Podcast #17 Part 1 – Hiding from the Nazis: Holocaust Survivor Pete Metzelaar’s Chilling Story

Doug Dvorak (00:05.887)
Good day Mission Podcast community. I’m your host, Doug Dvorak, and I’m extremely excited to bring you inspiring stories from incredible guests. These individuals are on a mission to create remarkable possibilities that not only enhance their own lives, but also make a lasting impact on the communities and individuals around them and that they serve. Stay tuned for some truly amazing conversations.
My guest today is Pete Metzelaar, a child survivor of the Holocaust. Hi, Pete.

Pete Metzelaar (00:38.165)
Hi, Doug, how are you?

Doug Dvorak (00:40.021)
I’m great, great. Welcome to the Mission Possible Podcast, Pete.

Pete Metzelaar (00:51.499)
Thank you very much.

Doug Dvorak (00:52.981)
You know, Pete, in preparing and researching you and your story, I was more than moved by a quote I read from you going back in the time machine to 1941, Amsterdam, you, Pete, age seven, quote, my mother and I slept together in a bed that was inside a closet. I remember lying in that bed, trembling in fear at times, end quote. Pete was born in Amsterdam in 1935, in 1942.

When Pete was seven, the Nazis seized Pete’s entire family except for Pete and his mother. Pete’s mother contacted the Dutch underground for help. The underground found Klaus and Rolfina Post who agreed to shelter Pete and his mother on their small farm in Northern Holland, putting their own lives at risk. For two years, they lived with the Posts until it became too dangerous and they found another hiding place with two women in the Hague. Pete, his mother, and his aunt were the only, and I underscore only, survivors of his family. Klaus and Rolfina Post have been recognized as righteous among the nations by Yad Vashem. After the war, Pete and his mother immigrated to the United States in 1949, arriving in New York. Pete was only 13 and didn’t speak a word of English. But was placed in the eighth grade. Pete also had a long career as a radiology technologist. Pete had two sons from a previous marriage. He and his wife, Bea, had a third son. The Metzellar’s moved to Seattle in 1997. Pete continues to be an active member of the Holocaust Center for Humanities Speakers Bureau. Pete, welcome and let’s hear your story.

Pete Metzelaar (02:45.995)
Thank you very much. An honor to be with you. One of the first things that I would like to bring up, because the question comes up many times, why do you tell your story? And I want to make it very clear that it is my personal story that is based on truth. It is based on actual events as I remember them. It is a Matter of clearing up misinformation create awareness of certain similarity of today to those that led up to the past.

I have put up this picture for many of the younger people.

Most people are familiar with the horror of 9-11 when 3,000 innocent people lost their lives. To give the picture of what the Nazi headed by Adolf Hitler did to the people of the Jewish faith, you take that horrible 9-11 number of 3,000 and multiply it 2,000 times and you come up with this incredible number of 6 million people that the Hitler’s

Doug Dvorak (04:05.461)
Hard to fathom. It’s hard to fathom

Pete Metzelaar (04:08.631)
Of that six million, there were a million, almost a million and a half kids, children under the age of 12 that they had to die as well.

One of the things that happened, every country that Hitler occupied, he instituted some rules, regulations. only to be adhered to by the people of the Jewish faith. They were referred to as the Nuremberg Lords, Nuremberg of course being a large city in Germany. When I do a presentation in the schools, I tell the kids, you don’t have to read them all, but I do want to point out one of them in there. And one of the things that Hitler did not allow was the riding of bicycles. And if anybody has ever been in the Netherlands or in Holland, You know, that country even rides on bicycles. The other thing that most people are familiar with, that one of the laws, and a very strictly adhere to one, was that every Jewish person, anytime they came out of their living quarters, had to have a bright yellow star sewn onto their outer garment. In what I like to call the Hebraic style of lettering, within that star, it spelled the word Jew. If you happen to be living in France, it would say Juff. If you were in Germany, it would say Jude. And in Holland, it would say Jot, J-O-O-D. Now, it was not only adults.

But it was children as well. It was not until that middle 80s that I visited with my mom who was still alive at the time and I found some photographs. It was her showing when she was in her early 20s wearing a coat, showing the star. And when I flipped that picture over, it had a crumbling piece of paper. And when I opened it up, there was one of these stars. I said, mom, where did you get that? She got very upset. She says, I don’t want to see that.

Pete Metzelaar (06:33.567)
Don’t remind me of what that brought back. That star that is visualized now is the actual star that came off of that coat. And as I mentioned, it was not just the adults, but children down to the age of six had to have that star on their outer garment.

It so happens to be in the middle with the arrow pointed, it happens to be me with quite a bit more hair, by the way. But that was the law. That was what was absolutely required.

Pete Metzelaar (07:29.055)
Looking out the window, mom, dad and I, lived in a four-story walk-up, old building, walk-up apartment. And I remember seeing German soldiers stopping people asking for identification. They did not break any laws, any rules. They were just stopped. And they had to show identification. And then they heard it away. Some of them put on trucks, as it turned out later. put on cattle cars to be shipped to, nobody knew. Nobody knew what happened to him. There was that period of time where somebody’s father, mother, aunt, uncle, whoever, somebody didn’t come home. What happened to them? People did literally not know. They were arrested, whatever that meant. And one day my mother sat down very, very upset, telling me that amongst other family members. that my dad has been arrested. My dad used to like to fish. I mean, he had a little two-man rowboat. Amongst those Nuremberg laws, one of them states that a Jewish person could not own a boat, if you want to call that a boat. He had a little rowboat. He went fishing on one of the canals in Amsterdam that was not allowed. It was in June of 1942 that he was arrested.

Doug Dvorak (08:30.408)
no.

Doug Dvorak (08:55.465)
What’s really interesting is I’ve heard of the Nuremberg trials, but I never knew about the Nuremberg laws. It’s fascinating. It’s horrific, but it’s fascinating.

Pete Metzelaar (09:03.67)
Yes.

Yes, the rules those people had to adhere to. So he was arrested in June of 1942, and that is the last that we heard of him again.

Pete Metzelaar (09:30.827)
Here it shows some of the pictures being herded on the trucks and then being put on trains. And when I say trains, they were cattle cars. People had no idea where they were going, had their personal belongings. Why are we going? Where are we going? And why are we going? I remember one of the first things prior to this photograph that was awakened one night. I remember it very clearly. It was dark.

Don’t recall what time it was, 10, 11 midnight. And I remember a truck or trucks pulling up to the front of the apartment complex. And I’ll never forget in the quiet of the night, these German soldiers yelling at the top of their lungs, Aller Juden! Aus! All Jews out!

Women screaming, doors being kicked in, they hadn’t come to our door yet for whatever reason. But the results, some of my friends in the next day in school were not there. As more and more people started to disappear, as in every country, you have good and you have bad. And when I say good and bad, they were just individuals. They had nothing to do with religious preferences. with ideology, their attitude was that we got to help these Jewish people, not because they were Jewish necessarily, but the idea was who are these Germans coming across our border and taking our citizens away? And so these people formed individual health groups, one person in one block, two people in another block, very, very secretive. And they did a number of things that the Jewish people couldn’t do for themselves. One of the big ones, of course, is falsify identification, that when they got stopped, that their name wouldn’t be on a list. It is very interesting to me and in very good thinking on the part of a youngster some years ago when I was doing a presentation in high school.

Doug Dvorak (11:41.685)
Mmm.

Pete Metzelaar (11:54.057)
And they just made mention of the fact that when those people had to wear their stars, it would identify them. So why not not wear the star? Very good question. Well, unfortunately, that did not help because one of the reasons or the main reason every country that Hitler occupied, he took over the seat of government, whether it was the state, the county, the city, Hitler’s

Doug Dvorak (12:05.234)
Really?

Pete Metzelaar (12:23.701)
bunch had records of the county. And there is something that happened in those days on those records that is happening today. Yes, today. Anybody can think in terms of having to go to a hospital for some kind of procedure. Besides all kinds of things that you agree to and you for, one of the questions then

as it is today is religious preference. In the event there is a list they had to know. So when they stopped you, whether you were in that star or not, if your name was on that list, you were a goner. So more and more people started to disappear. How my mother, and as I said in the beginning,

Doug Dvorak (13:00.509)
never would have thought of that. That is wow.

Pete Metzelaar (13:21.459)
I speak only of what I remember and I have to put in, it is kind of a tongue and cheek. I don’t know what I had for dinner last night, but yet I remember so vividly of so many events that happened so many years ago. And so one of the things that occurred when these people were disappearing.

My mom got hold of one of those. How she found that comes up several times in my story. How did she find one of those people? Because it was a secretive. If they ever got caught by the Germans who then knew that they were helping a Jewish person, that would be the end of them. So mom got hold of one of them. And one of the big things, of course, that so-called resistance underground people did.

was contacting people, how they found them, how they determined those would be the right ones. I have no idea. But they contacted people basically asking in its simpler form, would you be willing to shelter a Jewish person or persons? So mom went to one of these underground folks and they came up with a older couple, Klaus and Rolfina Post.

They were two farmers on the northern part of the Netherlands. They had a little bitty farm, and I mean little bitty.

This is a photograph of the actual farm. They had a couple of chickens, a couple of cows, a couple of pigs. That was it. You can’t call it a gentleman’s farm. They just survived.

This is a photograph as I remember them and that’s a long story how I attained those photographs, believe me. And they said, sure, yeah, we’re willing to do that. They were a devout Christian family, but that had nothing to do with being Christian, being Jewish, being anything else. Again, the attitude was, who are these Germans taking our people away? We need help where we can. They were wonderful people.

Doug Dvorak (15:34.805)
Hmm.

Pete Metzelaar (15:39.531)
They worked their fingers to the bone from sun up to sunset, raising veggies and what have you on a half an acre of ground and the few animals they had. They shared their food. Mom and I were on that farm for a little over two and a half years. We were never hungry. They shared everything. Not only that, but they were compassionate people. I remember there were a couple of times

Doug Dvorak (15:57.141)
Wow.

Pete Metzelaar (16:06.901)
where Klaas sat me on his knee and he sang a little song. He knew my dad was gone. Again, at that time, I wasn’t even seven years old yet, six and a half years old. He just became like a surrogate father to me. They were just wonderful, wonderful, wonderful people. Unfortunately, Germans, of course, started to find out that, yes, Jewish people were being hidden on the farm.

And now the trucks laden with a dozen soldiers each came to all of these farms in the area. And they would just ransack these farms, kicking over furniture, kicking down doors, at every look and cranny. Sometimes with fixed bayonets in those days, stabbing in the haystacks. Sometimes somebody was hiding in the haystack. If they survived, they were put on the truck. And where did they go? Nobody knew.

What happened? So Claus came up with an interesting, interesting idea. That little farm where Mama and I got there in 1942, middle of 42, it was old at that time already. It had no plumbing in sight. The toilet facilities were in an outhouse. You had to go outside of the farmhouse in an outhouse. It had no electricity.

And the floor of that little farm was made of knotty pine, 12 inch wide knotty pine. Someone they class took a saw and in between the joint of two of those 12 inch wide boards, he cut a six foot long section right into the joint. And when you opened up these two 12 inches, a total of 24, a foot and a half below lay the dirt.

of this old, old farm. Now, when mom and I heard the trucks coming, we’d open up those two boards and we’d jump in this hole underneath the floorboards. Either Klaus or Rolfina would put the boards back, throw a rug on it. You couldn’t see anything. I don’t know how many times, but those raids started to become very regular. And when I say regular, every 10 days, then every week.

Pete Metzelaar (18:31.859)
And when mom and I laid underneath the floorboard, body to body, shaking, with the German soldiers walking a foot and a half over our heads, all it would have taken is one sneeze, one hiccup, one cough, and it would have been all over. Even that got to be too dangerous, according to Klaus. And one day Klaus told me at dusk, and I want to emphasize the word dusk.

Again, for the youngsters, of course, it being when it started to get dark. As I mentioned, mom and I were on that farm for over two and a half years. During that entire time, neither my mother nor I could ever, ever come outside during daylight hours for two and a half years. Never. The reason being, of course, there are other farms in the area.

People get used to each other and you don’t know whose side of the political realm, if you want to call it that, you don’t know what side they’re on. We could never come outside because if somebody saw one of us, they’d probably say, hey, hey, who are they? We don’t exist. We don’t have a body. We don’t have a soul. We can’t communicate because that might be the last time we ever will. So we could never come out.

only a dust when I got dark. had made some homemade toys that I could play with away from the dirt road in the back of the farm at night and mom could take a breath of fresh air. So one day Klaus at dusk told me to get a wheelbarrow and a couple of shovels in about 100, 150 feet from the farmhouse or a little forest, can call it a forest, maybe half an acre of trees.

Then we got to a certain rise in the ground and he told me to help start digging. After a couple of nights, we ended up with a hole in the ground against this little hill, maybe three feet wide, maybe two feet tall, six feet deep. Klaus went out of the area and cut down some small trees that he just dropped randomly over the top of this hole. He took the branches and interwoven them.

Pete Metzelaar (20:55.735)
by the entrance. In other words, to get in, you’d kind of have to separate, step in and crawl in there and they would kind of snap back. You could stand two feet in front of it. It just blended into its nature. Couldn’t tell there was anything there. So now when mom and I heard the trucks coming down the road, we’d run out the back of the farm and we’d crawl into this hole. It scared the, you know, what’s out of me every time.

It was just big enough for mom and I, body to body, lay in this hole. And the two things that I remember very well that scared me more than anything else. Every time that we crawled into this hole, dirt came trickling down. And of course, I was always afraid it was all going to fall in on us. The thing that I remember more than anything else, as I mentioned, it was only about 100, 150 feet from the farm.

Doug Dvorak (21:43.573)
Sure.

Pete Metzelaar (21:52.767)
when we lay trembling in that hole, we could hear them ransacking the farm, looking for us, but I couldn’t see them because of the camouflage by the entrance in the front. So I heard them, but I couldn’t see them. And the thing that I was all this time, even though this whole horrible event had only been in making of a year.

between the time that we left Amsterdam and came and I had the awareness that terrible things I can’t use the word kill but I knew something terrible terrible is gonna happen and the thing that scared me more than anything else hearing them but not being able to see them laying in that hole is that this time they’re gonna come and get me what did I do I’m a kid where’s dad where’s grandma

Doug Dvorak (22:46.857)
Right.

Pete Metzelaar (22:48.661)
What are we doing in this hole? It scared the heck out of me because I heard them, but I didn’t know if they were coming. Well, I’m talking either in front of an audience. I’m talking to the folks right now. They never made it in there. They never made it into that forest. It was in the middle or toward the end of actually of 1943.

Pete Metzelaar (23:20.311)
that the Allies, the British and the Americans, started to run bombing raids over the Germany to try and wipe out Hitler’s war machine. They flew what was referred to as a B-17 flying fortress. Very well known here in the Northwest, the Boeing Corporation and their affiliates built 13,000 of them.

Doug Dvorak (23:43.551)
Mm-hmm.

Pete Metzelaar (23:49.303)
Those were four-engine, propeller-driven, and I always have to tell that to some of the younger kids. What do you mean, propeller-driven? What’s a propeller-driven airplane? It was just coincidental that when they flew from Great Britain over to Germany, it just was coincidental that the little farm mom and I were hiding on happened to be underneath the flight path.

Doug Dvorak (24:17.393)
no.

Pete Metzelaar (24:18.423)
They came over, they came over in groups of up to a thousand of those aircraft. A thousand in formation. Matter of fact, I have heard that that was the beginning of what people have heard of, referred to as carpet bombing. They flew in such close formation. Unfortunately, out of the…

Doug Dvorak (24:26.909)
a thousand B-17s? Wow.

Pete Metzelaar (24:46.551)
13,000. Each one of these had a crew of 10. When they got shut down, even though they were escorted by fighters as witnessed on the left photograph, when they got shut down, not many of those courageous crew got out. So to curtail the loss of life and material, the command in England decided to run those raids that night.

It was one of these first night raids. I could hear them coming. The windows started to rattle. The ground shook. I got petrified that time to such an degree I had to use the toilet facility something terrible. But I was too afraid to go outside in the dark by myself. With all this racket overhead, so I asked my mom to take me, which she did.

We stepped outside of the farm and we’re standing in the dirt. The noise overhead was absolutely deaf. I mean, it was, I can’t even describe it. The roar of these aircraft flying overhead. You could look up, couldn’t see anything. It was nighttime. And then a strange thing happened. My mom had a little flashlight.

And just so I wouldn’t trip over my own two feet in the dark, walking in the dirt on the way to the outhouse, my mom turned the light on so that I could see where I was going. When she did, when I say something strange happened, it certainly did. I smacked her in the abdomen with such force that she doubled up.

Doug Dvorak (26:38.752)
no.

Pete Metzelaar (26:39.143)
Many years later, we laughed about it. It wasn’t very funny. What was that all about? Well, I always like to refer when I talk to an audience the fact that whether you’re an adult or whether you’re a youngster, there is some part of your life that you have been faced with a terrific situation, something that either as a kid or for that matter as an adult scared that you know what’s out of. Well,

The brain that sits on top of our shoulders, our head, many times compensates. In certain times, it is compensated to the extent of, things are not as bad as they seem. What are you shaken about? Or go the opposite. Hey, it could be worse. You know, don’t think this is an easy matter. It could be worse. It’s a psychological element that the brain

tries to protect us human beings. Well, that is exactly what happened to this seven and a half year old. When mom turned on that little flashlight in the mind of a seven year old, I was convinced the bomb was gonna come right down that flashlight. It was just a psychological aspect of total, total fear. Absolutely total, total fear. Well,

Doug Dvorak (27:55.742)
Wow.

Pete Metzelaar (28:07.487)
Mom and I, as I mentioned, we were on that farm for about two and a half years. The raids became more prevalent as the war progressed. And in her wisdom, my mom decided we need to find another place to hide. The likelihood of getting caught became more vivid all the time, more likely. Not only would it, of course, be the end of us, mom and myself.

But it would be the end of Klaus and Rufina, those dear people, not only them, but they and their entire family would be arrested and sent to a death camp for helping two Jewish people. How my mom, again, got hold even being on the farm, get one of those secret people, so-called underground, I have no idea. I really don’t know. But she did.

Doug Dvorak (29:02.239)
But also the interesting thing, Pete, is not only first time to find Klaus and Rofino, but then in her infinite wisdom to be lucky and at the right place at the right time again for those two women in the Hague.

Pete Metzelaar (29:17.175)
Exactly. Yes, the underground came up with a couple of women in the city of The Hague. The Hague, of course, is the seat of government in the Netherlands and Holland, like our Washington, D.C. is. And those women were willing. They lived in a four-story walk-up apartment and they were willing to shelter us. To this day, I don’t recall their names.

I don’t even know why they did what they did because it was an entirely different environment.

Doug Dvorak (29:50.697)
How long were you with those two women, you and your mom in the Hague?

Pete Metzelaar (29:53.111)
of nine months. And the thing was that the Germans, in order to feed their military, put down stamp requirements for the non-Jewish people, for them to just go to the market and buy food. They got a limited number of stamps. Of course, the Jewish people weren’t given any, so we had to rely on

whatever the word is, the goodness sharing of those people. They were not very nice, those were. I mean, we ended up eating scraps. We just never went through this with Klotz and Rufino on the farm. There was hardly any communication. They didn’t talk much to us. And we were hungry all the time. And I have to say that I remember within that period of time, I don’t know why, these two times might have been more, where at night on a couple of times my mom disappeared for an hour or whatever and she’d come back with a loaf of bread. Don’t ask, I don’t know. I have no idea why, how she got that. Every time there was any dirty work to be done, whether it was cleaning the floors, the bathroom, those women would ask mom to do it.

I mean, it was so different, so different. There was no compassion. But we had to be thankful. After all, they did give us shelter. It was about six weeks after this, when we got there, that my mom came up with a terrible word I hadn’t heard for over two and a half years.

Can you imagine what this terrible word was? And it was Peter. You haven’t been to school. What do you mean school? I can’t go to school. I’m one of them. She says through the underground, I got some false papers for you. Instead of Peter Metzelaar, you’re now Peter Pelt. Peter Pelt. Never heard of that.

Doug Dvorak (32:12.981)
Peter Pelt.

Doug Dvorak (32:16.981)
Wow.

Pete Metzelaar (32:17.523)
It was with these false papers that I would say was again next to being afraid of being discovered inside of the cave. This was another time that I remember so clearly that I was petrified. Why? For over two and a half years, I am aware that somebody wants to do horrible, horrible things to me.

that horrible, horrible things had happened to my family, that you don’t talk to anybody, that you don’t communicate with anybody, you don’t exist. And now the star came off of my coat and I had to go to a public school. It scared the you-know-what out of me. The reason being, once again, psychologically, having not…

been a human being for this period of time. Every day I went to school, I psychologically felt every kid pointing at me saying, see, hey, there goes one of them. They didn’t know who I was. I was just one of the guys, but it was so indoctrinated in my mind that I was so fearful. It was probably about the end of the first quarter semester, don’t know.

Pete Metzelaar (34:02.877)
One of the things that I always ask kids when I talk to high school or middle school, I ask them, said, do you guys get your grades printed out? Computer print out? Most of them say yes. Well, needless to say, in those days we didn’t have any computers. But the way we got our grades, we had a little booklet called a report book here.

And it is fading, but you can still see Peter Pelt on it. And one of the other things that is somewhat different when you open it up, it’s got the various subjects matter. And as I tell the kids that I’m addressing, and again, this goes over great with the kids, I have to say, I said, take a look. I said, you can see something different. You notice that the grades are numerical.

Not like you guys are getting alphabetical, your A, Bs and Cs. I’m so sorry. I didn’t mean to say Cs. I know everybody here gets A’s and B’s and then I get a big roar. Yeah, sure. Nobody gets Cs. But anyway, there are a couple of fives out of a score of 10. I’m not sure, but it was like an F minus.

Doug Dvorak (35:17.525)
you

Pete Metzelaar (35:31.101)
It had to do with behavior. I did not behave very well, which was really stupid. I probably drew more attention to myself, but I was always afraid that I would be detected. I was always afraid that I had to look behind me. just could never be a human. Now, one of the things that I want to talk about in just a moment.

Doug Dvorak (35:39.402)
Right.

Pete Metzelaar (35:57.719)
is something that many people, even adults, may or may not be familiar with. And that is a question that I always ask, and that is, can anybody tell me the country on the planet, the very first country to develop a missile, a rocket for war purposes? The answer is Nazi Germany.

Doug Dvorak (36:22.473)
No clue.

Pete Metzelaar (36:27.049)
Nazi Germany had a very brilliant young student, I guess you can call him. His name was Werner von Braun. And Werner von Braun, when he was 21 years old, got his PhD, his doctorate in physics. And he and his scientists developed what became known as a V2 rocket.

not a jet, a rocket. It stood 65 feet tall. It had a 2,500 pound explosive on it. And they launched it from the entire west coast of Europe, everything from Scandinavia down to the Netherlands, Belgium, France, Spain. And they fired these things daily over to England, where the bombs came from. Unfortunately, Hitler was in a big hurry to get these operational.

and many of them never got to military bases. Some of them landed on some of the major cities and killed, history books show, where it killed almost 10,000 Brits. Where those things never even made it to military bases. They fired them to some large ports in the continent of Europe, like Rotterdam, one of the world’s largest ports in Holland. Antwerp, one of the largest ports in Belgium.

Doug Dvorak (37:38.837)
Mmm.

Pete Metzelaar (37:55.515)
And that was just almost on a daily basis. Now I’m going to go one step further. This is something that is something that, again, I don’t remember when I found out, but hard to believe. I will ask the question again, who and what people and what individuals or group of individuals

in 1969 referred to as the Apollo mission put America on the moon. It was Nazi Germany. It was Werner von Braun and his scientists who developed something up until just a few months ago was the most powerful rocket ever developed.

It was referred to as the Saturn V rocket. An unbelievable accomplishment. Here was the interesting thing that I always like to point out. At the end of the war, the Soviet Union, the United States, Great Britain and France tried to apprehend as many of the, what I like to call the butchers of the Holocaust.

Doug Dvorak (38:57.086)
Wow.

Pete Metzelaar (39:21.877)
the politicians, the generals, of course, at least those that haven’t escaped the country to South America, even the United States and Canada. However, politics being what it is, and I don’t go into names, I don’t go into any great detail. That’s the one thing I like to stay away from is politics. But I have to refer this to the word politics at the end of the war.

trying to apprehend these butchers when it came to Bernard Von Braun and 500 of his scientists, the United States says, hey guys, come on over, we can use you. And it was they in Huntsville, Alabama that developed this monster, monster rocket. It was referred to,

as the most powerful up until just a few months ago and is referred to as Operation Paperclip. Look that up on Google. You can read about it.

Here is a photograph on the left of the V2 rocket being fired up. The picture at the bottom.

Doug Dvorak (40:33.493)

Pete Metzelaar (40:46.461)
And the picture on the right shows in his cities, Wernher von Braun with the butchers. And the top picture over there shows Wernher von Braun in his later adult life in front of the Saturn V rocket, which is what boosted the United States to the moon. An interesting science story, if you will.

The British, needless to say, were not thrilled, to say the least, about these rockets coming over. So they had a very famous bomber on the left called the Lancaster. And as part of World War II, one of the most respected and foremost fighter planes on the right called the Spitfire. And they used to come and try and bomb out the launching facilities of the rockets. Well, it was a difficult thing because the Germans were certainly not stupid. And some of those launching facilities were in the back of railroad cars, so they moved them around. But the bottom line was they would send the fighters over to soften things up, and they would be…

Doug Dvorak (42:00.885)
Mmm.

Pete Metzelaar (42:13.527)
encountered by the German Luftwaffe, the German Air Force, and there would be dogfights. Now, like all cowards,

the Germans put anti-aircraft artillery on top of rooftops, as you can see in the left picture, in the middle of the city.

Pete Metzelaar (42:42.475)
hoping of course that the German, that the British wouldn’t bomb and kill civilians. Well, one of the things that just happened was the fact that there used to be dog fights over the cities. Today in modern warfare, you don’t hear too much about dog fights. Today you have a sophisticated machine.

Doug Dvorak (42:42.517)
Wow.

Pete Metzelaar (43:10.231)
capable of 2,000 miles an hour and then some with a very highly sophisticated and trained pilot. All he does is hit a button and some missiles leave his wing tips and 100 or 200 miles down the road some people get their brains blown out, some for good, some not. But these raids when the British came over and then the German Luftwaffe

Doug Dvorak (43:28.757)
Hmm.

Pete Metzelaar (43:38.443)
would intercept and they would try to shoot each other down. Well, the result of that particular event would create something called shrapnel. Shrapnel? What is shrapnel?

Pete Metzelaar (44:02.091)
Here’s a picture of some pieces of shrapnel. is exploded ammunition, anti-aircraft ammunition, exploded bombs, you name it. There were steel, jagged, nasty looking. And as I always tell the kids when I talk to a younger audience, in the United States, and most of the youngsters are familiar with it, we have a thing called trading cards, right?

National Hockey League, the NBA, the NFL, hey Charlie I’ll trade you ho ho ho for ha ha ha, whatever it happens to be. Well, no such thing existed in those days and probably still doesn’t in Europe. But leave it up to the kids and I happen to be one of them. Get ready for this. These raids, when they came over and these encounters between the British

Air Force and the German Luftwaffe created pieces of shrapnel that you could walk on the street and you could find these people, you could find these pieces of shrapnel and the kids used to collect them and trade them. The next day in school you’d say, hey Charlie look at this funny one I’ll trade you for these two you got there.

Doug Dvorak (45:17.493)
Wow.

Pete Metzelaar (45:25.577)
Are you kidding me? Exploded pieces of ammunition we used to trade. It was on a Sunday afternoon. This apartment where these women gave my mom and I shelter was about a block or so away from a park. And it was on a Sunday. My mom got courageous, took the star off and walked to the park to get some fresh air during daylight hours. It was on a Sunday. We no sooner get to the park.

And the air raid sirens sounded, meaning the Brits are on their way over. The Germans are going to intercept all you know what is going to break loose. Dogfights over the city. Everybody ran into these underground bunkers, bomb shelters. They were stinky, smelly, filthy, but it was safe. You could hear bombs exploding. You hear the Radek type machine guns.

And that could last from 20 minutes to a half an hour or so. On this particular day, I don’t remember how long it was, half an hour or so. And the oral clear sounded. Well, we came out and I was walking. Keep in mind this is on a Sunday. School tomorrow. So I was holding my mom’s hand and I’m looking on the street to find pieces of shrapnel to trade in school tomorrow.

the next day. As we walked along, I look up ahead and probably 25, 30 feet in front of me, there was a piece of shrapnel I had never, ever seen anything that big. It was probably three times bigger than those three pieces that you see on the screen now. It was jagged looking, but all I had to think of, I got to get this sucker.

Doug Dvorak (47:13.339)
Wow. Mmm.

Doug Dvorak (47:20.755)
Ha

Pete Metzelaar (47:21.077)
because if somebody wants to trade me for that, they’d have to give me everything they ever collected. Nobody had ever seen anything that big.

Doug Dvorak (47:29.629)
Yeah, Pete, but this is fascinating, but it’s it’s, you know, when you use the analogy for kids nowadays, when I grew up, I collected, you know, baseball cards, but the ravages of war to to find different things. Fascinating.

Pete Metzelaar (47:47.595)
different things.

So I see this jagged looking thing and I say, I gotta get this thing, you know, for sure. So I pull away from my mom. I remember I had red gloves, all the crazy things to remember. I remember I was wearing red gloves and I ran over to that thing and it took two hands to pick it up. It was that heavy, jagged, nasty looking, but I didn’t care. I was gonna be a big shot in school the next day. So I picked this thing up and I do remember.

When I picked it up, even though I was wearing gloves, came through my gloves, but who cares? I’m going to be a big shot. That’s all I care. So I picked this thing up and I was so proud of it. And I showed my mom and she doesn’t say anything. She takes one look at that and takes her hands underneath mine holding this thing and makes me heave it away. It wasn’t 10 seconds.

when all of a sudden, there was an explosion in back of me. There’s like a 10 inch crater in the street. I have no idea what it was I picked up, but whatever it was, it was live. It exploded. My only regret was I was gonna be a big shot in school the next day. Of course I wouldn’t be sitting here. I wouldn’t be sitting here talking.

Doug Dvorak (49:06.815)
Wow.

Pete Metzelaar (49:20.823)
either. Well, there was a conference called by Adolf Hitler in the city south of Berlin called the 1C, W-A-N-S-S-E-E, 1C conference, where he brought some of the politicians and some of the generals together. And in the meeting of one hour and 20 minutes,

During that meeting, they came up with the history books today refer to as the final solution, how to eradicate every person of the Jewish faith from the face of Europe. When that came about, those raids that I intermittently keep talking about now became 24-7. Where do you live in the farmland? Where do you work in this city?

kicking doors down, arresting people, bringing them to heaven knows where. No idea where they went. How my mom found out, it is probably a question that I gave her, that I asked of her, I don’t know how many times, and either she forgot, she wanted to forget, she didn’t, whatever it was, but mom found out those two women got scared that we would get caught.

and by them giving us shelter that would be the end of them, they were going to turn us in. So we had to get out of there. Once again, don’t ask, mom got hold one of these underground people and they came up with a one room apartment back in Amsterdam. Well, the city of Amsterdam and The Hague are probably only about 45 miles apart, not very far.

In those days, there was only one highway connecting the two cities. However, no civilians allowed. It was strictly used by the German military for German transport. I wake up one night and my mom is sitting at a little table with a candlelight, whatever it was, what to me looked like a bunch of bed sheets and she is sewing. I said, what are you doing?

Doug Dvorak (51:30.293)
Mmm.

Pete Metzelaar (51:43.637)
says, go back to sleep. I went back to sleep two, three hours later, whatever it was, I woke up and she had my hand out of these bedsheets made a skirt. She made a top with some buttons and a little hat. She made a nurse’s uniform. I said, what are you doing? She says, get dressed. We got to get out of here. It was, I don’t know, two, three in the morning.

Doug Dvorak (52:03.198)
Wow.

Pete Metzelaar (52:13.407)
She bundled me up. It was winter time. We had no belongings. We tippy-toed out of the apartment. And as we’re trudging through the snow, looking every which way, because there were curfews, to be sure that there wasn’t anybody that could see us, I said, Mom, where are we going? She says, don’t talk, Pete. I don’t want to hear your voice. As we were walking a little further. Now, by this time, I’m 10 years old.

And all of a sudden I realized something. says, Mom, we’re not going to that highway, are we? She says, Peter, we got to get to Amsterdam. I said, no, no, please. I was so scared. said, you know, it’s for the German. It’s the people that represent killing us. I said, it’s for the soldier. Nobody is allowed to be on that highway, let alone who we are. She says, just be quiet. Don’t talk.

As daylight came about, I could see troops marching, tanks on flatbed trucks. I was petrified. Now we get right to the highway. And I use the expression, now I know the doo-doo is going to hit the fan. My mom gets by that highway. I’m holding onto her for dear life. And she sticks her thumb out.

like hitchhiking, said, what are you doing? She says, I told you, don’t talk. Don’t say a word. Whatever it was, five, 10 minutes later, a big flatbed truck stops and a Nazi SS. Of course, the SS were the worst of the worst, the ones with the black uniforms with the skull on their caps.

And this S officer gets out and starts to read my mother the rioting. What are doing here with a child? No civilians allowed. Blah, this is for the fatherland. Blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. I have no idea why this guy would even give my mom a chance to explain. And here was her story. She says, sir, you know about the British trying to bomb the V2 rocket site? Yai, yai, yai. So,

Pete Metzelaar (54:36.351)
Well, just the other day, one of the British bombs went astray and hit the apartment house. The kid pointing at me was living and it killed his father and it killed his mother. As you can see, I’m a nurse for the International Red Cross and I’m taking him to an orphanage in Amsterdam. Apparently the guy didn’t say anything, but he grabbed my mom by the arm. I’m hanging on to her for dear life.

and he walks the two of us over to the back part of this flatbed truck. Now he separates me from my mother. Keep in mind, she’s my only security. I am out of my gorgeous fright. He walks mom over to the cab of the truck and the German SS officer, the driver is still in the driver’s seat and he helps my mother into the cab of the truck.

Doug Dvorak (55:35.797)
Hmm.

Pete Metzelaar (55:36.329)
Now he comes back for me. I don’t know what’s going to happen to me. He doesn’t say anything. He picks me up, puts me in the snow in the back part of this big truck. He walks over to the cab of the truck and gets in. My mom is sitting between the two German officers. I’m sitting by myself in the snow. And thank you very much.

They took us where we wanted to go. Mom fooled them. She fooled them. I always get excited when I, how did she ever come up with, you know, a plan like this? How did she ever, how do you come up with ideas like that? Unbelievable, but they took us, took us to Amsterdam.

Doug Dvorak (56:10.302)
Wow.

Doug Dvorak (56:31.921)

Pete Metzelaar (56:42.039)
Okay, it was in May of 1945, exactly five years after the occupation of Holland, that the Canadians liberated the Netherlands, liberated Holland. The war was over. Nobody in my family returned.