SOETAN Sjahrir, in exile on the Island of Banda in the 1930s, was surprised when the wife of a doctor greeted her friends with Heil Hitler! He didnt expect to see the Nazi salute on an island so remote, so far away from the center of the fascist movement in Europe.

She thought it was fashionable and funny, she didnt understand anything about fascism, Sjahrir records in an entry in his diary dated November 16, 1936. He was then 27.

Sjahrir who was