The ADL Mountain States Region is pleased to announce that the 2025 Governor’s Holocaust Remembrance Program will feature a keynote interview with Holocaust Survivor Pete Metzelaar. The program will be held on Wednesday, April 23 at 5:30 pm at Temple Emanuel in Denver with a livestream option. The program will, as always, be free and open to all. Register here.
We recently spoke with Pete to learn about his experiences during the war. An edited version of that conversation follows.
ADL: Pete, you were very young when the Nazis occupied Amsterdam. What do you remember about that time?
Peter Metzelaar: I was only five years old when the war started, so I don’t remember much before we went into hiding. I was an only child; my father was a tailor; his profession, “schneider,” was listed on his Auschwitz death certificate. My mother was a homemaker, and it was she who made contact with the Dutch Underground after my father was arrested and it became impossible for us to stay in our apartment in Amsterdam.
ADL: What was your life like in hiding?
PM: The Underground placed us with an incredibly kind older Christian couple, Klaas and Roefina Post, who sheltered us on their farm in northern Holland. They were compassionate and understanding; they shared their food with us and provided all of our needs. I was only able to come out at night; Klaas would leave homemade toys for me to play with in back of the barn in the evenings when I couldn’t be seen.
We were with the Posts for two and a half years. It was an old farm, probably 30 years old with no electricity and no plumbing; we used an outhouse. As the war went on, Nazi raids in the area increased in frequency. When that happened, my mother and I hid under the floor of the farmhouse. The floorboards were made of knotty pine and Klass took a saw and cut a hole through the joints so it could be opened up. When we heard the trucks, we would open it up and jump into the hole in the dirt, and Klaas and Roefina would put the boards back. Many, many times we were in there body to body, hardly able to breathe – one hiccup, one sneeze – it would have been all over.
About 150 feet away was a small forest and one day at dusk Klaas and I went out there with shovels and dug a hole 3’ wide and 2’ tall. Klaas cut down trees and put the logs and twigs in front of it; it completely blended in with the surrounding nature and you couldn’t see it at all. Now when we heard the trucks, we would crawl in this hole, just big enough for us to stand body to body. The scary part about that is the fact that I could hear the soldiers carrying on at the farm, convinced somebody was hiding. I was so afraid they would come and find us. I was also afraid that the dirt would cave. But the Nazis never did come into that forest.
After two and a half years, the raids became so frequent that my mom decided we had to find another place; we were afraid not only for ourselves, but for the Posts and their entire family who would also have been killed had they been discovered sheltering Jews. I do not know how my mother got ahold of the Underground, but there were a couple of women they found to take us into their apartment in the Hague. This was very different from the kindness we experienced at the Posts. The women were not friendly; they barely talked to us, and they forced my mom to do all the dirty cleaning in the apartment. They also refused to share their food with us, and so my mom had to go out at night to scavenge food, which was of course very dangerous. One night while she was out, my mother discovered that these women were planning to turn us in. Once again, my mom made contact with the Underground who found us an apartment in Amsterdam. The only problem was that there was just one highway connecting the two cities, and it was only for use by the Nazi military convoys. My mom was very clever; she took the bedsheets and by hand, sewed a nurse’s uniform for herself. She carried me out of the apartment and up to the highway, where we were stopped by the Nazis. My mom had grown up in Austria, and her German was perfect. She explained to the Nazis that she was a nurse and that my “parents” had been killed in a bombing raid, and she was taking me to an orphanage in Amsterdam. The Nazis believed her story. They put my mom up in the cab between the two Nazi officers and put me in the snow in the back, and in this way we got to Amsterdam. Four months later, the Canadians liberated Holland and the war was over.
ADL: After the war, you came to the US. Why did you decide to start speaking about your experiences?
PM: In 1992, one of my sons was transferred by his company to Brussels, Belgium, and he invited us to come visit him there. First we went to Amsterdam, and I had done a lot of research to try and find the town where the Post’s farm was located. We drove there and walked into a bank. The teller spoke English and pointed to the road where we would find the farm; it was very close by. We went into that forest, and nothing had been touched. We found our hiding place – it was just incredible. That particular trip – that event – made me decide to start talking about my experiences.
ADL: Do you have any final message for our readers?
PM: The most important things for any person are tolerance and an ability for independent thought. Don’t just go along with others who tell you how it is. Too often we go along with the flow and don’t stand up for our beliefs. But we can’t change the world without independent thinking.
Hear more from Pete at the 44th Annual Governor’s Holocaust Remembrance Program on Wednesday, April 23 at 5:30 pm at Temple Emanuel in Denver (livestream available). Register here.