Peter Nebel
In November of 2018, we flew to the UK for a few more interviews, and additional research in several archives in London. We met Peter Nebel in Northwood, and the first thing we noticed was his impeccable English accent.
We had contacted him after our interview with his older sister Ellen, back in 2017 in Livermore, California (USA). They hadn’t seen each other for a while because of age, health and the distance between them, but he was so happy when we could share a part of the interview we had filmed with Ellen.
Peter shared as many of his war memories and experiences as possible while interrupting the interview now and then to express how sorry he was that he didn’t remember some of the details. This wasn’t caused by a faltering memory, but had everything to do with the fact that Peter was one of the youngest children on Steamship SS Bodegraven, when it left the Dutch harbor of Ijmuiden on May 14th, 1940. That narrow escape on the day Holland was occupied by the Nazis and the 5-day long journey at open see that followed, were orchestrated by Truus Wijsmuller, saving Peter’s life, that of his sister Ellen and 72 other children.
Miraculously, both of Ellen and Peter’s parents and their older sister survived the war as well. They were finally reunited in the late 40’s, long after both he and Ellen had learned how to live without their parents. That complicated their reunion, which for neither of them was a simple and happy new beginning and forced them to find a way to get to know each other again. This process became more complicated because none of them found a way to talk about the war years and everything that had happened in those almost ten years they had been separated as a family.
But Peter made it clear to us during the interview that eventually he had been able to build a worthwhile, steady life in the UK. He became emotional, moved to tears as he reflected on Truus Wijsmuller's act of saving his life. Subsequently, he ended the interview with:
“She deserves every merit there is for people like her”.