door Most postcards sent from vacation destinations have nice tourist images. Beach, museums, cities, nature, party, costumes etc. Rarely will horrors be sent as a holiday greeting.
The picture postcard from the Dutch East Indies shown here is an exception to this. In 1905 this postcard was sent from a Kurhaus in Java (probably Tosari) to friends in the Netherlands. If the recipients don’t discover it, the letter writer is clear about it: ‘In this picture you see how forced labourers are treated in Java.’
The card text reads: Afstraffing van een kettingganger (Punishment of a chain man). In the Winkler Prins encyclopaedia (fourth edition, 1918) the description ‘Kettingganger noemt men in Insulinde een dwangarbeider, omdat hij vroeger aan de ketting liep. Tegenwoordig draagt hij een ijzeren ring om den hals’. (A chain man is called a forced labourer in Insulinde, because he used to be chained. Today he wears an iron ring around his neck.) So outright torture as a holiday greeting…..
