DE Oost is the first major Dutch film which clearly exposes the violence committed by its military during the 1945-1949 Indonesian independence war. It showed how an elite Dutch corps under Captain Raymond Westerling sowed terror in South Sulawesi, killing thousands of Indonesians. This controversial movie, made in a span of almost a decade, has sparked a flood of reactions—from praise to condemnation—from the Dutch media and public. On Twitter, Dutch Defense Minister Ank Bijleveld expressed regret that De Oost, made by Dutch-Moluccan Director Jim Taihuttu, has caused unrest among former soldiers who served in Indonesia, as veteran associations like the Dutch East Indies Federation (FIN) accused the film of defaming veterans. FIN even took the filmmakers to court. Tempo spoke to the film’s director, producers, and actors, and also historians, in the Netherlands and Indonesia.

GERMAN author Horst Henry Geerken follows the trace of Adolf Hitler and the Nazi ideology in Indonesia through the third and fourth volume of his book Hitlers Griff nach Asien. These two newest editions, published last year, continued what Geerken started in his previous volumes with the same title. In his recent books, Geerken delved into the diaries of Otto Coerper, which gave detailed descriptions on some 300 Germans who had been jailed in the Dutch Indies. According to Coerper’s notes, those prisoners were released after the Japanese entered the territories in 1942. They then settled in Sarangan by Mount Lawu in East Java, and set up a German school, or Deutsche Schule. Coerper also formed an officer’s training academy for military police.

The president at the time, Sukarno, sent navy cadets from Yogyakarta to learn German at the Deutsche Schule, so that they could understand military equipment, many of which originated from Germany. Among alumni from the Deutsche Schule are Raden Eddy Martadinata dan Donald Isaac Pandjaitan.