Teunis “Teun” van Genderen was born in Sliedrecht on 25 January 1918. He was the son of Teunis van Genderen and Johanna Nederlof. His father died in Lüneburg, Germany, on 17 May 1945, shortly after the liberation, and is remembered among Sliedrecht’s wartime victims.
Around 1938, Teunis married Cornelia Johanna “Corrie” Meijwaard. Their son, Jan Cornelis van Genderen, was born in Sliedrecht on 19 October 1940. The available records do not yet provide sufficient information to reconstruct the couple’s subsequent history.
On 22 June 1950, Teunis departed from Schiphol aboard the first KLM flight associated with the organised movement of Dutch dredging workers to Australia. He occupied seat C3 and arrived in Melbourne on 27 June. Curiously, the passenger record describes him as Polish, which appears likely to be a clerical error but has not yet been explained.
Anita “Nita” Hoolboom was born in Surabaya, Netherlands East Indies, on 4 April 1918. She was the daughter of Pieter Cornelis Hoolboom and Beatrice Lucie Groeneveld. In 1939, she married Jan Willem van den Belt in Bandung.
Jan Willem served with the Royal Netherlands East Indies Army and died at Tarakan, Borneo, on 12 January 1942. Anita was left a widow with a young family. The available family information identifies a son named Keith William van den Belt, while another migration record refers to Keith and William as two children. This discrepancy requires further verification.
Anita arrived in Melbourne aboard the SS Volendam on 25 January 1950, several months before Teunis. Their lives subsequently came together in Australia, and they reportedly married in 1953. Their daughter, Jenny van Genderen, was born in Australia.
Teunis died in Highton, Victoria, on 3 February 1986 and was buried at Barrabool Hills Cemetery. Anita died on 17 December 1999.
Their combined story connects Sliedrecht and the Netherlands East Indies with post-war Australia. Both brought family histories deeply affected by the Second World War and built a new shared life in Victoria.
This account is based on family-history and migration research undertaken by Fred Stuij. Photograph of Teunis: Alblasserwaard Genealogy. Gravestone photograph: BillionGraves.
For the wider history of the organised migration project, see From Sliedrecht to Williamstown: Dutch dredging workers in post-war Australia.
More related company histories, archival sources and personal stories are available through the Dutch Dredging in Australia Research Portal.
