The Bersiap was an extremely violent period in Dutch and Indonesian history that lasted from October 1945 to early 1946. In this initial phase of the Indonesian war of independence, thousands of Europeans and Indisch Dutch (Dutch people of mixed European-Indonesian heritage), Chinese, Moluccans, Indonesians, British, Indians and Japanese fell victim to violence committed by Indonesian people’s militias. Anyone who was seen as the enemy or a collaborator could not be sure of their life. A mass murder took place in the Indisch Bronbeek district of Bandung, which was home to retired KNIL soldiers. This photo shows the corpses of residents of this district after they had been exhumed and identified.
Later, the Bersiap became one of the specific events that Dutch veterans used to justify the war in Indonesia. The use of extreme violence against the alleged Indonesian perpetrators was regularly presented retrospectively by former Dutch soldiers as ‘retribution’ for this bloody period.
Civilian victims of the mass murder in the Indisch Bronbeek district of Bandung. Java, c. 1946. Photographer unknown. KITLV A216, KITLV 14032.