Tear Downs. Progress in Houston?

HOUSTON CHRONICLE REAL ESTATE BLOG:

Demolition crews began taking down the 1930s-era Josephine Apartments this morning.

In May, the Houston Chronicle reported the 75-year-old complex was sold to Tricon Homes, a local homebuilder known for putting up new townhomes in Inner Loop neighborhoods. At the time, the company said it did not know what plans it had for the complex, which sits the corner of Ashby and Bolsover in a Southampton neighborhood.

The complex was built in 1939 by architect F. Perry Johnson with one-bedroom units arrayed in a U-shape, a floor plan common to that time period. The exterior is notable for horizontal bands of dark brown brick on the sides and parapets to mask the roof. The units, roughly 750 square feet each, have hardwood floors and faux fireplaces. The original owners had it built with central air conditioning to make the units more marketable.

The residents were previously asked to move out by July.

Well, there ya go. I lived in this neighborhood. These are charming 1930's Art Deco apartments in Houston gone to be replaced by cheap yuppie hovels. Another neighborhood trashed.  

Years ago, I'd take out of town visitors on the AIA Houston walking tours.  On one tour, the guide pointed out the Medical Arts Building and sadly commented that the next day it would be demolished. True, it had fallen on bad times, and when I saw it in the early 80s it was filthy and neglected, but the design and detail were memorable. 

If a town has no historic features left, it shows itself to be short-sighted and lacking in the ability to recognize what is valuable and in the innovation necessary to repurpose and preserve old structures. But the developer who bought the Josephine Apartments property clearly didn't want to do that. 

WASHINGTON POST: An economic defense of old buildings

Jane Jacobs, a woman akin to the patron saint of urban planners, first argued 50 years ago that healthy neighborhoods need old buildings. Aging, creaky, faded, "charming" buildings. Retired couples and young families need the cheap rent they promise. Small businesses need the cramped offices they contain. Streets need the diversity created not just when different people coexist, but when buildings of varying vintage do, too.

"Cities need old buildings so badly," Jacobs wrote in her classic "The Death and Life of Great American Cities," "it is probably impossible for vigorous streets and districts to grow without them.”  

Ever since, this idea -- based on the intuition of a woman who was surveying her own New York Greenwich Village neighborhood -- has been received wisdom among planners and urban theorists. But what happens when we look at the data?

The National Trust for Historic Preservation has tried to do just this, leveraging open property-parcel data in three cities to analyze the connection between the kinds of places Jacobs was describing and the numbers that economists and businesses would care about: jobs per square foot, the share of small businesses to big chains, the number of minority- and women-owned businesses.  

The novel geospatial analysis, drawn from the District of Columbia, Seattle and San Francisco, suggests that older, smaller buildings do matter to a city's economy and a neighborhood's commercial life beyond the allure of affordable fixer-uppers. In Seattle, the report found one-third more jobs per commercial square foot in parts of town with a variety of older, smaller buildings mixed in. In Seattle
San Francisco, it found more than twice the rate of women and minority-owned businesses. In the District, it found a higher share of non-chain businesses.

The findings don't necessarily mean we should save all old buildings from demolition, or even that one old building is better than one new one. But they give preservationists (and Jane Jacobs enthusiasts) new data in fierce development debates over how rapidly changing and relatively older cities like Washington should grow.

Photo credits - Josephine Apartments, Preservation Houston. Medical Arts Building post card photo, CardCow.com.

Prudence Crandall

Prudence Crandall was born on this day in 1803. She started the first academy in New England for African-American women. She is one of my heroes. Crandall House was my dorm at the University of Hartford. It's there I became interested in her life and work for education and justice. There's a nice museum in Canterbury, eastern Connecticut, the site of her school:

Crandall’s steadfast commitment to the education of these young women was immediately tested by withering opposition from Connecticut residents who refused to tolerate a school for young women of color. Despite this hateful reaction, she continued to operate the school. Finally, the state of Connecticut passed the “Black Law,” which barred the teaching of “any colored people...not inhabitants” of Connecticut without a town’s permission. Crandall was arrested, spent a night in jail, and faced three trials as her case became a cause célèbre throughout the country. While awaiting trial, she continued to operate her school despite threats of violence and denials of service on the part of the townspeople of Canterbury and even despite the poisoning of the school’s drinking water well. Her continued defiance drew sharp criticism not only from local citizens but also from politicians, religious leaders and others from across the state. State Senator Andrew T. Judson, who spearheaded the passage of the “Black Law,” even went so far as to state, “...we are not merely opposed to the establishment of that school in Canterbury; we mean there shall not be such a school set up anywhere in our state. The colored people can never rise from their menial condition in our country.”

Her first trial resulted in no verdict, but in the second she was convicted. A third trial, an appeal before Connecticut’s Supreme Court, overturned the conviction and dismissed the case altogether. Arguments from her trials were later used in Brown v. Board of Education, the Supreme Court's landmark school desegregation decision of 1954.

Connecticut repealed the “Black Law” in 1838, but Crandall had already left the state. Despite the dismissal of the case, townspeople in Canterbury continued to vandalize Crandall’s school. Following a mob assault two months after the case dismissal, she was forced to close the school. She and her husband, the Reverend Calvin Phillio, moved to Illinois. She did not, however, abandon her commitment to education. There she opened a school in her home and continued to work to further the rights of women.

Crandall continued her interest in the reform movement throughout the rest of her life. At the urging of Mark Twain and others, the Connecticut Legislature did penance for its earlier prosecution of Crandall by granting her a small pension in 1886. Prudence Crandall died in Elk Falls, Kan., in 1890, leaving behind a legacy of equal education and the fight for reform. The Prudence Crandall Museum in Canterbury, Conn., celebrates this legacy and is a site on both the Connecticut Women’s Heritage Trail and the Connecticut Freedom Trail.

ON THIS DAY: JOHN BOSWELL

"It is possible to change ecclesiastical attitudes toward gay people and their sexuality because the objections to homosexuality are not biblical, they are not consistent, they are not part of Jesus' teaching; and they are not even fundamentally Christian." - John Boswell

Historian John Eastburn Boswell was born 20 March 1947 in Boston, Massachusetts. He published 4 books, including Christianity, Social Tolerance, and Homosexuality (1980). Boswell died of complications from AIDS when he was only 47 years old.

I remember hearing him speak, either at a Integrity/Houston convention or at Autry House, Houston. Well all I can say is praise be. What a gift John Boswell is in his writings that live on.

The Episcopal Church Exposes the Doctrine of Discovery

This video is intended to inform people about the impact of the Doctrine of Discovery in an effort to respond to God's direction; that we, the Episcopal Church, "act with justice and...do what is right" (Psalm 106:3, Book of Common Prayer), and about the unjust way the Americas were settled, and the on-going consequences of those events. Resources Now Available at http://www.episcopalchurch.org/page/doctrine-discovery-resources

Etan Patz

Authorities in New York City have closed off a street in SoHo, one of the trendiest consumerist shopping areas in the world, to search for a child who disappeared nearly thirty years ago. (Link: New York Daily News.) The media would have us believe that this displays America's regard for human life. Then I think immediately about our wars in Afghanistan and Iraq.

Photo credit: Bryan Smith for The New York Daily News.

ON THIS DAY

Freedom of religion was granted to the Jews of New Amsterdam on 20 April 1657.

Historical Find: Lighting that fire with a sex toy

New York Daily News

The world's oldest sex toy was more than just a feel-good aid. The 30,000-year-old siltstone phallus doubled as a tool to ignite fires.

The racy relic was found in a cave in Germany and is being studied at the University of Tubingen there, according to Independent Online.

The find was a rare one since examples of masculinity from that period are unusual to stumble upon, although female-inspired works of art are rather common.

The prehistoric phallus, which has marks where it was obviously used for striking against flints, also features carved rings around one polished end. Researchers say it's easy to see what it was used for.

Photo: University of Tübingen

Middelburg 17 May 1940 — the Forgotten Bombardment

Wis[s]e Words:

On 10 May 1940 the Germans invaded the Netherlands and Belgium on their way to France. As they had tried more or less the same thing in the First World War the French strategy was to meet them halfway, moving into Belgium and the Southern Netherlands to stop them. As you know this wasn’t quite succesful, but some French units (including French Moroccan units) managed to get as far as Breda before retreating westwards into Zeeland. This was the reason why the Dutch surrender on the fifteenth did not include Zeeland, as that was occupied by French troops. The slow withdrawal of the French meant that on the 17th Middelburg was near the frontline, with most inhabitants fortunately evacuated already as a precaution. That day a combination of aerial and artillery bombardment by the Germans broke the last resistance in Zeeland, with the last French soldiers already having disappeared into Belgium.

Twentytwo people died in the bombardment, which could have been much higher had there been no evacuation. The material devastation however was enormous, with most of the historical centre — some parts dating back to around 800 CE — destroyed. Some 253 houses and 320 shops and other business buildings were destroyed, as well as another 18 or so public buildings, including the old abbey and the city hall. The evacuation may have saved lifes, but it also meant there were few people other than the voluntary fire fighters available to extinguish the many small fires that the bombardment started; much of the damage therefore was done by fire rather than explosion. That it was such nice, warm, dry spring weather didn’t help either…

Unlike Rotterdam the bombardment was not intended as a terror bombardment, but a tactical decision to break the remaining resistance in Zeeland. The Germans supposed that Middelburg was were the French units had their headquarters and allegedly also believe there were artillery and anti-aircraft guns in place in the city, which was not the case. These reasons for the bombardment do not excuse the crime of course, but do make the bombardment more understandable than that of Rotterdam.

Kent State Murders - 40th Anniversary

Dead: Allison Krause - Age: 19, William Schroeder - Age: 19, Jeffrey Miller - Age: 20, Sandra Scheuer - Age: 20. They were the four students killed on the Kent State campus in Ohio on May 4, 1970, during a Vietnam war protest. The National Guard opened fire.

History: Earth Day and Fluoride

PhillyBurbs. com:-

The Donora Smog that killed residents of a Pennsylvania town in 1948 was the first in a series of environmental disasters that led to today's environmental consciousness.

Cathy Milbourn, air quality spokeswoman for the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, said the "fluoride fog" was one of the key events that prompted a cry for pollution control legislation.

"That supposedly triggered the first Clean Air Act," she said. "It's been said that if the smog lasted another day, it would have killed 1,000 instead of 20."

The lamp still shines

I'd read Cecil Woodham Smith's classic biography of Florence Nightingale years ago. Last year I read Mark Bostridge's book, Florence Nightingale : the making of an icon, so this article in the Guardian interested me:

"But when the Florence Nightingale museum in London reopens after a £1.4m rebuild on her birthday next month, an installation by artist Susan Stockwell will remind visitors that the pioneering nurse actually lived on for another half century until 1910 – and spent most of that time in her bed.

"For the sculpture, funded by the Guy's and St Thomas's hospital charity as a gift to the museum, Stockwell has taken a Victorian brass bed and made a ghostly mattress pressed down by the weight of an invisible figure out of thousands of furled pages from books.

"The pages convey the fact that though Nightingale was in bed, she was not inactive. She wrote more than 200 books, pamphlets and articles, including pioneering work on hospital planning, and her 1860 Notes on Nursing, regarded as the foundation of modern nursing."[...]

"There is a final joke hidden in the bed which may not have amused Nightingale, a woman of sharp wit but apparently without a frivolous bone in her body. Stockwell had hoped to make the mattress from old copies of Nightingale's books, but the idea proved too expensive. Instead, while the outer layers are from Notes on Nursing and Cecil Woodham Smith's classic biography, the core is made from 700 copies of Mills & Boon romances Stockwell bought on eBay, including hospital romances in which fragile nurses are eventually crushed against the manly chests of handsome doctors – as Nightingale certainly never was."

Selma Engel-Wijnberg, Holocaust survivor, finally receives an apology from the Dutch government

Today is Shoah day in Israel and also the 65th anniversary of the liberation by Canadian troops of Westerbork, the Nazi transit camp in the east of the Netherlands. As Radio Netherlands reports, one of the survivors of the death camps has finally been recognised by the Dutch government,

As part of the commemorations, Selma Engel-Wijnberg was made a Knight in the Order of Orange-Nassau. Presenting the royal award, Dutch Health Minister Ab Klink praised her continuing determination to tell her story for the benefit of future generations. He also offered a formal apology on behalf of the Dutch government for the way she was treated after the war.

Now 87, Selma Engel-Wijnberg was one of the few Dutch survivors of Sobibor extermination camp in Poland and the only one still alive. On her return to the Netherlands, she had problems with the Dutch authorities. Because she had married a Polish man, Chaim Engel, they no longer regarded her as a Dutch citizen and attempted to deport her. The couple later emigrated to Israel and then to the United States.

For more on Mrs Engel-Wijnberg's story - with an astounding video description of her arrival at Sobibor, click here.

"...When they opened the doors, these big doors that we had to go out, they start screaming and hitting with the whips, and, uh, we had to go out and out, and, all, all the people, and there was a little trolley, a little wagon what, uh, the coal miners use that goes, you can, uh, uh, rip it open that people can easy go out, so all the people that couldn't walk, they throwed them in there, and also children what got lost from their parents, they had to go in the trolley, and this trolley went straight to the gas chamber."

More on Sobibor, click here. On the right above is a photograph of the Himmelfahrtstrasse, or road to heaven, which led to the gas chambers in Sobibor. (Photo Jacques Lahitte)

Stan Freberg on Vietnam sounds familiar

On Dick Cavett, the brilliant Stan Freberg talks about radio ads he created in 1970 during the Vietnam-era for the McGovern-Hatfield amendment ("amendment to end the war"), which would have cut funding for Nixon's war. It was defeated in a vote 55-39. We can imagine what Freberg would have thought about the Obama wars...

Prince Bernhard & his SS membership

RADIO NETHERLANDS WORLDWIDE

The Dutch government knew of the SS membership of the late Prince Bernhard as early as 1944, according to NRC Handelsblad.

The newspaper bases its finding on documents released by the National Archive in The Hague earlier this year. One of the documents refers to a coded telegram, dated September 1944, from Foreign Minister Eelco van Kleffens. The telegram reveals the cabinet knew Prince Bernhard had briefly joined the SS but suspected he had been unable to avoid doing so, "possibly in order to prevent something worse". In the telegram, the foreign minister instructs the Dutch ambassador in the United States not to refute claims, made by American media as of 1941, that Prince Bernhard had been a member of the SS.

Until now, it was not clear if the Dutch cabinet knew such allegations had any basis in fact. For many years Prince Bernhard remained evasive on his links with the Nazi NSDAP party and related organisations. In an interview with De Volkskrant, published shortly after his death in December 2004, the prince admitted to his SS membership for the first time. He always denied having belonged to the NSDAP.

More (in Dutch):

Volkskrant

Telegraaf

NRC|Handelsblad

A Symbol of Resistance

Miep looks like a pack mule. She goes out nearly everyday in search of vegetables, and then cycles back with her purchases in large shopping bags. She’s also the one who brings five library books with her every Saturday.
-- Anne Frank July 11, 1943

Last week we read about the death of Freya Gräfin von Moltke. Last night it was reported that Miep Gies, another symbol of resistance, has died.

From the Anne Frank Foundation

Miep Gies, the last surviving and best known helper of Anne Frank and the people who shared her hiding place in an Amsterdam canalside house, has died in Hoorn on 11 January at the age of 100. Right until the end Miep remained deeply involved with the remembrance of Anne Frank and spreading the message of her story. Every day she received letters from all over the world with questions about her relationship with Anne Frank and her role as a helper. “I’m not a hero’, she once said, “It wasn’t something I planned in advance, I simply did what I could to help.” Miep Gies leaves a son, a daughter in law and three grandchildren behind.

In her own words,

'I stand at the end of the long, long line of good Dutch people who did what I did or more - much more - during those dark and terrible times years ago, but always like yesterday in the hearts of those of us who bear witness. Never a day goes by that I do not think of what happened then.' -- Miep Gies on her website

For the BBC report, click here.
Photo copyright Anne Frank Stichting.
Cross posted at Antemedius and The Peace Tree.

UPDATED: Nazi resistance leader Freya von Moltke dies in Vermont

UPDATE BELOW

R.I.P. Freya von Moltke

BURLINGTON FREE PRESS/ASSOCIATED PRESS:

NORWICH -- Freya von Moltke, a prominent member of the Nazi resistance in World War II, has died at the age of 98, her son said.

Von Moltke, who was born in Germany but had lived in Vermont since 1960, died Friday after suffering a viral infection, her son Helmuth von Moltke told the Lebanon Valley News.

In her writings after the war, von Moltke described her life in the resistance with her husband, Helmuth James Graf von Moltke, who co-founded the anti-Nazi Kreisau Circle and was executed for his activities.

[...]

The Kreisau Circle included several dozen clergy members, economic experts and diplomats. Freya von Moltke hosted meetings in 1942 and '43 at the family estate at which the group discussed plans for the democratic Germany they hoped would follow the collapse of the Third Reich.

In 1943, the group established contact with Col. Claus von Stauffenberg, the leader of the German military resistance, and supported his failed attempt on July 20, 1944, to assassinate Hitler with a bomb.

Helmuth von Moltke was arrested in January 1944 for warning a friend that he was about to be arrested. He was executed a year later for treason.

In 1947, Freya von Moltke left Europe for South Africa, where her mother-in-law had been born. She worked as a social worker but grew troubled by the apartheid regime and returned in 1956 to Germany, where she began publicizing the activities of the Kreisau Circle.

She moved to Vermont to live with Eugen Rosenstock-Huessy, a Dartmouth College professor and social philosopher who had fled Germany after the rise of the Nazis. After Rosenstock-Huessy died in 1973, she dedicated herself to promoting his works and those of her late husband.

Her transcriptions of her husband's letters were published in German in 1988 as "Letters to Freya 1939-1945." Her memoirs, "Memories of Kreisau and the German Resistance," were first published in 1997.

After the fall of communism in 1989, the von Moltkes' former estate was chosen by the German and Polish governments as the site of a reconciliation Mass between the two nations. It is now used as a youth center and meeting place to promote European integration.

Von Moltke gave her blessing to the establishment of the Freya von Moltke Foundation for the New Kreisau to support the work being done at the estate.

A memorial service is scheduled for Friday at the Norwich Congregational Church, associate pastor the Rev. Mary R. Brownlow said Sunday.

I've always been amazed by the courage of the resisters against the Nazi regime of whatever cultural or political stripe - aristocrats or Anarchists, Communists or Social Democrats or whatever - who acted at enormous personal risk.

In 1989, the Geschwester-Scholl-Preis, a literary prize named after Sophie and Hans Scholl, was awarded posthumously (link in German) - in the presence of Freya von Moltke - to Helmuth James von Moltke for "Briefe an Freya 1939-1945 " ("Letters to Freya 1930-1945"). You can also read the New York Times review of that book here.

For further reading, I recommend "Berlin Diaries 1940-1945" the posthumously published diaries of Marie Vassiltchikov, who was secretary to Adam von Trott and knew many people in the July 20th plot.

Photo: Freya von Moltke - Wikipedia Creative Commons/HopsonRoad

UPDATE

On Tuesday, January 5 the Guardian had an editorial, "In praise of... Freya von Moltke":

She dedicated much of the six and a half decades of post-war life she would enjoy to chronicling the German resistance, in lectures and books, and in her later years she supported the conversion of Kreisau into a centre for European reconciliation. A woman who lived and sacrificed through her country's darkest years, was keen to bequeath the promise of a brighter future.

Keeping Alive those Ancient Uncouths

From Louie Crew, some eye-opening background history on the treatment of LBGTs. He does not excuse the Archbishop of Canterbury's silence vis-à-vis the proposed horrendous Ugandan anti-gay laws, but gives an historical context to the current situation in that country. We've come far and yet we keep alive those ancient uncouths.

Anglicans in Uganda are currently encouraging passage of a harsh new law that would institute the death penalty for some homosexual acts and would punish with severe prison sentences those who fail to report the homosexuality of those whom they counsel or even just know. The legislation will encourage the most vicious kinds of witch hunts. One Anglican priest in Uganda has likened lesbians and gays to "cockroaches." International human rights organizations are alarmed that this legislation may actually pass.

This violence has a long history, especially among the British and those whom the British have influenced.

The Napoleonic Code (1804) led to radical reform of almost all law in most of Europe. One of its effects was the decriminalization of consensual homosexual acts throughout most of Europe, EXCEPT in England.

That was no accident, and the Church of England was one of the main obstacles to reform of Britain's sodomy laws.

Britain continued to execute homosexuals for five more decades. England's last execution for sodomy occurred in 1857.

While the death penalty was still on the books, many visitors from the Continent wrote of their horror at the flagrant public pillorying of homosexuals in Britain. (See a brief account of the Vere Street Coterie --1810 -- at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vere_Street_Coterie).

The British obsession led Lord Byron to spend most of his adult life on the Continent. He and his homosexual friends called themselves "Methodists" as code for "homosexuals" in their private correspondence. (See extensive accounts in Louis Crompton's BYRON AND GREEK LOVE, University of California
Press, 1985; see also Crompton's HOMOSEXUALITY AND CIVILIZATION. Belknap Press of Harvard University Press.)

Even after the death penalty was removed, the British fervor against gays continued little abated. Witness the conviction with jail and hard labor sentence for Oscar Wilde in 1895.

Wilde died only five years later, in 1900, a completely broken man, and it took more than six decades thereafter before Britain decriminalized consensual homosexuality (1967), almost a decade after decriminalizing heterosexual prostitution.

Britain's decriminalization of consensual homosexual acts would likely have been delayed further had not the Archbishop of Canterbury, Michael Ramsey, supported the reform.

There is much lgbt blood on the hands of the Church of England. Uganda is merely keeping alive those ancient uncouths, with help from the silence of Rowan Williams. Rowan Williams is no Michael Ramsey.

In the early 1971 one of the bishops from Florida shocked the Episcopal House of Bishops by asking on the floor of the house how he was to handle a priest whom he had discovered to be "queer." His raw candor shocked the House, which immediately established the House of Bishops Task Force on Homophiles and the Ministry (1971-76) so that such discussions could go underground. (Only Episcopalians could have come up with such a prissy name as "the House of Bishops Task Force on Homophiles and the Ministry"!)

In October 1974 I took out ads for a new publication, INTEGRITY: GAY EPISCOPAL FORUM in THE EPISCOPALIAN, THE ADVOCATE, and THE LIVING CHURCH.

Immediately I received a letter from Bishop John Walker, a member of this Task Force, asking me to meet with the Task Force in Washington as soon as possible. We met at Epiphany in Washington, DC, and to that meeting I brought with me copies fresh off the Xerox, of the first issue of the FORUM, in which I called for chapters to be formed.

A priest named Tyndale and a layman named Wycliffe (who says the Holy Spirit does not have a sense of history?!), both from Chicago, but neither knowing the other, called me wanting to start a chapter. I put them in touch. Theymet in December and the following summer (1975) hosted the first national convention of Integrity at St. James Cathedral in Chicago.

In my papers stored in archives of the University of Michigan is a thick binder labeled "Episcopal Snide," a collection of hostile mail that I frequently received from bishops. Long ago I decided not to keep that collection near me. From the day I took out the ads, I understood that we all have much better news to tell to absolutely everybody. It is not ourselves whom we proclaim but Jesus as Lord and ourselves your servants for
Jesus' sake.

Louie Crew, professor emeritus of English at Rutgers University, is the founder of Integrity, and a longtime deputy to General Convention from the Diocese of Newark.

HRH Princess Margriet to open Liberation Museum in Zeeland

The museum is in Nieuwdorp, where my grandfather taught school! Zeeland Blog has the announcement (Dutch) of the opening and an interesting linked YouTube video from "Cineac Oud Sabbinge," about what happened during Liberation around Oud Sabbinge, a few km from Wolphaartsdijk, where my uncle was the village doctor!

Princess Margriet will open the Liberation Museum of Zeeland (Dutch) tomorrow, Friday October 30.

The Battle of the Schelde is focus of the museum. This forgotten battle, which took place 65 years ago during the liberation of The Netherlands, between September and November 1944, had large parts of ths island of Walcheren inundated at the cost of a great many military and civilian casualties.

The battle was a key to the liberation of The Netherlands and the end of WWII.

The ambassadors of Canada, Great Britain, Norway and France, as well as veterans, will be in attendance.

Despicable ruling in Holland

nrc/international

Impunity for Dutch massacre in Indonesia was given 60 years ago

The Dutch state does not want to pay compensation to the victims of a 1947 massacre in an Indonesian village, but it also stopped the prosecution of the army officer who was held responsible right after the attrocity, the Dutch current affairs television programme Netwerk revealed on Monday.
The story of the Rawagede village was back in the limelight last year when relatives and survivors of the massacre demanded an apology and compensation from the Dutch state.

On the TV show on Monday, Jeffrey Pondaag of the Committee for Dutch Honours of Debt showed an exchange of letters from 1948 that reveals the decision not to prosecute major Alphons Wijnen for the atrocity was taken straight after the tragedy, in spite of a recommendation by the Dutch chief of staff Simon Spoor to the procurator general to institute proceedings.

On 9 December 1947, Dutch troops attacked the village of Rawagede and, according to the villagers, killed all the men - 431 in total. A 1969 investigation by the Dutch government into war crimes in Indonesia says 150 were killed in Rawagede (since renamed Balongsari).

Indonesia was granted sovereignty from the Netherlands in 1949 after five years of armed struggle against the Dutch army.

Pondaag and his committee are now seeking compensation and apologies for nine widows and one man who survived the bloodbath as a boy. Pondaag said he found the exchange of letters in the files given to him by the lawyer representing the government in the case.

The Dutch attorney general has rejected the civil claim put forward last September because the case is too old.
_________________
For background: look here and here.

RETURN TO MANHATTAN: 400th ANNIVERSARY OF HENRY HUDSON'S VOYAGE

Rijksmuseum

Starting on 31 March, Rijksmuseum in collaboration with the Dutch archives service Nationaal Archief will exhibit various documents related to the establishment of the Dutch colony New Netherland and the trading post New Amsterdam – which later became New York City – at the beginning of the 17th century. One of the highlights of the exhibition Return to Manhattan (Weerzien met Manhattan) is undoubtedly Nationaal Archief’s Schaghenbrief letter from 1626. One of the earliest documents to mention the purchase of Manhattan, the island on which New Netherland was established, the Schaghenbrief letter is not only evidence of the agreement concluded between the local population and the Dutch in 1626, but also of the first children born to the pioneers in the Dutch colony. Henry Hudson’s discovery of Manhattan Island 400 years ago, as an explorer working for the Dutch East India Company (VOC), will be celebrated this year.

The exhibition also includes the oldest map to show Manhattan as an island (1614) and the famous cityscape of New Amsterdam by Johannes Vingboons from circa 1665. In addition to these unique historical documents from Nationaal Archief, two 17th-century prints of an indigenous man and woman by Wenceslaus Hollar will be on display, as well as part of the famous Blaeu Atlas from the collection of the Koninklijk Oudheidkundig Genootschap (Royal Antiquarian Society).