BABY BOOTIE JEWELRY

My greatgrandfather moved to the Dutch Indies at the beginning of the 20th century, he married my grandmother while she was still in the Netherlands.
They married "with the glove", a marriage when the couple are far away from each other.

While the First World War was still going on my greatgrandmother risked German submarines to make the long journey from Holland to the Dutch Indies via America.
She arrived at Ellis Island, her paperwork is also posted in this set.
According to the paperwork she sailed on the S.S. Nieuw Amsterdam in 1918, was 25 at the time, could read and write, used to live in Arnhem and was on her way to Semarang.

She had a accident on the ship, or in an elevator at an hotel in America, we are not sure.
But her skull was damaged and a part of her skull got stuck in her head, but she survived.
A possible family member died on his trip to the Dutch Indies in 1888, so a tricky journey that took several weeks.

My greatgrandparents were somehow involved with a garage, I am not sure if they ran it or if other family members ran it.
There were several other family members living there at the time.

They had 2 children, my grandmother Hedwig and my granduncle Dirk.
My grandmother was born in Semarang on 17 augustus 1919.
Unfortunately my greatgrandmother died when both kids were still young.
Their father married a local Indonesian woman, according to my aunt this woman was not very nice.
My grandmother and her brother were not very happy.

My grandmother eventually married a Dutch soldier and when the war began she was pregnant, although she supposedly didn't know about it.

Then the war began, my grandfather and uncle Dirk were soldiers and both captured by the Japanese.
The family was harassed and the European side was soon arrested and send to concentraction camps.
According to some my grandmother was in hiding with Indonesian (looking) friends but because her stepmother was Indonesian she perhaps found family members she could hide with.
Her stepmother would not allow her back into the house.
Because my grandmother was very European, she could not go outside and her darker friends had to go outside to find food and money.
We are not sure what exactly happened, I've heard mostly stories and family gossip.
But the girls were found by soldiers and some say they were all raped.
I even heard say that my grandmother was not pregnant when this happened and became pregnant because of this rape.

After this ordeal they were taken to a prisoner camp or went their themself because of what happened.
The other Dutch family members were already emprisoned there, the Indonesian side of the family were generally left alone although life did become a lot harder to them.
My greatgrandfather was send to camp Kesilir, my step-greatgrandmother saw him a few times and tried to throw food over the fence a few times but was send away.
He died there in 1943, probably of malnutrition.

My grandmother was send to Lampersari concentration camp, here she had her baby, my aunt Annemarie.
Life in the camp was terrible, my aunt as a toddler had a nightmare all her life of a woman beaten to death by the guards, also my gran was beaten a few times.
These years damaged the entire family for several generations.

My aunt has several horrible memories of this period, one she told me involved my grandmother.
My grandmother was working in the fields was was caught trying to smuggle insects she caught, into the camp.
She did this so that my aunt as a baby could eat them.
But a japanese soldier caught her and started beating up my poor weak malnourished grandmother in front of my then 2 year old aunt.
My aunt ran to help her mother and started biting the japanese soldier in his trousers.
Well she tried, but she couldn't even get trough the fabric with her teeth.
The Japanese soldier was about to start hitting the child but decided not to and walked away.
Of course we don't know why, my aunt thinks he didn't beat her because she reminded him of his own child or because he respected the bravery of the little girl.

My uncle dirk became a POW as he was a soldier when the war began, he was ordered to work on the Birma railroad, a experience that broke him for ever.
He was and still is a strong and proud man but he never got over it.
He still hates eveything japanese, he caused a big row when his son went to Japan on a journey.
He never talked about what he went trough.

When the war finally came to an end my grandmother, my aunt and my greatuncle were close to death.
My grandmother was so sick that the Japs forced her to go to the hospital barracks.
Nobody explained to my aunt, her mother was just taken away from her and the little girl kept screaming for her mother for days.

My grandmother (and thus me) owes her life to the atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki.
I hate those bombs and think the bombing of civilian targets is always wrong.
I feel terrible for the people of those cities.
But it is a fact that if these bom

On January 18, 1968, Ioana Claudia Moga was born. She was a healthy little baby girl and very, very pretty. She had dark hair and big eyes. What an amazing creature she was. I fell in love with her instantly.

Because I had a Caesarian-section, Ioana and I spent a little more than a week in the hospital. A few days before we left, she didn’t feel well. She had a slight fever and the doctors were a bit concerned. But they decided that the two of us would be more comfortable at home and discharged us.

It turned out to be a mistake.

We went home, and the next evening Ioana’s condition worsened. She began throwing up. Her temperature rose. And she had a terrible fever. We rushed her to the emergency room, and when the doctor drew blood, he discovered what was wrong. Ioana had a staph infection that she must have contracted in the hospital. At that point, everyone became extremely concerned.

Later, we learned that the hospital where Ioana was born wasn’t very clean. Nearly 20 babies had died from staph infections they contracted there during a short period of time.

Ioana survived for two months. The staph infection ate her. At the end, she had a big hole in her back because the infection ate her flesh. It was the worst thing you could imagine, and it made me crazy. I can’t explain how distraught I was; I was with Ioana in the hospital all day and all night during those two months.

It was hard. I remember the ugly hospital. I remember that everybody tried to save her. I even prayed to God, but nothing helped.

Then near the end, on March 18, 1968, my mother pulled me aside. She was a smart lady and knew Ioana was about to die. She wanted to spare me the terrible pain of watching my daughter die.

“Go home, Stella,” she said.

“I can’t, mom.”

“Go,” she said. “Change your clothes, take a shower and then come back. I will stay with Ioana.”

My mother knew what was about to happen. She knew that if Ioana died in my arms I’d never recover from the loss. So she did what any good mother would have done, she protected her daughter.

“OK, mom,” I finally said. “I’ll go.”

I left. I went home and showered and changed my clothes and took a break from that terrible hospital and the dank, dark hospital room. It was the last time I saw my daughter alive. As my mother had foreseen, Ioana died. And she died in my mother’s arms.

When I returned to the hospital and found out that Ioana was dead, I quite literally lost my mind. It’s hard to recall everything that happened after that. I was very, very depressed for quite a while and they had to keep me in the hospital for a few days. My mother stayed with me to help pull me through that challenging time.

We buried Ioana in a very little casket in the same grave as my grandfather. He was one of the best people the Earth had ever seen, and I wanted my little girl to be with him forever. They made a little hole in the dirt at his grave and put the casket in there with him. Years later, I wanted to bring Ioana’s remains from Romania to America, but they couldn’t find any bones. She was so, so tiny when she died.

My whole world changed with Ioana’s death.

Nothing ever was going to be the same again. Nothing. In the days that followed, I felt so guilty. I wondered if because we had sex before marriage that God was punishing me with bad luck. That was an old Romanian superstition, and I was sure it had happened to me. I should have divorced John right then, after Ioana died, but I didn’t. Everybody told me to stick with him, that it was just the grief speaking. So I stayed with John. And together, we went back to finish college.

The first year after her death was a blur. I didn’t want to go on. Holding that beautiful angel in my arms was all I wanted to do. I went through all the stages of grief just like every normal human being. I had no idea then why this had to happen. God doesn’t make mistakes. We may not understand why horrible things happen to good people.

Once I started to heal emotionally, I began to ask myself the question why my little girl didn’t get to stay with me. I waited and waited for the answer. It never came. I was in too much emotional pain to find the answer buried deep within my heart. I know that God was cradling me through every miserable existence. And I let him.

From deep within the strength of my soul, I wanted another baby. How could I even feel this way? I asked myself that question again and again. But somehow that’s what was supposed to happen next for me.

I was gentle with myself. It was the darkest year of my life. I learned then one of the biggest lessons of my life – that this too shall pass. I wasn’t ready to get back to feeling good about myself and my life. Somehow, staying in a perpetual state of grief kept my daughter alive and close to me in my thoughts.

My parents were very seasoned with dealing with tragedy. This one was their worst moment as well. Just when you think you can handle anything, life in Romania threw us anoth