Fonds PP - Jakob Peters fond

Jacob Peters was born in 1908 in Neuendorf, Chortitza, South Russia to Abram and Margaretha (Derksen) Peters. He received his early education in the village school, followed by attending the Zentralschule in Nikolaipol (1923-1924) and the Chortitza Teachers Institute (1925-1927. He usually came home to Neuendorf for the summer to help his parents with the farm harvest. In 1928, he told his parents that he was was not coming for the summer, as he and his friend were planning to go to the Caucausus to study plants. It was discovered later that Jakob's real plan was not to study plants, but to escape from Russia. The family found out when they got a letter from him from Persia (Iran). Eventually Jacob and his friends made their way to Germany and from Germany to Brazil in 1930 through the help of Benjamin H. Unruh in Germany. Jakob Peters lived in Brazil until 1933, when he returned to Germany to study in Berlin at the University for Children of German Nationals living abroad. In Brazil he had begun a teaching career. In 1939 he had almost completed his Ph.D. in Education and was hoping to return to South America to teach in Paraguay, when the war broke out in September on that year. When Germany invaded Russia in 1941, Jakob was enlisted as an interpreter on the eastern front and stationed in Orel, Russia. Jakob visited his father Abram Peters in Burwalde, Ukraine three times between 1941 and 1943. In 1942, he brought his sister Anna Peters to Berlin where she worked in a German household and took up nursing studies in Danzig (Gdansk). In 1943 Jakob's parents and other siblings were evacuated by the retreating Germany army and became refugees in Oberschlesian, Germany. In 1944 his sister Anna Peters received word that Jakob had gone "missing in action" and she was given his last effects.