Although he came out of the Holocaust alive, Peter Metzelaar of Seattle was one of millions of survivors who paid the price of intolerance, prejudice, hate and violence.

Metzelaar shared his harrowing story of survival to a packed performance hall at Glacier High School on Thursday morning on Holocaust Remembrance Day.

His family was taken by Nazis in 1942. First his aunt and uncle. Then his grandparents. Finally his father.

Metzelaar, born in 1935 in Amsterdam, was 7 at the time.

Only he and his mother, Ellie, were left. Metzelaar didn’t understand where his family members were taken or why.

The young boy known as Peter Metzelaar ceased to exist and a yellow star of David affixed to his clothes showed the word “jood” Dutch for Jew.

The badges were a form of identification, but also a tactic to dehumanize Jews, Metzelaar said.

His freedom, his identity, his entire being were being erased. In his mind, he became a non-entity.

Metzelaar described the cacophonous raids when German soldiers came to his apartment building in the middle of the night to round up neighbors, friends and classmates never to be seen again.

“The only reason I knew something was wrong is that a couple of my friends weren’t in school the next day. [Then] more friends disappeared. It wasn’t explained to us why,” he said.

The disappearance of people in his building continued.

“Then came the day my mom was pretty upset,” he said.

His mother told him his aunt and uncle had been arrested.

“There wasn’t much time later that grandma and grandpa had been arrested. They’re gone. They’re gone? What does that mean? How do you explain this to a 7-year-old?” he asked.

“The day she really came apart was when my dad was arrested.”

His father had gone fishing in a rowboat.

“That’s the last time we ever saw or heard of him again,” he said.

Somehow his mother contacted a member of the Dutch Underground for help. Mother and son went into hiding on a small farm owned by a couple in their late 50s named Klaas and Roefina Post. There, they were sheltered, fed and treated kindly for more than two years. What still amazes Metzelaar is how caring the hardworking Posts were to complete strangers.

Metzelaar and his mother shared a little bedroom and slept in a closet. In that time Metzelaar and his mother never went outside during the day. Only at dusk could Metzelaar go outside and play with his homemade toys.

Despite the Posts’ kindness, it was a life lived in constant fear: fear of being discovered during raids and sent off to concentration camps, along with the Posts for hiding them.

“Several trucks with dozens of soldiers would ransack farms convinced someone is being hidden, sometimes stabbing bayonets in haystacks [where] sometimes adults and children were hiding,” Metzelaar said.

With around-the-clock raids, Klaas Post created a hideaway under the wood floor.

During one particular raid of the Post farmhouse, Metzelaar was paralyzed by fear as soldiers stood right above their hiding spot.

“Just one cough, one sneeze, one hiccup — it would be all over,” he said.

When it became too risky to hide under the floor, Metzelaar helped Klaas Post dig a 3-foot-wide, 3-foot-tall, 6-foot deep cave into a nearby hill. They placed trees and branches to make a roof and blend it into the surrounding landscape.

Metzelaar couldn’t escape the feeling of being hunted.

“The thing that scared me more than anything else at the time, I was aware someone was hunting me 24/7. Someone wants to murder me 24/7,” he said.

Adding to the relentless fear was the farm’s location underneath the flight path of Allied bomber aircraft.

“The noise was deafening,” Metzelaar said. “The ground shook.”

After 2 1/2 years, his mother decided it was too dangerous for them to stay with the Posts and she located another shelter.

This time it was two women living in The Hague who proved to be very unkind, didn’t provide food, didn’t talk to them and made them do chores, but nonetheless they were thankful for shelter and for their lives.

After three weeks, his mother said it was time he returned to school. After living in hiding for years, he was stunned. With false papers and a new last name, he saw daylight once again and went to school.

Their stay with the women was short. His mother learned the women planned to turn them in.

Once again his mother contacted someone in the Dutch Underground and found an apartment in Amsterdam.

“The only problem was the one highway connecting the two cities were strictly for German convoys, no civilians allowed,” Metzelaar said.

Metzelaar’s mother led them in a daring escape to Amsterdam.

One winter night he woke up to find her hastily sewing white sheets by candlelight. She was making a nurse’s uniform.

“We tippy-toed out of the apartment. Here we were trudging in snow after midnight. It was curfew in a war-occupied county,” he said.

Metzelaar was certain they were going to be killed.

“She turned sideways and started to hitchhike,” Metzelaar said holding up his thumb. “It didn’t take long and an SS officer comes up. The SS were the butchers of all butchers. The worst of the worst.”

Metzelaar was shaking, clutching his mother.

“He starts reading my mom the riot act,” he said.

Artfully, his mother hatched a fictional story that she was a Red Cross nurse transporting Metzelaar, who was orphaned after a bomb hit his house killing his mother and father.

The SS officer led him to the snow-filled flatbed and helped his mother into the cab.

“Here is my mom sitting between two SS officers. They took us to Amsterdam,” Metzelaar said seemingly still in disbelief as he told this to the Glacier students.

During the war, Metzelaar had two very physical brushes with death. One time was while he attended school and picked up a piece of what he thought was shrapnel, which at the time was popularly traded among classmates. Showing the shrapnel, which felt hot, to his mother, she heaved it away where, after seconds, it exploded.

The other time was when he found himself dangling under the fist of an SS officer clutching his collar and holding a gun to his head. At the time, Metzelaar had been collecting wood and while others fled at the approaching officer he wasn’t paying attention.

“He reaches into belt, puts a gun to my head and said, ‘I will give you 10 seconds.’ I didn’t know what stupid game he was playing, but with my skinny legs I ran and I guarantee you I could have won the Olympic games,” Metzelaar said.

By the time Amsterdam was liberated by Canadian forces in spring 1945, freedom was a foreign concept to Metzelaar.

“No one in my family returned. My mom and I were the only survivors. It was very hard to go from a non-entity to a person,” he said.

He and his mother lived in Holland for three more years before coming to the United States.

It wasn’t until more than five decades later that an adult Metzelaar returned to the places where he hid with his mother. He also finally learned what had become of his father and grandparents.

He visited the Post farm and found the Posts had died six or seven years earlier.

“I felt 7 and a half or 8 years old again,” he said.

He went searching for the hillside cave.

“Not five minutes later my son said, ‘Dad come here. I found it,’” Metzelaar said. “It was as we left it 60 years ago. Unbelievable. I carved E and P for Ellie and Peter into the wood.”

Metzelaar then visited the Auschwitz concentration camp in Poland.

“The most inhumane piece of hell,” Metzelaar shouted.

This was where his father and grandparents had been sent.

His grandparents were sent directly to the gas chambers off the train and his father was put to work. Metzelaar said his father survived three weeks until his death.

They were among the 6 million Jews systematically killed by the Nazi regime.

To help young students put in perspective the magnitude of 6 million people, Metzelaar had earlier shown a photo of the World Trade Towers encircled by gray smoke as they were hit by airplanes on 9/11.

“People familiar with this horrible scene of 9/11 when 3,000 innocent people of different faiths, different cultures, different occupations — they had aunts, uncles, children, parents — multiply that 2,000 times. [You] come up with 6 million people of the Jewish faith annihilated — 1.5 million kids your age.”

Metzelaar told the Glacier students the biggest weapon they will have in their lives is knowledge.

“I don’t know if you read the paper. I hope you do. Be informed,” Metzelaar said. “Use independent thought. Research is always available. Confirm everything.”

Posting a quote, Metzelaar asked if students knew who said it.

“‘If you tell a lie big enough and keep repeating it, people will eventually come to believe it.’ The guy that said that — Joseph Goebbels, Hitler’s propaganda minister.”

Metzelaar said his message to students was one of tolerance.

“I hope you folks develop tolerance,” Metzelaar said. “Hopefully we can all make this a better world.”

With that Metzelaar thanked the audience and received a standing ovation.

Metzelaar will speak to Whitefish high schools today. Event organizer Rabbi Francine Roston of the Glacier Jewish Community-B’nai Shalom told students before Metzelaar’s presentation that his personal account was an empowering opportunity to be a witness to history.

“If anyone ever seeks to deny history you are able to testify. I remember the first time in my life I heard a Holocaust survivor tell his story.

“I will never forget. That’s my responsibility. I’m going to pass my responsibility to you. I hope you take it into your mind and into your heart and carry it to one generation,” Roston said.

For more information on Metzelaar, go to www.holocaustcenterseattle.org.

Hilary Matheson is a reporter for The Daily Inter Lake. She may be reached at 758-4431 or hmatheson@dailyinterlake.com.