100 Yaar: Dutch Journalist Visits Elim Village Centenarians

In September 2024, Marjon Bolwijn, an author and journalist from the Dutch national daily newspaper de Volkskrant, sat down with two Elim Village resident centenarians as part of her project 100 Yaar (100 Years). Ms. Bolwijn has spent the last three years interviewing over 135 centenarians from across the Netherlands. These stories are published weekly in de Volkskrant, with a selection included in Ms. Bolwijn’s book, Life Lessons from 100-Year-Olds, published in 2022. Though each story is different, they share similarities: positivity, resilience, and the wisdom of life. They provide insight into historical events, societal changes, and daily life over the last century.

During her visit to Canada, Ms. Bolwijn interviewed six centenarians who were born in the Netherlands and emigrated to Canada between 1948 and 1962—including Elim Village residents Neeltje (Nel) Diepeveen and Susan Dotinga. Ms. Bolwijn was impressed by Elim Village for the comfort and safety provided for older adults as well as the way things are lovingly organized. “An inspiration for the Netherlands,” she says.

This is the first of two interviews conducted at Elim Village; the second will be published in the Spring 2025 issue of The Elim Connection.

By Marjon Bolwijn

In 1953, Neeltje Diepeveen emigrated to Canada with her young family. She has been called Nel ever since. For the last 22 years, Nel has lived in Elim Village, first in Independent Living with her husband and more recently in Assisted Living. She speaks English with a heavy Dutch accent and has not forgotten the hard “g” sound, evident when she pronounces the name of her birth village: Scheveningen. Daughter Elisabeth arrives by bicycle—a rare phenomenon in city traffic in Canada—to join her mother at the interview.

What kind of circumstances did you grow up in?

I grew up in a very poor family in Scheveningen. My father was a fisherman. During the First World War he went missing for a long time. After his return I was born, as an afterthought, my mother was already in her 40s at the time. There was ten years between me and my youngest brother above me. My oldest sister had a baby before I was born.

There were various stories going around about my father’s disappearance. One was that he and the crew of the fishing boat had been captured by the English because they were fishing in English waters. In England they would have been locked up in a camp. After returning home, my father decided to stop fishing because he had seen too many colleagues drown. He stayed on shore and started selling fish, in the harbor and on the street, with a cart pulled by first a dog and later a bicycle. At the auction he mainly bought harinkies and plaice.

Thanks to the income of my older sisters and brothers, we were able to move to a larger house in a new neighborhood in Loosduinen, a neighborhood with many large Catholic families. My father started a fish shop at home. I was shouted at on the street – Holland is known for its swear words. The children called me schollekop and schellevis. I smelled like fish, they said, and had few friends.

What was that like for you?

I felt very alone. When I was about seven, I came up with an idea to make friends: I took money from our shop and bought ice creams to share with the other children. That afternoon, I had a lot of friends. The ice cream seller thought it strange to see a little girl with so much money and informed my parents. That was once and never again.

When I was eight years old, my father died from an infection in his neck. Penicillin was not available at that time. The whole family went to see him in the hospital, but I was not allowed to come and was left alone in the house.

How did your mother cope after your father’s death?

She had always loved a joke, but after he died she became quiet and depressed. She took over the fish shop, but sales were not going well. We got money from the government. My mother started doing housework for other families. When I came home from school, she was often not there; the house key was always hidden between the window frame and the screen, so I could get in. The rent on our house became unaffordable, so we moved to a smaller house, where mother sold all kinds of things in the living room: licorice, tea bags, coffee. It was a time of abject poverty. My shoes were too small because there was no money for new ones; my clothes were second-hand, hand-me-downs from a rich family where a sister worked as a maid.

What made you decide to emigrate to Canada?

After WWII broke out, I met Dirk—then just 16 years old—at the Christian Reformed Church youth club. In January 1945, the Occupiers issued a call for compulsory labour. Dirk didn’t want to work for the Nazis. Someone changed the date of birth on his identity card by a year. With the forged card in his pocket, he fled to his grandparents’ farm, in Northern Holland, to avoid being sent to Germany.

On the way, a German soldier checked his ID card. Seeing it was tampered with, the soldier arrested Dirk and sent him to Camp Amersfoort. Dirk returned three months later, very thin.

Five years after the War, we were married. Because of a housing shortage, there was no prospect of improvement in the coming years. Emigrating was not a hard decision; there were advertisements everywhere about the availability of houses and jobs in Canada. And Dirk hoped to leave his Camp Amersfoort experience behind.

And did a better life indeed await in Canada?

We ended up on the outskirts of Edmonton in Alberta, where many Dutch emigrants moved. The house we were promised turned out to be a converted chicken coop on a former farm, no improvement compared to the Netherlands. The roads in Edmonton were muddy because not yet paved; I had a hard time getting through with the stroller. During those first years I was often alone with the children, because my husband worked as an electrician on large projects and only came home on the weekend.

What camp experiences did your husband want to leave behind?

I’m not going to tell you about that.

Nel turns her head away from the visit and closes her eyes. The non-verbal message is clear. In another room, and with Nel’s consent, her daughter Elisabeth tells of the anxiety dreams that caused Dirk Diepeveen to flee from the Netherlands.

After his arrest on the train on January 3, 1945, 16-year-old Dirk was detained in various camps, including more than three weeks in the infamous Camp Amersfoort. The regime in this concentration camp for resistance fighters, communists, Jews, black marketers and men who had attempted to escape forced labor in Germany was known to be brutal; many prisoners were abused, harassed and executed. Dirk was also beaten. He had to chop wood in the forest in the freezing cold, causing his hands to freeze. During one of the many lengthy roll calls, he and other detainees unwittingly watched as a fellow prisoner was beaten to death because he could not stand standing for so long. The teenager was put on a train to Germany with a group of prisoners in February for forced labor. On the way he saw how men who jumped out of the train in desperation were immediately shot.

In a German camp where he was subsequently detained, Dirk contracted dysentery. He could not hold his feces and was forced to eat it from the floor. The critically ill Dirk was admitted to a hospital, where a nurse—using forged papers—helped him escape. He walked back home on foot, sick and exhausted, afraid that he would not survive the journey. To encourage himself, he sang the same song over and over, about prisoners being released.

Like many other war victims returning to the Netherlands, Dirk kept his mouth shut about what he had experienced. No one, not even his own family, showed interest in what he had experienced in detention.

Haunted by his traumatic experiences, his desire arose to turn his back on the Netherlands. But when he emigrated to Canada, his trauma moved with him. For the rest of his life, Dirk would suffer from depression, headaches and stress. He had nightmares every night, which he would relive during the day.

Neeltje suffered with him all those years. At a certain point she could no longer listen to Dirk’s horrific memories and could no longer bear the nightmare journey. She considered leaving him a few times. Instead, she chose a move indoors, to another bedroom. Neeltje always had to be the strongest in the family; she was the basis and arranged everything.

Of the many treatments Dirk received in Canada, only EMDR—which he received at the age of 69—helped. His nightmares disappeared, but the flashbacks and panic attacks during the day increased. He was never able to get his camp experiences out of his mind.

Though the suffering Dirk endured remained with him throughout his life, he and Nel did find a better life in Canada. They developed many close friendships and enjoyed the support of their church community. With their family, they took advantage of the all that the Canadian outdoors offered, spending time fishing, camping and cross-country skiing.

In December 2023, Dirk passed away; finally Nel could leave his war trauma behind. After our interview was completed, I watched the 100-year-old on her bed, in a sound sleep. Above the headboard hung a portrait of her and Dirk on their wedding day, a tribute to their 73 years of marriage.