Maria Hertogh was born on 24 March 1937 at Tjimahi in Java in the Dutch East Indies.

Her father was Adrianus Petus Hertogh. Born in Holland in 1905, he had in 1924 enlisted in the Royal Netherlands East Indies Army. In the early thirties he married Adeline Hunter, a Eurasian brought up in Java.

Maria was thus a Dutch subject by birth, though she never saw Holland until she was nearly fourteen years old, after the events here described when she became, willy nilly and with tragic results, the central figure in a clash of cultures and religions.

She was born into a Christian family. On 10 April 1937, she was baptized in the Roman Catholic Church of St. Ignatius at Tjimahi by a Catholic priest, Father de Koster. During her earliest years, she regularly attended services at a Roman Catholic Church with her family.

Maria's mother, Adeline Hertogh, was the daughter of one Hunter, son of a Scotsman settled in Java who had married an Indonesian (Eurasian) actress known as Nor Louise. They had two children, Adeline and a brother (two years older) who became a Muslim and was known as Soewaldi.

Nor Louise, Adeline's mother, then acting with the “Bolero Opera Party”, left Hunter when Adeline was five years old for an Indonesian Muslim, also an actor, named Raden Ismail.

Adeline was then “adopted” by an Indonesian Muslim. She was brought up as a Muslim until about the age of fifteen.

She then met A.P. Hertogh, left her Muslim parents and married him in a Roman Catholic ceremony at Bandoeng in West Java.

There is thus a parallel between the early lives of Maria and her mother. Both started off as Christians (or, in Adeline's case, at least as a non-Muslim). Both were “adopted” by Muslims at the age of five and then came under Muslim influences which dominated their lives until about the age of fifteen. Later, both reverted, Adeline, willingly, Maria unwillingly, to a Christian environment.

The circumstances of Maria's “adoption” are disputed, as will be described. Such “adoptions” may seem strange in some western eyes, especially when they involve, as in these cases, a change of religion.