celebrations. Film and interviews cover Jewish Amsterdam up to 1940. The film had its premiere on 29 December 1975 in Amsterdam. It was also broadcast on television by the NCRV on 8 February 1976.
Some of the research was done by Salvador Bloemgarten, who also worked with Bregstein on the screenplay. The film was produced by Jan Vrijman Cineproductie.
The integral film text was later published in the book Op zoek naar Joods Amsterdam / film by Philo Bregstein, Amsterdam: Meulenhoff (film texts), 1981 (partly previously published in Parool and Skoop). At the back (pp.59-76) is a diary Bregstein kept on the preparations and production of the film.
More extensive excerpts from the interviews were included in Herinneringen aan Joods Amsterdam / edited by Philo Bregstein and Salvador Bloemgarten, Amsterdam: De Bezige Bij, 1978 (340 pp). Some additional interviews were conducted in 1977 for this purpose. The book includes a list of ‘narrators’, as well as a list of biographical notes concerning the interviewees.
NIOD Collection 400 IC
The collection is in the public domain. Inventory numbers 8494 – 8498 can be consulted in NIOD’s reading room. Inventory number 1520 can be accessed directly online.
The East Indies collection was formed from archive and documentation material donated by private individuals. Since 1946, NIOD has been collecting material relating to the period starting with the run-up to World War II until the transfer of sovereignty in December 1949.
The focus has been on the experiences of Dutch people during the Japanese occupation. The collection contains 5 interviews with 6 people conducted for the documentary Je blijft toch een vreemde made by Marius van Deventer, 1983 and 1 interview conducted in 1989 with W.C. van Nifterik on World War II by Werner Zonderop. With the latter interview, poems by the interviewee are also available under inventory number 5444. These poems were written in Tjipinang prison.
The interviews discuss events and experiences in the years 1940 – 1983.
They mainly discuss Indonesia, Jakarta, Makassar and the Netherlands. Themes include World War II, Japanese occupation, Indonesian resistance, sentencing and imprisonment in Tjipinang prison, internment in Camp Makassar and Camp Vincentius, work in the lumbering construction crew, refugees from Singapore.
Number of interviews digitised available: 137
Language: Papiamentu
Number of interviews: 32
Language: Papiamentu
HERENSIA
Oral history has been recorded mainly through the programme ‘Herensia’ (=heritage in Papiamentu). Many of these recordings are on the Vimeo channel:
https://vimeo.com/user16789416
Number of interviews: 1206
Language: Papiamentu
Makambanan na Boneiru (Dutch on Bonaire)
Number of interviews: 22
https://vimeo.com/search/?q=Makambanan+na+Boneiru
HERENSIA via BONAIRE.TV
Number of interviews: 326
Language: Papiamentu
WHAT IS ARCHIVO BONEIRU?
Journalist and author Boi Antoin has built up an extensive collection of Bonairean cultural heritage on Bonaire in recent years. The material is stored in a room measuring about six by four metres. The collection includes 20th-century photographs, video tapes, audio tapes, objects, books and documents. Although the material is not very old, storage conditions in Bonaire are far from ideal, so the deterioration in its material condition is easy to see.
Plataforma Kultural and Fundashon Historiko Kultural Boneriano have taken the initiative to have the existing material digitised and made accessible. They are collaborating with Regionaal Archief Dordrecht in the process. The National Archives advised and the Institute for Sound and Vision will include part of the collection in its catalogue.
Programme category:
Boneiru Ayera i Awe (Bonaire past and present): 460
Documentaries: 70
Herensia (Heritage): 1385
Herensia di Siglo (Heritage of the Ages): 85
Aki Boneiru: 446 (1981- )
Aktualidat: 38 (oug 2021- )
Beku (weekly radio programme): ±1000 (2007- )
