April 3, 2023
Victoria, B.C., social worker and foster parent was a
member of the Dutch SS and a participant in the Holocaust
From 1958 to 1988, Victoria, B.C., was home to a former member of the Dutch SS who was part of the roundup and arrest of the Netherlands’ Jews in 1942 and 1943. This man also had connections with the Dutch resistance and was instrumental in exempting many—probably hundreds—of former Dutch soldiers from forced labour in Germany.
His name was Jan Jürgen (John) Petersen (1915-1988). He and his family came to Canada in 1952. They initially settled in the Alberni Valley on Vancouver Island before moving to Victoria. Petersen’s life in Canada was as morally conflicted as it had been in the Netherlands. He and his second wife, Susan, became foster parents in 1956, a role they continued to discharge until the early 1970s. Petersen also worked as a social worker from 1963 to 1980. While he was genuinely helpful to some of the young people he served, he also sexually abused others.
The throughline from Petersen’s life during the war to his life in Canada is that while he presented as a genial and charming individual, he was also a subtle and habitual liar and manipulator, someone who periodically violated more sensitive ethical boundaries. In addition, he was seen by some as a spiritual guru, and he devoted much time to occult exploration. During the first half of the 1960s, the Petersen household was not only packed to the rafters with young people—boarders in addition to John and Susan’s own children and the foster kids—the Ouija board was also a frequent focus of attention.
Petersen is the subject of a new biography, A Snake on the Heart – History, Mystery, and Truth: The Entangled Journeys of a Biographer and His Nazi Subject, published by Iguana Books of Toronto and available online. Among author Patrick Wolfe’s motivations for writing the book was to reckon with the fact that Petersen was his spiritual mentor. Wolfe says Petersen was a gifted and troubled man who could be wise and helpful, but whose personal behaviour sometimes flew in the face of his teachings and exploited and damaged others. Wolfe adds that Petersen’s contradictions speak with unusual clarity to the potentials for good and evil that exist in us all.
Petersen’s daughter, Constance, paraphrased a frequent admonition she heard from him: “Do as I say, but not as I do—because I can’t live up to it. But what I say is important.” Wolfe says there are several explanations for this grievous weakness in Petersen’s conduct.
Although researching and writing A Snake on the Heart was a lengthy search for the truth, what ultimately emerged, according to Wolfe, is a cautionary tale, a warning about the dangers of falseness and failing to be truthful to oneself and going badly astray as a result. In the age of “truthiness” and false narratives, the book offers the timely and challenging perspective that “distortion and self-deception will keep us from the bedrock of self-knowledge and fundamentally inhibit our ability to discover and adhere to our best selves.”
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