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Saturday 7 April 2012 the documentary Tuan Papa will be screened in the CineMasia Filmfestival in Amsterdam.

Location: De Balie, Kleine Gartmanplantsoen, Amsterdam

The screening will start at 1:00 pm.

The film will be screened with English subtitles! Director Annegriet Wietsma is present to answer questions from the audience. Join us!

Dear all,

I would like to share with you that we visited our half-sister Edwina and her children and grandchildren in Indonesia. Last year we heard of each other’s existence for the first time. We combined this very exciting meeting with a holiday in Indonesia. The last four days of our holiday we stayed at home with Edwina, which was fun. All in all, we know each other pretty well now.

During the filming of the documentary Sir Daddy we were looking for Pak Mulyadi. He was supposed to be a child of a Dutch soldier. We knew that years ago he worked as a guard at the tea plantation of Pekalongan in West Java. My sister Tineke Hellwig, an Indonesian linguist, had interviewed him once for a different study. During that interview he had mentioned by chance that his father was a Dutch soldier. They never heard from him. According to the notes of my sister, Pak Mulyadi remembered the name of his father as ‘Permil’. A very strange name.

On our arrival at the plantation we quickly learned that Pak Mulyadi was deceased a few years earlier. But his son and his old mother, who once had been the lover of a Dutch soldier, were happy to receive us. It was an interesting interview with the grandson acting as the interpreter for his grandmother, who only spoke Sundanese and barely Indonesian. At one point we asked for the name of the Dutch grandfather. The name was unfortunately forgotten. But when we mentioned ‘Permil’ the conversation took an unexpected and emotional turn...

On Tuesday, October 11, the Radio Gelderland broadcaster has focused on Warlovechild. Jan van Ewijk, who has been searching for his two half sisters for long, was invited for an interview.
Read more on the website of Radio Gelderland. Once we receive a link to the transmission, we will post it here as soon as possible.

Dear Warlovechild team,

With utmost interest the FIOM Ambulatory Foundation has followed the news on the website of Warlovechild from the start. FIOM can perhaps help people, both warlovechildren as well as Dutch veterans or their Dutch children, in their quests with general assistance and support.

Anna Montan and Patrick Lauwerends wrote the title song for our documentary Sir Daddy (Tuan Papa). The lyrics are sung in Dutch and Indonesian with a catchy melody in an atmospheric arrangement. The two have released a cd called CINTA that contains our song. Read more about this on www.annamontan.com .

Listen to our title song here.

Nana, one of the interviewees in the film Tuan Papa (Sir Daddy), at the Tong Tong Fair in The Hague, holding a DVD of the film in her hands. The two young lovers on the DVD cover are her parents: mother Els and soldier Jack. Nana, living in Indonesia, visited her cousin Dien in the Netherlands this summer 2011. It must be emotional for her to see a bunch of DVDs with that beautiful picture on the sleeve: both her father and her mother have deceased. Fortunately we captured their stories in time and were able to reveal their love story in Tuan Papa and on this website!

Sunday, May 16th was the kick off of the Crossmedia Warlovechild project. Paul van der Gaag and Jos Palm interviewed Annegriet Wietsma and Stef Scagliola, both founders of Warlovechild. Also, military historian Wim Klinkert and jounalist Hilde Jansen contributed to the discussion. In the audience Jan Dennie told briefly about his personal experiences as a warlovechild. Music by Anne Montan and Patrick Lauwerends brought the broadcast into Indonesian spheres.
Afterwards producer Jean Hellwig showed a video impression of his search in Indonesia for warlovechildren together with Annegriet Wietsma.
Watch the video to get an impression of this special radio broadcast.

A year ago, we invented the word "warlovechild” and it has become a concept to stay. The word is new, but the people it's all about have been there since long: children born out of love during wartime.

We received many positive reactions about the word. The warlovechildren themselves who have lived for years in the shadow of an unnamed taboo, appreciate the word underlining that they were born out of love, and not from violence or abuse. Love in times of war, this is what it's all about.

The term was easily translated from the Dutch word 'oorlogsliefdekind'. Hence we can now be found at www.oorlogsliefdekind.nl as well as at www.warlovechild.org. But what would the term be in Indonesian? A first translation could be "anak di masa percintaan perang '. But there is very little poetry in there. And a website address www.anakpercintaaandimasaperang.id seems not the easiest to type.

So who has a good idea? Reply! Who knows, we may make another great contest out of it!

Jean Hellwig

Love in wartime. During the colonial war in Indonesia 1946-1949, Dutch soldiers maintained extensive contacts with Indonesian girls. Often they fathered children as a result of their ‘war romances’. Many of these warlovechildren never met their fathers. They kept looking for them all their lives and would like to get in touch. Is there any family in the Netherlands? Fathers also decide, sometimes after sixty years, to search for their withheld children. And children of Dutch marriages may want to meet their unknown Indonesian half brother or half sister.

Are you looking for a father, warlovechild, half brother or half sister? Or are you curious to read the stories of others?

See the quests in Your Search or start a quest yourself. In Information you can read how to undertake a personal search yourself. For stories about love and war, go to:

Warlovechildren in the Netherlands | Warlovechildren in Indonesia | Daddy Soldiers |
Family & kin | Soldiers Sweethearts in Indonesia |
Soldiers in love | Persevering lovers