Gräbner, Dieter Die "van Imhoff" - das Totenschiff

Geschichte und Mythos einer Weltkriegstragödie

On May 10, 1940, the German invasion of the West began. The Netherlands were occupied. The shockwaves reached as far as the Dutch East Indies in the Far East. German men aged 17 and older were interned, and their assets and property confiscated. Among those affected was the Protestant Hermann Reiteroriginally from Höchenwho had established a mission station in Central Kalimantan for the Basel Mission Society. Reiter was slated for transport on the prison ship *van Imhoff*. His compatriot, the Catholic Steyl missionary Brother Aloysius, was held behind the same barbed wire. The ship was severely hit by Japanese aircraft; while the crew escaped in lifeboats, the prisoners were left to their fate. More than four hundred drowned; fewer than a hundred managed to save themselves. Missionary Reiter was among the dead, while Brother Aloysius survived and wrote an account of the events. Dieter Gräbner researched all available information. The author chronicles Reiters life, recounts the sinking from Brother Aloysiuss perspective, and traces the legacy left by the *van Imhoff* tragedy during and after the war. For, in truth, the story only begins thereyet it was a story no one wanted to hear. Gräbner writes of reparation funds that vanished into SS coffers, of victims without perpetrators, of guilt without atonement, of trials that never took place, and of documentary films that were never shown. It was a "no-go zone" in the relationship between former wartime adversariesthe Dutch and the Germans.