{"id":141803,"date":"1955-04-26T20:15:00","date_gmt":"1955-04-26T18:15:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/oudaalten.nl\/niet-gecategoriseerd\/from-ijzerlo-to-tres-arroyos\/"},"modified":"2026-04-11T12:47:46","modified_gmt":"2026-04-11T10:47:46","slug":"from-ijzerlo-to-tres-arroyos","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/oldaalten.nl\/en\/emigration\/argentina\/from-ijzerlo-to-tres-arroyos\/","title":{"rendered":"From IJzerlo to Tres Arroyos"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Dagblad Tubantia, April 26, 1955<\/strong><\/p>\n\n

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Herman Prinzen family (9 people) emigrates to Argentina<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
\"Herman\n\t\t\t\n\t\t\t\t\n\t\t\t<\/svg>\n\t\t<\/button>
Herman Prinzen and his family, who will set sail for Argentina the day after tomorrow.<\/em><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

\u201cThat will be the last coffee you receive from us,\u201d says Herman Prinzen from IJzerlo near Aalten, as he places a steaming cup of coffee on the table. It is quiet in the large kitchen of the \u201cLinquenda\u201d farm\u2014a kitchen that appears larger than ever before because practically no paintings remain on the walls. An attempt was made to decorate the wall somewhat with an old, weathered mirror, which was not particularly successful, and otherwise, only a lone Biblical daily calendar hangs on the wallpaper. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Through the kitchen window, one can look out over the IJzerlo es, which lies flat and bare, trying to bask in the meager rays of sunlight. The wind fiercely blows the loose sand from the fields across the plowed land. Herman Prinzen, the 48-year-old farmer, stares outside. \u201cWe have lived here for about eighteen years now,\u201d he says, perhaps more to himself than to us. \u201cWe won’t be here for eighteen days anymore, not even eight….\u201d <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Learning Spanish was not easy<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

\u201cIn Argentina, they speak Spanish!\u201d says one of Prinzen’s young daughters. \u201cHave you ever heard anyone speak Spanish?\u201d \u201cNo,\u201d we must confess. \u201cHas Saint Nicholas never visited you then? He comes from Spain, doesn’t he?\u201d \u201cSpanish is a difficult language,\u201d says Prinzen. \u201cLeerink\u2014Wim Leerink, so to speak, from Kerkstraat in Aalten\u2014taught us some Spanish. Boy, it wasn’t easy, and we still don’t know much of it.\u201d \u201cBut come,\u201d he continues, turning his gaze away from the es that has been shrouded in drifting sand for hours\u2014\u201cmy work there is done\u201d\u2014\u201cI will tell you about our upcoming emigration.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

And then farmer Herman Prinzen begins his story. It is a story whose essence will bring a radical change to his life, and not only to his, but to that of his wife, Mrs. Prinzen-K\u00e4mink, and their seven children, the oldest of whom is sixteen and the youngest not yet a year old, crowing with delight in the stroller. \u201cYou know Grandpa Brunsveld,\u201d Prinzen notes. \u201cEveryone here knows Grandpa Brunsveld, after all. He is a born and bred IJzerlo man, and when it is his birthday, many people come to visit.\u201d <\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cThat was on November 24 of last year. My wife and I were sitting and talking with him late in the afternoon when Mr. K\u00e4mink, a cousin of my wife, also came in. K\u00e4mink is a senior board member of the Christian Emigration Center, and you can imagine that the conversation soon turned to emigration. Not long ago, K\u00e4mink had visited Argentina and several other countries to inform himself about the immigration possibilities there.\u201d \u201cPerhaps there is a perspective for you there as well,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cWe didn’t think much more about it, but a few days later we received a letter from him. He had indeed been thinking about it. To be brief, he wrote that in Argentina, at the Protestant Christian school<\/a>, there is a boarding house for which they are looking for a caretaker. \u201cIs that something for you?\u201d he wrote. That question was not as strange as it might seem at first glance. After all, here in IJzerlo I am primarily a farmer, but for ten years I was also the caretaker of the community building \u201cOns aller belang.\u201d The white smock was already in the suitcase….\u201d <\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cIs our task here perhaps finished?\u201d<\/em><\/h2>\n\n\n\n

\u201cThat letter from K\u00e4mink never let go of my wife and me. There is, K\u00e4mink wrote, an urgent need for a caretaker. We are not the kind of people\u2014neither my wife nor I\u2014who are afraid to leave for another country or to face a somewhat unknown future. We viewed K\u00e4mink’s letter from a matter of principle. Like this: \u201cIs it perhaps the case that our task here, in the Aalten rural district of IJzerlo, is finished and that a new future and a new task await us in another and foreign land?\u201d \u201cYes,\u201d says Mrs. Prinzen, \u201cthat is how we approached this matter.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cNow, you must not think,\u201d Prinzen continues, \u201cthat the problem was simple for us. We have lived in this farmhouse for many years together with my wife’s parents, who have now grown old. Would it be right for us to leave and leave our parents alone in the evening of their lives?\u201d \u201cYou understand, this is a \u201cheavy\u201d matter to consider.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cHowever, our parents said: \u201cIf you believe that there is a future for you and the children in Argentina, then you certainly must not let that pass because of us. We must not hold you back, even though we are old. We trust that if you are given a task in Argentina, we will also be cared for.\u201d When our parents accepted this so faithfully, I said that evening: \u201cWhat do you think, wife, how should we handle this?\u201d \u201cWe should just go, Herman,\u201d she said. \u201cEverything is being made easy for us….\u201d That was around Christmas.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The boat departs Thursday<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

\u201cWe then wrote to K\u00e4mink in Hoogeveen, and he arranged everything else. This coming Thursday we depart by boat. We will be traveling for about four weeks. Then we will arrive in Buenos Aires, the capital of Argentina. We then have to travel another eight hours by bus before we reach Tres Arroyos, our new place of residence. As I said, I will become the caretaker of a boarding house there. It is located 50 meters from the school and ten minutes from the church. So we are not moving to an uninhabited region.\u201d <\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cMany immigrants live in Tres Arroyos, by the way. They are not recent immigrants. There are quite a few whose parents or grandparents already immigrated to Argentina, yet they have, as I have read in letters I received from Argentina, always maintained the Dutch national character. Even at school, lessons in the Dutch language are still given for a few hours a week. The head of the school wrote that to me.\u201d <\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cUsually about eighty children stay in the boarding house. The distance from home to school is too great to travel daily, and therefore the children stay in the boarding house from April to December. They have four months of vacation, from December through March. Then they go home. Those are the summer months in Argentina. During that vacation, I have the opportunity to work in agriculture in Argentina. Two of our daughters, Christina and Johanna, are going to work in the boarding house in Tres Arroyos. One stays at home to help mother, and the others either go to school or stay at home because they are still too young for school. We have four girls and three boys. That is the whole story.\u201d <\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cWhether we are dreading it? No, not anymore,\u201d says Prinzen. \u201cWe have made the decision and now believe that our life’s path will be continued over there, in Argentina. The same sun shines there as here in the IJzerlo es, and the same God reigns there as in the Netherlands. We have had a few busy days. Almost everything is packed now, however. A few more days and then we go.\u201d \u201cOh yes, you might want to know what will happen to our parents? They are also being cared for. Our trust has not been put to shame, because a cousin of ours, Wim K\u00e4mink, is getting married on May 6 and will come to live here on the farm. He will not only take care of the business but also, together with his wife, look after his grandpa and grandma. So, in this respect too, everything will turn out well. We are very grateful for that.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n\n

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Reading tip:<\/strong> blog by Lara Droogleever Fortuyn from 2017: “In Tres Arroyos, cheese and meat come together”<\/a><\/p>\n<\/div>\n\n

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Sources<\/strong><\/h2>\n\n\n\n
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