Van Imhoff sinking

from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

The sinking of the Van Imhoff was an event caused by a Japanese aircraft attack in the Indian Ocean during World War II . The Van Imhoff was a Dutch ship that was supposed to bring 478 Germans living in the Dutch East Indies from Sumatra to Bombay .

The Germans on board the Van Imhoff had been interned by the Dutch colonial administration in 1940 because of their nationality after the German troops marched into the Netherlands . When the Van Imhoff began to sink, all 110 Dutch people went to the lifeboats. They did not release the Germans imprisoned on board; therefore over 400 of them drowned.

The ship

The Van Imhoff

The Van Imhoff was the second ship of this name that served the Koninklijke Paketvaart Maatschappij (KPM). The first Van Imhoff was stranded and sunk in 1911. The second Van Imhoff with 2980  GRT was built in Rotterdam near Fijenoord in 1914 and sunk in 1942.

The ships were named after the German-born Governor General of the Dutch East Indies, Gustaaf Willem van Imhoff .

incident

When Wehrmacht troops marched into the Netherlands on May 10, 1940 , all Germans were interned in the Dutch East Indies. After the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor , prisoner transports were put together on the west coast of Sumatra to bring the interned Germans to British India before a Japanese invasion . Two of these transports with Dutch ships actually made it to Bombay . The third ship that was to be used for such a transport was the freighter Van Imhoff . He cast off in Sibolga on January 18, 1942 .

On January 19, 1942, a Japanese plane west of Sumatra attacked Van Imhoff, which was not marked as a prisoner transport, assuming it was a Dutch troop transport . On board were 478 German civilian internees and 110 Dutch (48 crew members and 62 soldiers). When the Van Imhoff sank , the entire Dutch crew, including Captain Hoeksema, went into the lifeboats. The German civil internees, who were locked on and below deck with barbed wire, were forbidden to go into the boats under threat of being shot. Most of the civil internees sank with the ship. Among the dead were the veterinarian Professor Fritz Ludwig Huber, officer of the Order of Oranje Nassau, the researcher Hans Overbeck and the artist Walter Spies from Germany, and the Austrian sinologist Erwin Ritter von Zach .

Some people were able to save themselves on two remaining small boats without oars and emergency rations and a few rafts and were spotted the next day by a flying boat of the Dutch Navy . This called the Dutch steamer Boelongan for help, which arrived at the first lifeboat around 9:20 a.m. When the captain of the Boelongan , M. L. Berveling, learned that the shipwrecked were exclusively German civilian internees, he had the ship turned without asking for drinking water and food or being taken on board, as he had received the following instruction:

“First of all the management of the stoomschip Van Imhoff oppikken, the Europese en inlandse scheepsbemanning benevens de militairen who were voor bewaking aan boord - daarna op aanwijzing van de militaire commandant controlled elements onder de Duitse geïnterneerden (the Metvoords Van Imhoff) are verified nemen - overige Duitsers beletten te land. "

“First take the crew of the steamship van Imhoff on board, namely the European and local crew as well as the military personnel who were on board to guard the internees. Then, on the instructions of the military commander, take trustworthy elements among the German internees (who were transported with the van Imhoff) on board. Prevent the other Germans from landing. "

A few minutes later, the Catalina , which was supposed to protect the ship from underwater attacks, saw another lifeboat, two rafts and castaways in the water. The Boelongan , which was piloted there , was there at around 10.40 a.m. , but again did not take any of the castaways on board. Shortly after the Boelongan had passed the shipwrecked vehicles, an aircraft attack on the steamer was observed from the Y-63. The statements of Berveling, who claimed to have been attacked several times by the Japanese aircraft, did not coincide with the testimony of the survivors in the lifeboat and the observations of the crew of the Y-63, who claimed that the aircraft turned off after dropping a single bomb. The occupants of the boats parted from the castaways on the slow rafts on January 21, 1942, in the hope of being able to send them help later.

Only 65 people were able to escape to the island of Nias on January 23, 1942 ; all the rest perished. According to survivor Albert Vehring's report, the rescued were interned again on January 24th. However, there is also a story that the rescued are said to have proclaimed a “Free Republic of Nias” after an uprising on Nias, which existed for a few weeks. The president of this Free Republic is said to have been a representative of the Bosch company named Fischer; Vehring acted as foreign minister.

Post-history

One of the survivors, the missionary of the Basler Mission (in Borneo ) Gottlob Weiler, published an experience report about the rescue, which as a mission booklet saw several editions after the war.

After the war ended, it turned out that Dutch naval services on the island of Sumatra had instructed the captains of the evacuation steamers not to rescue German shipwrecked people. In 1953, one of the surviving Germans filed a lawsuit against the captain of the Van Imhoff with the Dutch judiciary for murder. In 1955, the Justice Department dealt with the case. The Public Prosecutor General ('procureur-generaal') at the 'Gerechtshof' Amsterdam was commissioned in May 1956 to investigate the case. He came to the conclusion that there was no sufficient reason for a criminal complaint to be found. He claimed that, in view of the circumstances of the war, the captain had done everything possible to give the internees in the sinking ship the remaining means of rescue.

When the corresponding volume of Loe de Jongs Het Koninkrijk der Nederlanden appeared in de Tweede Wereldoorlog in 1984 , it became known that in 1964 a documentary program about the incident had been produced. The VARA broadcaster did not broadcast it, however, as they feared negative reactions - not least from Germany. When the director Dick Verkijk advocated broadcasting his documentary in 1984, it was claimed that the broadcast had since been deleted. The Dutch public broadcaster BNN -VARA broadcast the documentary on three Sundays in December 2017 (10th, 17th and 24th) during prime time .

literature

  • Thank God Weiler: The sinking of the “van Imhoff”: An eyewitness report (On the streets of the world. Mission booklets of the Junge Gemeinde, No. 16). Evang. Missionsverlag, Stuttgart 1952 (several editions).
  • C. van Heekeren: Batavia be: Berlijn: Duitsers geïnterneerd in Nederlands-Indië . The Hague 1967, here: "Transports naar Bombay: De Van Imhoff".
  • Loe de Jong : Het Koninkrijk der Nederlanden in de Tweede Wereldoorlog . Part February 11, 1984, SS 745 ff., Pp. 753-758; online (PDF)
  • Jochen Buchsteiner: Death before Sumatra. Seventy years ago the “Van Imhoff” sank in the Indian Ocean. In: FAZ , December 17, 2011, p. 3.
  • Markus Frädrich: Agony in the Indian Ocean ( Memento from February 10, 2013 in the web archive archive.today ) In: Domradio , January 18, 2012.
  • Dieter Gräbner : The "van Imhoff" - the death ship. History and myth of a world war tragedy. Conte Verlag , Libri Vitae Volume XVIII, Saarbrücken 2012.
  • Georg Steinberg: The sinking of the van Imhoff on January 19, 1942. Eyewitness reports of German survivors , UTZ-Verlag, Munich 2018.

Web links

Commons : Van Imhoff  - collection of pictures, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Koninklijke Paketvaart Maatschappij 1888–1967 . theshipslist.com
  2. ^ Hans-Wilm Schütte: The Asian Studies in Germany. History, status and perspectives . IFA, Hamburg 2002, ISBN 3-88910-273-5 , p. 150 .
  3. ↑ kombuispraat.com
  4. ↑ War Crimes - Van Imhoff Downfall: The Dead Ship . In: Der Spiegel . No. 5 , 1965, pp. 42, 44 ( online ).
  5. ↑ War Crimes - Van Imhoff Downfall: The Death Ship (II) . In: Der Spiegel . No. 7 , 1966, pp. 60: 63-64 ( online ).
  6. ^ Report by survivor Albert Vehring, quoted on wo2forum.nl .
  7. ↑ wordpress.com
  8. ^ Loe de Jong : Het Koninkrijk der Nederlanden in de Tweede Wereldoorlog . Part February 11, 1984, p. 758; online (PDF)
  9. ^ Loe de Jong : Het Koninkrijk der Nederlanden in de Tweede Wereldoorlog . Part 14.2. P. 762.
  10. ↑ De Ondergang van de Van Imhoff ; Trailer ( Vimeo.com )