A conversation with Fieke Goedhart
Part 1
My life story about war, rejection, and the power of love.
What i never thought i’d share
When Wim asked if he could come by to discuss my life story, I hesitated. Not because I didn’t want to, but because I don’t see myself that way. When people say I’ve been through so much and have so much to share, I always think: is it really that special? But the conversation flowed naturally. There’s simply a whole history in my life, from my childhood to today, with the whole world as the backdrop. And within that history are life lessons that might just have something to say.
The camp
I was 6 years old when I ended up in a Japanese internment camp in the Dutch East Indies with my parents. My father was in a men’s camp, and my mother, little brother, and I were in a women’s camp. A child experiences something like that differently than an adult. You accept the situation as it is—not because you’re happy about it, but because there’s no other choice. Looking back, I’ve learned through psychology that school age is actually the best age to endure something like that. Early childhood and adolescence are much more difficult. My little brother was only three when we entered the camp; he missed out on so much love and attention there. He emerged from it physically and mentally weakened and has struggled his entire life. I—and for that I can only thank God—came through it well.
My mother died in the camp. After that, my little brother and I wandered around, looking for food, among other things. It sounds unimaginable as I write this now, but back then it was simply my daily routine. Death was very normal to me; I saw people dying every day. That’s how life was back then.
Years later, for our 25th wedding anniversary, Kees and I were given a trip to Indonesia as a gift. I was determined to return to that neighborhood in Bandung where it all had happened. The houses were still there, renovated, and Japanese tourists were walking around—it’s a vacation destination for them these days. I looked at it, and it no longer affected me. I think that’s because of two things. First: God has healed me. Second: as a child, you can leave things behind in a certain way.
I believe that finding Jesus was the decisive factor in that. I sometimes meet people who went through the same thing at the same age and who are still victims. But I see it differently. For me, my faith in Jesus was actually a liberation that allowed me to let go of the past.
A mother who couldn’t love
I was named after an older sister who had already passed away before I was born. My mother had once received a prophecy in a cult-like group that this sister would return. She named me Fieke, but I was nothing like who she expected: not a sociable, cute little girl with curly hair who loved to sit on her lap, but exactly the opposite.
My mother was sick—I should mention that—and couldn’t come to terms with it. She more or less pushed me aside.
I still remember a moment in the camp: she sent me to get water, which was quite an ordeal with all those people lined up for a single faucet. When I came back, she knocked the water out of my hands and said, “You’re not Fieke at all. Go away.” That’s how sick she was. As a child, you don’t understand any of that.
When she was dying, she was a different woman. Softer. We were called to her; she was staying with the nuns—that was still possible during the first few months in the camp. My mother said to me, “Tell Dad to find a kind mom for you all.” Those are the things you remember. Especially now that I’m an adult and know she was sick, I can come to terms with it. But as a child and as a teenager, it was different.
Our whole family was, in fact, steeped in absence and rejection. My father himself had been kicked out at age seven after his mother died and his stepmother didn’t want to deal with small children. He was raised by the baker and later became a baker himself. It was a severe form of rejection, which he passed on in his own way—sometimes in the wrong way.
My second mother, whom my father married after the war, was the middle child in a strict family. She was overshadowed by an older sister who became a school principal and a younger brother who became a pastor. She married my father, as she once told me herself, not out of love, but because she felt sorry for us—two frustrated children. Two wounded people who couldn’t give each other what was needed. The marriage was strained, and I certainly felt the effects of that.
I was glad to be able to move out when I turned sixteen. My stepmother actually helped me with that—not because she wanted me gone, but because she sincerely asked what I wanted. I had completed middle school and wanted to work with children. That’s how I ended up at the Van den Berg Foundation in Noordwijk, where people with mental and physical disabilities lived at the time. I really enjoyed working there. It made me feel that, despite everything, I was welcome there.
Catching up on my education
Between the camp and my job in Noordwijk, there was still an entire school term. I was ten and had to start in fifth grade, which didn’t work out at first. We spent a year in Leiden, together with all kinds of other children from the war—some from Indonesia, some from the camps, or from Germany. There we received tutoring, and during that year I caught up to the fifth-grade level.
I remembered a great deal, but until quite late in life I never really knew when to spell a word with “dt.” The elementary school recommended domestic science school, and that was the last thing I wanted. I wanted nothing more than to go to the HBS, but the mulo was nice too—my second mother fought hard for that. I ended up at the mulo in Driebergen and loved it. I wasn’t a brilliant student with a stellar report card, but I made it through.
Living, not suffering
People often ask me how I came to terms with those traumatic years. The answer is actually simple: you just had to keep living. I never really gave it much thought. During my many years of work at what is now called “Sleutels tot Herstel,” I met people carrying heavy emotional baggage—people who had suffered terribly as children. For me, “suffering” isn’t the right word. I didn’t like certain things, but that’s different from suffering. I enjoyed friendships, my work, and giving love to the children I worked with—though receiving love was a different story.
There was no affection in our family. No one ever told you when you’d done something right; if you did something wrong, there were consequences. When you grow up with that, you think it’s normal. I simply grew up with it and accepted it as it was. That might sound strange, but it’s just the way it is: I didn’t suffer greatly.
Learning forgiveness
Over the years, forgiveness has become key for me—including toward the Japanese. It took a long time, and I was very afraid of it. A missionary who had worked in Japan explained something about the culture to me back then. Later, I also met some Japanese people, though I was still very anxious about it at the time. It wasn’t until I turned fifty that the nightmares started again. After that, people prayed for me, and I haven’t been bothered by them since.
I often think about the children who are now coming from war zones, such as Ukraine, and the support they receive. Back then, we came from Indonesia with our parents, and there was absolutely no knowledge or understanding of what to do with such children. You just had to live, learn, and find a job. Now I see that this was a major shortcoming. Above all, those children need a safe place, because that sense of safety has completely vanished.
When we returned to the Netherlands, the Dutch paid little attention to what we had been through. They were busy coming to terms with the war against the Germans themselves and would say things like, “You may have had it tough, but at least you were in a warm country under the palm trees, while we were freezing to death here.” There was little recognition of our suffering at the time.
The reunion with my father
After the war, we stayed in the camp for about two more months, because everyone had to find their way back to their families. The Red Cross tracked down my father’s whereabouts through a cousin—who had been in the men’s camp with my father. My little brother was too sick to come along, so I was taken to Batavia on a truck along with a group of children.
I had no idea what my father looked like. We’d had little contact with our parents in Indonesia; they both worked hard, and we had a babau who took care of us. On the balcony where I was supposed to be, a man with a receding hairline was sitting there reading a newspaper. I said, “Hello, I’m Fieke,” whereupon the man jumped up in a rage. Just then, my real father came around the corner and called my name. It turned out that the other man had just lost his own little daughter, who was my age—everything was all mixed up.
My father’s first question was where Mom was. “Dead,” I said. To me, that was so ordinary at the time; after all, I saw people dying every day. He didn’t even know his wife had died; he’d been in the men’s camp, and she’d been in the women’s camp with the children. Out of sheer grief, he banged his head against the wall.
Shortly afterward, the Bersiap period began, and we had to flee again. It was a long time before we could go to the Netherlands. Everything had been stolen; even my mother’s jewelry had been taken from her in the camp. To survive, you had to “kedekken”—slip something to someone behind the fence in exchange for food. I stole things myself, too. You simply wanted to survive.
A new beginning
Before I met Kees, I had come to faith at the Hezenberg. I was deeply impressed by what I saw and heard there, though I couldn’t make much sense of it at the time. Above all, I had one longing: here, they were kind to me. Here, I was heard. I wasn’t used to that.
As a fourteen-year-old, I wrote down my experiences in a notebook. I dreamed of turning it into a book someday and becoming famous. My stepmother found that notebook, tore it to pieces, and threw it into the stove. “This is what we do with fantasy stories,” she said. She probably didn’t know what to make of it, was frustrated herself, or simply didn’t believe it had really happened. We never spoke of it again.
Shortly after my conversion, I learned to pray and realized that believing in Jesus had become very real to me. More and more people told me about Him, and it became more important than ever for me to know: there is Someone who loves me and accepts me just as I am. Life at the camp—and even family life—had never given me that assurance.
Despite my limited knowledge, I was asked to lead Bible studies for the youth at Stromen van Kracht in Amsterdam. It was the middle of the night when the phone rang at the orphanage where I worked: “Fieke, the Lord has chosen you to lead Bible studies for the youth.” That doesn’t sound easy, I thought, but if the Lord says so… That’s just how I was. Fanatical, incredibly fanatical.
During one of those Bible studies, I had to translate for a French speaker who was speaking English. To be honest, my school English was rather limited, so I partly made up my own version of the story. Looking back, I realize that was my way of showing that I belonged there too, that I was capable of something. The man was initially shocked that a woman was leading the Bible study, and on top of that, I was wearing a petticoat skirt with jingling bracelets while serving everyone coffee and tea. Kees was there too, and at the end of the evening he came up to me kindly: “Not easy, is it?” “No, do you understand it?” “It’ll be all right,” he said—he had actually learned English well at business school. That’s how we got to know each other.
We talked a lot in the time that followed. Kees was ready to get married sooner than I was; I still wanted to travel and had all kinds of plans. At one point, I even broke up with him, but I missed him so much that I quickly changed my mind. He said, “I still love you, but if you do that one more time, I don’t know what I’ll do.” That moment laid a solid foundation. Throughout our marriage, we’ve never had to wonder who we were or what we thought, because we’d discussed everything beforehand.
Back then, it wasn’t easy for me to believe that someone could truly love me. When Kees got angry, I would sometimes think: See, he doesn’t love me either. I really had to learn what love was, and I’m incredibly grateful to God for that. Without Him, I could never have done it.
End of part 1
@wimvanputten