Jeanne van Leur - de Loos

Jeanne van Leur-de Loos – Peu to her friends and family – was interned in the Tjideng camp from 31 August 1943 to 18 September 1945, and later in the Kampong Makassar women’s camp. Her husband, lawyer Job van Leur, was killed in the Battle of the Java Sea in 1942.

When she was liberated from the camp, she wrote to her parents in the Netherlands and said of her former home: ‘Everything is gone.’ She experienced hostility towards the Dutch: ‘For a long time, Westerners have no longer been welcome in the shops and markets,’ she wrote. Selling food to Europeans was seen as collaborating with the colonists.

Fabric was scarce, but Peu found a way to obtain silk maps from the British Air Force, probably through a middleman. The maps had been printed to help British servicemen get their bearings in the event of an emergency landing.

Before the war, Peu had regularly exchanged sewing patterns with friends. Making clothes has always been a hobby of hers. Using a hand sewing machine, she made this dressing gown from the maps in 1945.

After the hardships of the Japanese internment camp, such a dressing gown was much more than just any old item of clothing. Made with great care to the familiar hum of her sewing machine, it resembled the dresses Peu had worn before the war.

On 25 January 1946, Peu and 1,000 others boarded a ship called the Johan de Witt and sailed for the Netherlands. A little under a month later, she arrived in Amsterdam. There she continued to wear the gown until about 1951.

Pier Terwen is the son of Jeanne (Peu) van Leur - de Loos. In his video portrait he tells about his mother and the dress she made from silk maps.

Watch the video portrait