Calm before the storm (reprise)
Monday, May 31st, 2010
Christine and Paul Schönherr for their parents' house in Batavia (?).
My grandmother, Christine Vogel Schönherr, and her six year-old brother, Paul Schönherr, standing here together on the picture. I think that for their home in Jakarta, but certainly I do not know. I do not know when this picture was taken, but it must have been for 3 August 1947: the death of my grandmother's brother. I got this picture sent by a friend of my grandmother. This friend I met in the summer of 2003, in the funeral home where my grandmother was lying.
When I look at this brother and sister hiding from the sun creeps me the feeling of calm before the storm. The picture radiates sheer calmness and tranquility, but also a certain lifelessness. In the background is no one or nothing else than to see the large, white house, blazing in the sun. In the foreground, looking for the sister to protect her big brother. The big brother perform his duties, proud and proud, ignorant of the future where his father weekly crying to his grave would sit with his mother, sister, brother and their children.
Paul French Schönherr was KNIL military and police action during the first at the age of 27 killed. His death has always been a big mystery in our family. The prevailing story was that during a patrol prominently. In potash they walked into an ambush of peloppers. My great uncle was shot down because the peloppers thought he was someone important because he figured prominently. For one reason or another, only this version was stuck with me. The real version, I had forgotten until I was in the autumn of 2003 Last of the war read.
This book describes how a researcher Stef Scagliola Netherlands deal with its acts of war in the Dutch East Indies. One of the topics Scagliola toucheth the KNIL interrogations of Indonesians for Indonesians to find rebellious. KNIL'ers were forced to Indonesians that these interrogations yielded nothing to the life. Because these Indonesians were not exactly gentle addressed, there was a risk that they would still be hostile. So they left the Indonesian heard during a patrol in the vanguard, with his hands above his head. Once the company at a potash arrived, they shot him down: they could say that he had tried to flee.
In reading this passage drew all the blood from my face. Suddenly I remembered a conversation I had with my grandmother made, years before. I had often talked with her about my great-uncle and during this conversation, we came to speak about his death. Again I got the usual story told, but by this time I asked. I did not understand and asked why he was not peloppers shot: he was military and had to have had a gun. "He could not, because he had his hands above his head." Surprised, I looked at my grandmother. This was a detail I had never heard. "Why he had his hands above his head?" I asked her. And, more to myself than to her, "It is not true." The conversation fell silent. My grandmother looked away and said: "Paul is shot by his own people." Startled, I looked at my grandmother. "But why?" "We have never known," was the reply.
With those five words I understood that for decades had done a version of the round, which my grandmother and great-grandparents would have been easier to accept than the real one. I will have been so impressed by this outpouring that I never thought back to me. Only when reading Scagliola's book came out this conversation with my grandmother up again, along with many new questions. Was my great-uncle in the same way their lives as heard Indonesians? Why? She suspects him of something? Did he know what would happen when he first had to walk? What was at that moment in his head? When I watch this picture, I feel these questions come bubbling up.
Paul Schönherr was buried on the field of honor Menteng Pulo . Photos of the family Schönherr, visit the website of the IISH and in the book Indian Life in the Netherlands (Cottaar, 2007, Vogel collection).
This article was published in 2009 under the heading The one photo www.indischalbum.nl .
