Private Papers of Dr M Bruinvels-Bakker

Collection

Scope and content:: Wordprocessed memoir (22pp), compiled in 2008 and written in the third person, recording how, as a six year old Dutch child living in Java at the time of the Japanese invasion in March 1942, she and her younger sister and their Jewish mother were initially able to remain at home, though her father was interned in Struiswijk prison in Batavia, but were themselves ordered into the Tjideng women's internment camp in Batavia (September 1943 – early 1944) before being transferred, with all the other Jewish women internees, to Tangerang camp (early – late 1944) and then ADEK camp (late 1944 – August 1945) outside Batavia; and giving her recollections of life as an internee, notably the shortages of food, water and clothing, occasional brutal punishments by the Japanese, ill health among the internees especially at Tangerang, her education, pastimes and friendships with other children, the internees' subdued reactions to the news of the end of the war, her reunion with her father after his release and the first worrying signs of Indonesian nationalism.

Access, restrictions:: Visit IWM website for Research Room access provisions see https://www.iwm.org.uk/research/research-facilities

Finding aids:: Online catalogue see: https://www.iwm.org.uk/collections/item/object/1030018924