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Getting more comfortable and numbered

Maandag 24 April
De loods wordt opgeruimd en Gretel maakt een leuke bank uit planken en een met hooi gevulde tiker. Ik maak een hooikist voor onze kokerij eveneens uit een tiker met hooi gevuld.  We krijgen onze nummers. Ik heb No 22252 dus de twee laatste cijfers precies mijn leeftijd. A. heeft 53 Gretel heeft 54. Mevr Base 55.

Monday 24 April
The shed is tidied up and Gretel fashions a nice bench from timber and a tiker filled with hay. I make a haybox for our cooking also from a tiker filled with hay. We get our numbers. I have 22252 so the last two figures are exactly my age. A. gets 53 Gretel gets 54. Mrs Base 55.

Dinsdag 25 April
Weer iets nieuws. Alleen die zin hebben en krachtig genoeg moeten gras snijden and patjoelen!! Ik heb geen zin en vertik het.

Tuesday 25 April
Another new thing. Only those who want to and are strong enough have to cut grass and patjoelen!! I don't want to and refuse.


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About this blog

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 t

Daily life in Camp

Maandag 20 Maart Zoo alleen alles hebben moeten doen - arme schatten.  Waarom moet toch alles zoo gebeuren. God willd het zeker zo heben. heeft hij mij die schrik willen besparen - of willde hij dat ik alles zoude verliezen dat waarde heeft b.v. alle waardevolle papieren die de meisjes vergeten hebben!!? En al mijn prachtige handwerken en al mijn silver. Monday 20 March To have had to do everything alone - my poor darlings. Why is this happening. God must have wanted it this way. Did he want to spare me the shock - or did he want me to lose everything of value e.g. all the important documents the girls forgot to bring. And all my beautiful handcrafts and all my silver. Dinsdag 21 Maart We beginnen de menschen te leren kennen - wij merken dat er een stroming is tegen de duitsche vrouwen!! Het raakt me niet en ik maak geen papier vuil met al de gesprekken over dat onderwerp!! Ik leerde echter heel wat aardige vrouwen kennen die ook voor een mof wat voelen! Er is hier wel

Her last portrait

I've been sorting family photos and documents and found this pencil drawing of Meta done in 1944 in Camp Ambarawa. It might have been done soon after she arrived in the camp because she looks quite well, though thinner in the face than could be seen in earlier photos. The artist was Mrs D van den Palm. I wonder what happened to her. Perhaps she did not survive camp either. Meta Peelen-Reith passed away in Camp Ambarawa on 25th August 1945.