A new book available now is Bert ten Broeke's autobiography. If the name sounds Dutch it is - he was born in a border town with Germany in the north of Holland in 1924. His father was the local butcher and he developed a good knowledge of the meat trade.
In May 1940 came Hitler's armies and airforce which took over Holland. Bert was only 15 at the time, and on turning 16 he was expected to serve apprenticeship for the Reich and was sent to an Arbeidsdienst camp in Oosterwolde; this was followed by deportation to Germany for forced labour. Actually this wasn't so bad: after time in the kitchen of a factory, he was sent to another butcher in a nearby town where he learned more about the meat trade.
But he needed to escape for other reasons and he made his way back to Holland in January 1945, which wasn't an easy thing to do, and experienced the fighting between the liberating Allies and the Germans.
After the war he took up atheletics as an interest and proved very fit, but the Dutch government had disillusioned him - in 1950 he came to New Zealand.
Again his father's trade led into him into butchery and as continental smallgoods or delicatessen meats were unknown in New Zealand (being then a 'good old British country'), he pioneered their introduction with his own butcher shops and later a purpose-built factory in Porirua. Competitors emerged, but somehow Brook's Smallgoods were considered the best - Dutch business sense helped too.
The brandname still exists today, but the factories were bought by Crown Consolidated in 1980, and the products aren't quite as good as they were when Bert was in charge.
The book has 90,000 words on 192 pages in 240 x 170 mm format with 20 pages of illustrations, two thirds in colour. A great read!
No comments:
Post a Comment