BY KAREN BOSSICK

Pete Metzelaar was 7 when the Nazis came to his home in the Netherlands, arresting most of his family members.

Metzelaar and his mother hid in a small farmhouse in the countryside where they slept together in a bed inside a closet. They built an improvised cave in the forest to retreat to when Nazis trucks showed up at the farmhouse looking for Jews.

When things became too dangerous, they found another hiding place with two women in The Hague. Peter, his mother and his aunt were the only survivors of his family. He and his mother immigrated to the United States in 1949 where he became a radiology technologist. In California and, later, Seattle.

Metzelaar, now 90, will tell his story of survival, aided and abetted by the Dutch Resistance and his own will to live, in a free talk at 6:30 p.m. Wednesday, Dec. 3, at the Liberty Theatre in Hailey.

“Pete’s talk is extraordinary and proves the importance of living history—and to never forget,” said Lisa Uhlmann, co-founder and president of the Council for Holocaust Awareness of Idaho and co-founder of the Idaho Anne Frank Human Rights Memorial in Boise.

The Holocaust survivor is being brought to Hailey and to Boise, where he will talk at 7 p.m. Tuesday at the Egyptian Theatre, by the Council for Holocaust Awareness of Idaho. The council’s acronym—CHAI-is pronounced “hi” and is Hebrew for “life.”

Uhlmann said its CHAI’s hope that Metzelaar’s visit will prompt Idahoans to learn more about the Holocaust and its worldwide implications, including contemporary dangers of anti-Semitism.

Uhlmann has been involved in bringing a variety of speakers to Boise over the past 30 years, including Miep Gies, who was involved in hiding Anne Frank’s family.

Twenty years ago, she brought in Anne Frank’s half-sister, who survived Auschwitz and married Otto Frank after the war, to Hailey. Demi Moore and Bruce Willis sponsored it at the Liberty Theatre, which they owned before gifting it to Company of Fools.

CHAI also is developing educational Holocaust Trunks featuring Holocaust curriculum that will be available to Idaho teachers at no charge,” said Uhlmann.

She said she wanted to make Metzelaar’s talks free so that everyone—even children—will feel free to come.

“To witness Pete’s story is absolutely off-the-charts extraordinary,” she said.