Anton Colijn
Antonie Hendrikus Colijn (13 April 1894 in
Carstenszgebergte
in New Guinea.
Colijn was the eldest son (of three) of the Hendrikus Colijn, Prime Minister of the Netherlands from 1925 to 1926 and 1933–1939.
After studying at the
Royal Dutch Petroleum Company and worked for them in Curaçao, in the United States, Romania and, in the 1930s, in the Dutch East Indies
(now Indonesia).
He was stationed at
Ceylon, but his ship was bombed by the Japanese. He reached the coast of Sumatra, was captured and interned at Palembang. On 11 March 1945 he died from exhaustion and illness in an internment camp at Bangka Island
.
Colijn was posthumously awarded the Bronze Lion.
His wife and daughters were also interned but they survived the war. Helen Colijn, a daughter of Anton Colijn, wrote The Power of Song, a book about survival in a women's camp, upon which the film Paradise Road (1997) is based.[1]
Bibliography
- Naar de eeuwige sneeuw van tropisch Nederland: de bestijging van het Carstenszgebergte in Nederlandsch Nieuw Guinee. Amsterdam: Scheltens & Giltay, 1937 (5e druk: 1949).
- "De Nederlandsche expeditie naar de Cartensztoppen", in: De Berggids, 1937, nr.3.
Literature
- Ballard, Chris, Steven Vink and Anton Ploeg, Race to the Snow; Photography and the Exploration of Dutch New Guinea, 1907-1936. Amsterdam: KIT Publishers, 2001
References
- ISBN 978-1476670560.
External links
- interview met Jean Jacques Dozy (in Dutch)
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