Born in Amsterdam, Netherlands, in 1953, Marchiena Boon Davis was the youngest of five children. The family moved to the United States when Marchiena was three years old. Marchiena’s mother, Anna van de Steenoven Boon, was a native of Dutch colonial Indonesia. Studying in Holland at the start of World War II, Anna and her brother, Hans, returned to Indonesia on a special children’s flight arranged by KLM. After the Japanese occupied Indonesia in 1942, Anna and her family endured 41 months in POW camps where they experienced harsh labor and starvation rations and were subject to punishments for breaking rules. After the war ended, Anna returned to Holland where she married Derk Jan Boon. Grandmother to eight and great-grandmother to fourteen, Anna “Anke” Boon died in Franklin, North Carolina, in 2019 at the age of 95. Her daughter, Marchiena, shared her story with the Museum of History and Holocaust Education in 2023.
Marchiena Davis Interview, 2023-02-23, Legacy Series Oral History Program, 2013-, KSU/14/05/03/001, Museum of History and Holocaust Education, Kennesaw State University.
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