I have created this blog to read and communicate to my family members the content of the diaries, notes, letters and other writings I have from my grandmother Meta Peelen-Reith.
Meta lived in the first half of the 20th century and experienced two world wars. The last one killed her when she succumbed to the effects of the malnutrition and dysentery she endured in the Japanese Concentration Camp on Java that she was interned in in 1944. She died on 25th August 1945, ten days after Japan surrendered.
Meta kept a diary in those camp days, using a school exercise book. She took a great risk to keep this diary, because paper and pencil was forbidden by the Japanese camp guards and punishment was brutal for those who transgressed this rule.
The diary is written in Dutch in pencil, and overwritten in ink later, it seems, and it is sometimes difficult to read, because the writing is faded and smudged in places.
As I go through the diary I'll provide both the Dutch original text and my translation of it.
As I go through the diary I'll provide both the Dutch original text and my translation of it.
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