Helen (center) and her sisters.
The Dutch East Indies, 1939.
Credit: Song of Survival
THE JAPANESE GUARD held up two fingers. Only two graves. A few days earlier it had been eight.
Helen Colijn, a Dutch teenager, along with three other prisoners, had volunteered for grave duty. Sometimes digging graves didn’t seem as depressing as living in the filthy internment camp with all of the starving, sick, and dying women.
Helen’s view of death had changed drastically during her imprisonment. It was no longer a shock, and barely a sorrow. It occurred nearly every day. Few of the surviving prisoners still had the energy to grieve.
But Helen could do something to help: she could dig. The guards wouldn’t do it, so it was up to the prisoners. She wished the guards would at least give them better digging tools...
From "Helen Colijn: Rising Above" from Women Heroes of World War II: The Pacific Theater
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