Louis Johan Alexander Schoonheyt, twice a victim of his times.

Schoonheyt, as a medical Royal Netherlands East Indies Army officer, shortly before his departure for the Netherlands East Indies. Imagecode: 18996

Schoonheyt and Boven-Digoel

“So Schoonheyt, colonial bandit, I read that book of yours and you are of course a victim of your times,” exclaimed the writer Eddy du Perron to Doctor Schoonheyt.

This remark referred to Louis Johan Alexander Schoonheyt (born 1903, Magetan, Netherlands East Indies) and his book Boven-Digoel, entitled after an internment camp set up by the Netherlands Indies government in a remote corner of New Guinea. Supporters of independent Indonesia and other political activists could be interned there indefinitely. Schoonheyt did not actually find himself in Boven-Digoel as a result of political activism. Having been educated in the Netherlands, he was sent back to his land of origin as a doctor, where he was stationed from 1932 until 1934 in the internment camp and where he campaigned aggressively against malaria. What Du Perron meant by Schoonheyt as “a victim of his times” was that this camp doctor was upstanding, but not capable of thinking outside the colonial vision of the camp.

The Internment camp Tanahmerah (Boven-Digoel) during the time of its construction. Imagecode: 55463

For the inhabitants of the camp, Schoonheyt’s book Boven-Digoel was such a terrible disappointment that some people immediately threw it in the river. One inmate, his colleague in the hospital, I. F. Salim, wrote that he furiously threw it on the ground, not believing that the man with whom he had worked so well would hold such colonial prejudices. After rereading it, he realized that it was actually reasonably accurate, but that the facts were placed within the customary colonial interpretation. Salim and other inmates claimed that they were interned purely on the grounds of their political activism, that they had not committed a single crime and that not a single complaint against them had been filed. But Schoonheyt absolutely refused to accept that the Dutch were capable of locking people up – especially indefinitely – with neither evidence of misconduct nor due process.

Nevertheless it was precisely for that reason that the camp was established in early 1927 after the so-called communist uprising in late 1926: to intern the many people who could not legally be punished because they had done nothing other than sympathize with the Indonesian independence movement. Part of the camp was not freed earlier than mid-1943 when, in the face of Japanese occupation, the Dutch closed the camp and sent the inhabitants to Australia.

Schoonheyt, center, with the staff of his anti-malaria campaign and of the hospital of Boven-Digoel. Imagecode: 19033

The Schoonheyt collection at KITLV

It is ironic that Schoonheyt considered the Dutch to be incapable of imprisoning innocent people because that is exactly what happened to him later in life. In 1940 he was interned indefinitely and without due process for political activism in the Netherlands Indies and Suriname. He documented this incarceration – which colored the rest of his life – in photos, the taking of which was strictly forbidden. That makes these photos even more important than those of Boven-Digoel. After his death in 1986 these were donated to the special collections of the KITLV. While other photos of Boven-Digoel exist, his are unique because they are the only known photographs that document daily life there.

Intermezzo: Schoonheyt in the public eye

Initially there was nothing to indicate that Schoonheyt would be arrested as politically dangerous. In 1935 when he returned to Batavia (now Jakarta), the capital of the Netherlands Indies, he worked hard at an illustrious public career. In 1936 he both married Henriette Straatemeier and published Boven-Digoel. Even though he was already established as a malaria expert, the following year he earned a doctorate from the Medical College in Batavia on the basis of his dissertation Contributions to the anthropology of the people of Batavia and vicinity. He primarily classified the various facial forms in this area and drew conclusions about how frequently these appear. This study received positive reactions from researchers in numerous countries. There was nothing to indicate that he was a supporter of the racist paradigm of the Nazis. On the contrary, he had already done research in physical anthropology, a subject that was well received by Indonesian intellectuals.

Physical anthropological research in the hospital of Boven-Digoel. Imagecode: 19035  

Shortly after completing his studies he spent half in year on leave in Europe, where he was puzzled by the rise of Nazism in Germany. In early 1938 he assumed the important role of harbor doctor in Tandjoengpriok, the port of Batavia. He improved the drainage of the marshy coastal area between the harbor and the capital. Various sorts of stagnant waters and illegal breeding grounds for fish were eliminated, resulting in the disappearance of breeding grounds for malaria mosquitoes. The prevalence of this sickness decreased dramatically across the area.

Morass south of Tandjoengpriok intended for treatment in the anti-malaria campaign. Imagecode: 13859

Never far from the public eye, he found time to hold lectures on the prevention of malaria. He also stirred up public debate about Boven-Digoel which he strongly defended. Furthermore he warned against a Japanese attack on Southeast Asia and this was the beginning of his end. He did not conceal his preference for the then legal (and later outlawed) Indische NSB (National Socialist Movement). This differed from its Dutch counterpart in that the motivation was not to create a totalitarian state like Germany, but to preserve the Netherlands East Indies, not only through powerful domestic disciplinary measures such as interment, but also through powerful defenses against Germany’s ally Japan. In Boven-Digoel Schoonheyt had experienced an all but complete lack of military defenses.

Schoonheyt detained

On May 10, 1940 began the five-day invasion of the Netherlands by the Germans. Presumed sympathizers were immediately interned indefinitely as members of the Indische NSB. That many people like Schoonheyt opposed the conquest did not matter: they were now considered potential dangers to the state. Thus for a second time Schoonheyt was a victim of his times and dramatically so. He was imprisoned in Ambarawa. Then in November 1940 he and other prisoners who were considered very dangerous were transferred to the prison in Ngawi. In an almost successful attempt to inform the governor general of the injustices to which they were subjected, he and his colleagues escaped through the sewer. Photos of this sewer, as well as other aspects of daily life, are included in Schoonheyt’s photo collection. While photography was prohibited, Schoonheyt brought roll after roll of film to safety by wearing a very small swimsuit. The rolls of film were hidden together with what such a swimsuit normally hides. The guards ignored his strange gait and his colleagues who knew about it laughed themselves silly.

Schoonheyt in a short suit (front center) leading exercises for his co-captives in Ngawi. Imagecode: 19087

Because of the arbitrariness of who was imprisoned and who not, the Dutch military Captain Simon Spoor was charged with interviewing the detained. He quickly came to believe that most of the Indische NSB supporters were not guilty of treason and pleaded cautiously in the newspapers to let many of them free. Cautiously because the contentious press maintained that there were still NSB members roaming around freely and its readers were not happy with his plea.

The fluctuating status of these interns is indicative of the insubstantial nature of the charges against them. Initially they were considered “traitors” but after a few months when their guilt was still unproven, their status changed to “dangers to the state.” From research such as Spoor’s it appears that they were disinclined towards betrayal. Then they were labeled as “potentially dangerous.” Even this accusation, however, was difficult to maintain, and eventually the allegations disappeared. But that did not mean freedom; now they were considered to be “embittered.” Supposedly they were embittered by the fact that they had been imprisoned, and therefore they were not to be allowed to reintegrate into society! Thus the 146 embittered, including leftist activists, were sent to the other side of the world on the steamship Tjisidane, in part out of fear that they might collaborate with the Japanese who were already suspected of having ambitions in Southeast Asia.

The barbed wire and watchtowers of the internment camp in Jodensavanne in Suriname. Imagecode 19108

On 1 March 1941 they set foot in Suriname. A special camp for “the NSBers” was built on an abandoned plantation in Jodensavanne 50 kilometers south of Paramaribo. Here they disappeared behind barbed wire and watch towers. Two of the prisoners tried to escape and were subsequently liquidated. Nevertheless the conditions were better than in the camps in which the Japanese imprisoned the European population of the Netherlands East Indies. After the defeat of Germany in 1945 they were released.

Captain L. Th. Becking, the first commander of Boven-Digoel, who was similarly imprisoned in Jodensavanne for supposedly sympathizing with the Germans, arrived too late in the hospital of Paramaribo to save his life after the authorities had blocked his treatment. Imagecode: 19103

The following year Schoonheyt returned to the Netherlands where he was contacted, much to his surprise, by his former assistant from Digoel, I. F. Salim. Salim was living in Europe because he had been carrying a time bomb with him since their days in Digoel: he suffered from chronic malaria that could reassert itself in the tropics and cause his demise. They became friends. Having been unjustly incarcerated himself, Schoonheyt was now completely convinced that Salim and the others had been wrongfully imprisoned. Salim, originally a journalist, published his Dutch-language and very well-balanced Fifteen Years in Boven-Digoel. Despite his fifteen year imprisonment he harbored no hatred for the Dutch.

I. F. M. Salim (standing third from left) presumably around the time of the release of his autobiography Fifteen years in Boven-Digoel. Imagecode: 19134

While Schoonheyt did not harbor hatred about his own imprisonment either, he did harbor resentment. Despite his extremely persistent efforts to resume his profession in the Netherlands, he remained desperate in his own way. His biographer, Anthony van Kampen, described how this doctor, who prior to the war did not smoke, lived alone in:

A room full of books, dossiers and folders, with here and there a random bottle of sherry, and empty and half empty sacks of tobacco everywhere with which he, in spite of the smoking prohibition, continuously rolled cigarettes.

Under no circumstances is unjustified imprisonment a blessing. That being said, some of the 138 people who, like Schoonheyt, survived internment in Jodensavanne realized later that their lot was the lesser of two evils. On the other side of the world in Suriname, they escaped the Japanese concentration camps in which many of their compatriots suffered abuse. Schoonheyt himself was officially rehabilitated in 1949 and therefore received an honorable discharge and his salary which was withheld during his internment. Nevertheless he is considered to be, as Du Perron wrote, “a victim of his times.”

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