Peter van Essen

Peter van Essen was born on 15 January 1922 in Apeldoorn. During the final years of the war, the Nazis needed more workers for their factories in Germany and recruited young men from the occupied countries. Peter’s brother, a barber, was snatched off the street and forced to work in a steel mill. “He couldn’t handle it,” Van Essen recalled. Fortunately, his brother found a German barbershop in need of staff and was able to work there instead.

In January 1943, Van Essen received his first letter ordering him to report for work in Germany. He ignored it, but by the fourth letter, the Nazis threatened to send him to a concentration camp if he failed to show up at a local office. A man of faith, Van Essen prayed for guidance. He did not want to go.

Soon after, a member of the resistance approached him and asked if he needed a place to hide. He said yes, marking the beginning of a two-year period in hiding at a farm called ‘De Koekoek’ in the hamlet of Dale near Aalten. He stayed partly in a barn, hidden above a pigsty, where he began keeping a diary.

In 1943, at the age of 21, Van Essen rang the doorbell of a man known as ‘Ome Jan’ (Uncle Jan), the leader of the local resistance in Aalten. His 16-year-old daughter, Henny, opened the door. “She was mopping the hallway,” Van Essen remembered. “She looked cute, though her hair was a mess.” The two would marry in 1947 and emigrated to Canada in 1953, where they had five children. Mrs Van Essen passed away in 2013, and Peter died on 1 November 2018 in Cobourg, Canada.

In 2015, he published his experiences in a book titled Above the Pigsty. Remarkably, his original diary is now in the possession of the National Hiding Museum, which is also mentioned in the book.

With this publication, Peter van Essen has left a valuable legacy, ensuring that stories from the Second World War are preserved and retold. The book is dedicated to the memory of the Canadians who helped liberate the Netherlands from the Nazi regime. This English-language book is available (including as an e-book) via FriesenPress Editions.

Click here for an interview with the author in a Canadian newspaper.