Jodensavanne () was a Dutch internment camp for political prisoners from the Dutch East Indies operated in Surinam during World War II (from 1942 to 1946). The camp was named after a nearby, long-abandoned Jewish colony, Jodensavanne.
Although the camp was intended to imprison so-called "irreconcilable" German sympathizers from the Dutch East Indies, including supporters of the Dutch NSB and the Nazi Party, roughly a quarter of the prisoners apparently were not supporters of those parties; these included Indonesian nationalists and others. Among the most famous prisoners of the camp were Ernest Douwes Dekker, an Indonesian nationalist, L. J. A. Schoonheyt, a government doctor in the Indies who had become a NSB supporter, and Lo Hartog van Banda, a Dutch cartoonist who had been a Conscientious objector.
Eight people died in the camp during its existence, including two who were shot to death by marines while in handcuffs, which led to a government investigation in 1949–50.
History
Establishment
Since the late 1920s Dutch colonial authorities had experimented with building remote internment camps in the Dutch East Indies for members of banned political parties, most notably the Boven-Digoel concentration camp located near present-day Merauke, Indonesia, where they interned members of the Indonesian Communist Party and other nationalists. The internees in that camp were rarely charged with a crime, but were rather exiled due to the special powers of the Governor-General of the Dutch East Indies (called ) which allowed disruptive political figures to be exiled or detained in remote areas.
On May 10, 1940, the day of the German invasion of the Netherlands, authorities in the Dutch East Indies enacted martial law and carried out mass arrests of German nationals and supposed German sympathizers living there, including mostly Europeans of German, Hungarian, Czech, and Italian origin, as well as some Dutch with German surnames. Until May 10, the NSB had not been illegal in the Indies, and it was only through the wartime martial law that they were now able to be detained indefinitely without charges. One of these prisoners, Dr. Schoonheyt, had actually been the camp doctor at Boven-Digoel and published a well-known book about it, before becoming a high-profile NSB supporter. These prisoners were initially detained on Onrust Island, Ngawi, and other sites in East Java; none faced trial or were charged with any crimes. After the Netherlands declared war on Japan in 1941, the Indies government found that the Indies was no longer a secure place to imprison them. They exiled roughly two thousand German nationals to India and Siam. In the case of Dutch citizens, they decided to exile the more "irreconcilable" among them to Surinam. The Indies Governor General Alidius Tjarda van Starkenborgh Stachouwer sent a request to Surinam Governor Johannes Kielstra, who had already interned NSB members in Surinam, and a plan to ship the Indies internees was accepted. These 146 "irreconcilables" were put aboard the ship Tjisedané in Surabaya in January 1942 and arrived in Paramaribo, Surinam on March 21, 1942. Because there were delays in construction of the Jodensavanne camp, the internees spent six months at Fort Nieuw-Amsterdam.
The camp site which was prepared for them in Surinam was named after the nearby ruins of an abandoned 17th century Jewish settlement, Jodensavanne. Among the officers put in charge were the first camp commander G. Gebuys, camp commander Lieutenant Roos, Captain H. Mouwen, Navy Commander A. C. H. Kuyck, and Troop Commander Colonel Johannes Kroese Meijer, who was later decorated for his wartime service and became a major-general in the Royal Netherlands Indies Army after his time at the camp. Other camps in the area included Copieweg, was also set up for German citizens in Surinam and later for contentious objectors from South Africa and a few Surninam opposition figures, and also camps on the island of Bonaire which were set up for Germans detained in the Antilles.