Peperzak: 'Respect your fellow humans'
<p>By her helping hands, and in conjunction with the Dutch Underground, Carla Peperzak helped hide some 40 Dutch Jews from the hands of the Nazis during World War II, as well as forging identification and other documents for them and many others. “Respect your fellow humans,” she told Forrest M. Bird students Tuesday. (Photo by LEE HUGHES)</p>
SANDPOINT — It took her 35 years to be slowly drawn back to the religion she turned her back upon after the war.
“I wanted nothing much to do with Judaism,” Carla Peperzak, who helped hide Dutch Jews in the Netherlands during World War II, told a hot room packed with students and a few faculty at the Forrest M. Bird Charter School Tuesday.
So much so she married out of the religion of her birth after the war. Some might see it as an odd reaction considering that Peperzak’s contribution to the war effort was to work with the Dutch resistance to help hide Jews.
Born in 1926 and raised the daughter of a Jewish women’s clothing manufacturer in Amsterdam, Peperzak described her upbringing with her sister as a “good” childhood. The public school she attended was about 30 percent Jewish. She was a member of a mostly Jewish rowing club.
“Life was quite nice,” she said in an accented voice.
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