Peace reigns in old Dutch cemeteries

Peace reigns in old Dutch cemeteries

By Ida Indawati Khouw

Jakartans bored with conventional recreational spots such as
Ancol Dreamland in North Jakarta and Taman Mini Indonesia Indah
in East Jakarta may want to consider Dutch cemeteries as an
alternative. This is the 28th article in a series on old and
protected buildings and sites in Jakarta.

JAKARTA (JP): Jakarta residents often complain about the
city's lack of public parks and places to relax, but most
residents overlook Dutch cemeteries, which may be the perfect
solution to these gripes.

There are at least three Dutch cemeteries in the city -- the
oldest one is located on Jl. Tanah Abang I in Central Jakarta,
and has been turned into the open-air Museum of Memorial Stone
Park. The other two cemeteries contain the graves of war victims
and are located in Menteng Pulo in South Jakarta and Ancol in
North Jakarta.

The cemeteries offer beautiful views of huge "gardens", and
the atmosphere at these sites is anything but frightening.

Although it is not managed as well as the other two, the most
beautiful Dutch cemetery in Jakarta is located in Tanah Abang,
where, according to local guide Wilfred Situmorang, no corpses
remain.

"Almost all of the corpses were dug up and moved to other
places when the city administration decided to use the site for a
museum in 1975," he said.

He said at the time of the decision, the cemetery had become
an abandoned field with grass covering the beautifully sculpted
tombstones.

The graveyard was built in 1795 because the Dutch cemeteries
in downtown Batavia (as Jakarta was previously known) had been
demolished or were overcrowded.

Tanah Abang was considered a remote spot at the time the
corpses were transported from downtown to the new cemetery by
boat on Krukut River.

Historian Adolf Heuken, in his book Historical Sites of
Jakarta, quoted an 1825 report that hearses from hospitals
transported corpses to Tanah Abang twice daily.

"The mortality rate was significantly high in Batavia at the
beginning of the 19th century due to deteriorating health
conditions in the city .... Government officials and
businesspeople died often and new personnel were installed
immediately. Sometimes people could hardly remember a well-known
person who had died just a few years earlier," according to the
book.

Tradition

In Batavia, graves were located in kerkhof, or churchyards,
according to Western tradition. It is from the word kerkhof that
some Indonesians now refer to Dutch cemeteries as kerkof or
kerkop.

"People wanted to be buried near the church building, which is
considered to be closer to the House of God. Usually, only
prominent figures were buried inside the church, while others
were buried in the yard," Heuken said.

He said that when several old churches in downtown Batavia
were demolished at the beginning of the 19th century, some
gravestones were brought to the new Tanah Abang cemetery and
"some of these stones were inserted into the cemetery's outer
wall, while others were placed within the yard".

That is why some of the stones found in the cemetery date from
long before the cemetery was built in 1795.

The city administration "saved" the old cemetery by converting
it into a museum, where people could enjoy the gravestones made
from quality marble and crafted into romantic angels, Gothic
turrets and sleeping children, bringing to mind the old
cemeteries of Europe.

Some of the memorial stones were not made from stone but
steel, like the monument of Catholic priest H. van der Grinten,
which is in the shape of a small "castle" with four turrets on
top.

It was also in the Tanah Abang cemetery that the bodies of
famous figures once laid, including several Dutch governor-
generals, high-ranking Dutch military officers, the founder of
the famous STOVIA medical school H.F. Roll, the richest landlord
in Batavia Jonathan Michiels and archeologist W.F. Stutterheim,
who researched several archeological sites in Indonesia.

The headstones of several non-Dutch people can also be found
here, including that of Olivia Marrianne Raffles, the first wife
of Sir Thomas Stamford Raffles, a British national who was one of
the British East Indies governor-generals and the founder of
Singapore. Also located in the cemetery is the gravestone of
American Edwin Rich Connell, who was born in Brooklyn in 1861 and
died at the age of 27.

The tombstones found in the cemetery come is a dazzling
variety of shapes and forms, such as the figure of a mourning
woman with her face turned downward. Another depicts a weeping
woman lying prostrate.

Most of the headstones portray male or female angels. There
are also "unique" forms, like cups covered by clothes, harps or
even skulls.

"Probably, the shape of the stones represented the deceased
favorite things during their lives," said Wilfred Situmorang.

Because the graveyard was being used as a Christian cemetery
until the early 1970s, several prominent Indonesians were buried
there, including student activist Soe Hok Gie and the famous
artist of the 1930s Miss Riboet.

Sukarno's coffin

The coffins of founding president Sukarno and vice president
Mohammad Hatta were also placed there for a time.

The Dutch cemeteries at Menteng Pulo and Ancol are not
decorated with beautifully carved gravestones, but simple crosses
and headstones for non-Christians buried there.

The cemeteries for war victims could, actually, serve as an
example for the city's burial agency, which hopes to make public
cemeteries in the capital not only burial sites, but also green
and scenic areas.

The Menteng Pulo Ereveld (field of honor) for victims of World
War II is the most famous of seven war cemeteries in Java, all
under the auspices of the Netherlands War Graves Foundation (OGS)
in Indonesia. The Menteng Pulo cemetery's main attraction is its
beautiful chapel and columbarium.

It is comes as somewhat of a surprise to enter this solemn and
peaceful "prairie", which is in stark contrast to the surrounding
crowded neighborhoods and the hectic and polluted Jakarta.

The 3.5-hectare cemetery has 4,400 crosses and headstones, a
chapel with an "East-meets-West" architectural style, a
columbarium of 754 urns containing the ashes of Dutch military
internees who were executed in Japan and several gazebos, all of
which are well tended.

"The graveyard is open for everybody even if they have no
relationship with the deceased," said the director of OGS in
Indonesia, Nanno Nommensen.

A leaflet published by the foundation says the cemetery was
inaugurated by Lt. Gen. S.H. Spoor, the then commander general of
the Dutch East Indies, on Dec. 8, 1947. In his inauguration
address, Spoor said the graveyard was open to people of all
races, religions, descendants and positions.

That is why, besides Dutch nationals, Indonesians, Chinese and
other nationalities can be found here.

"Indonesians who were buried here were mostly soldiers of the
KNIL (Royal Dutch Army)," said Nommensen.

There is some bitterness behind the Ancol war graveyard, which
was opened on Sept. 4, 1946, as it was built on the site where
thousands of people were shot or beheaded by Japanese colonial
troops.

"We don't know how many people were executed at that time, but
at present there are 2,000 graves, some of which are mass
graves," Nommensen said.

Japan began to colonize Indonesia in 1942 by cleansing the
country of Dutch and Allied soldiers.

According to the book Sejarah Indonesia Modern (History of
Modern Indonesia), there were 170,000 internees throughout the
country at that time, including Dutch and Allied soldiers and
civilians.