An Indonesian In A Nazi Concentration Camp

Tuesday, October 3, 2006

PARLINDOENGAN Loebis was the leader of Perhimpoenan Indonesia, an association of Indonesian students studying in the Netherlands, when he was arrested by the Gestapo and sent to Buchenwald to languish in the infamous German concentration camp for four years until his release by the Allies in 1945.

In an autobiography titled Orang Indonesia di Kamp Konsentrasi Nazi, Parlindoengan Loebis (1910-1994) wrote of the horrifying experience he went through. I should be prepared to be incarcerated for years. That is, if Im not killed outright. To survive in the camp, I must be hard-hearted and unfeeling like a stone. Parlindoengan refused to cry.

Tempo examines the book and interviews people close to Parlindoengan and those with fond memories of the man forgotten by his own generation.

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...I was thrown into a cell already occupied by three men. The 3x3-meter cell had two iron bunks without mattress. There was a hole into which we defecated and urinated. The hole was covered only with a piece of wood. Whoever slept near the hole would smell a very foul odor...

THUS Parlindoengan Loebis describes his first day of detention by the Gestapo. Here are the frightening chapters of his life after he was arrested by the Dutch secret police

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