Dutch uncles

These are the two remaining Boot brothers. The first photo is of  Pete Bood. He is a Boot but his name was misspelled on the birth record. He says he's fine with it because being a Boot carries painful emotional baggage for him.   There are only two Boot brothers of Nicolaas Boot, (dad's father) left. We visited with them both. The second photo is of Uncle Koos (Jacobus) He took our breath away a little whe we saw him because he looks more like Dad's father and this is how we think dad's "papa" would look now if he were alive.

I took a lot of notes as we listened to Pete talk/ rant/opine/ramble. He has a painful history. He was held in captivity on the Russian front during WW2. Rob and Robbie asked a lot of questions. He was quick to point out "You can write it all down and you can read it in a book but you'll never know what I went through."  He said he was beaten so badly by the Germans on a daily basis, that eventually he stopped feeling it. "They always picked me out of a line up because I had a defiant look on my face. Every night 20 soldiers would die in that concentration camp in Russia." He talked about all the open graves where bodies were dumped regularly. He said there were thousands of these graves.

It was the Russians that freed him from the camp. He even saw Stalin once. When asked who was worse, Stalin or Hitler he replied, "If one kills 500 and the other 1000, it doesn't matter, they are both still killers." In 2003 he received compensation from Germany for being in the concentration camp - $31,000.

There is much pain in his memories that is reflected in his eyes and expression as he talks about the war time.
"you just have to live your life, you can't stop." he said.

"I liked it that my name was mispelled BOOD. I'm the only one in Holland!" he proudly stated. We asked about his brother Nico and we heard that  same thing that we've always heard said about him, that he was a gentleman. "He was a man"  He added this time that he was also a rebel. (This is evidenced by the fact that Nick worked for the Dutch underground during the war. )

"if there was anyone in the family that I got along with it was your mother Nell. Everytime she came to visit she would say, "I came to see you first" with a big smile on her face. I liked that."

"I always argued with my mother but I got along with my dad.

When asked about his parents, Pieter and Elizabeth Rid Boot he said,  "My father was so religious that you got sick of it and he was greedy! He would give us money but then we had to give him back .10 for every 1.00. (I think he was taking out tithing for them and this would be anything but greedy)  He was friends with a lot of Jews. They gave him their money and other valuables to him for safe keeping, and when they disappeared ....

Now here's the hard part of his history. The camps were physically torturous, but the more painful memory for him is the knowledge that his parents turned him in to the Nazi's!
 When we visited with him a few years ago he wept as he retold the story. This time he said he didn't want to talk about it. "I don't know completely what happened but I forgave my father completely when I got back - I just decided to."  He did add that he believed his mother made his father turn him in. Wow....

Years ago I heard Mam say that she thought his parents turned him in because he was hiding. They didn't want to get shot for "hiding" someone. Elyn recalls that mam said that the parents knew that one of their sons was stealing food and they thought it was him...so they turned him in. Years later, another brother, Bernard, confessed to the pilferring.

Our conversation with Piet ended with this insight "If there were only two people in the world there would still be trouble!"