My Name Is Selma: The remarkable memoir of a Jewish Resistance fighter and Ravensbrück survivor

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Selma van de Perre and her son, Jocelin, during a presentation of her book at the National Holocaust Museum in Amsterdam, January 9, 2020. (Cnaan Liphshiz/JTA) How normal people, like their grandparents, could have supported the National Socialist German Workers’ Party. I always think, “How could they?” But it happens all over the world still, doesn’t it? People follow dictators before they know what’s going to happen. This story has been held by Selma for decades, it's a story that should be heard and a book that should be available in every secondary school. Selma van de Perre is interviewed about her book at the National Holocaust Museum, Jan. 9, 2020. (Cnaan Liphshiz) My Name is Selma” is a cousin to Judy Batalion’s recent “The Light of Days,” which focused on the Polish Jewish women in the anti-Nazi resistance. Like many of Batalion’s subjects, Selma Velleman did not look stereotypically Jewish. With her hair dyed blonde, she was able to assume a non-Jewish identity and work as a courier for the resistance. She passed as Margareta van der Kuit, or Marga, and that persona almost certainly saved her life.

She declined and, spooked, told her boss. But he convinced her to meet with her admirer and steal his identity papers. Selma managed it, unscathed. Selma van de Perre, who spent years concealing her Jewish identity, went under the alias ‘Marga’ as she criss-crossed the Netherlands delivering critical documents including letters and false identity papers. My strategy was to flirt with the soldiers in the waiting room. They responded and gave suggestive looks, so it was clear my plan was working. A Jewish Holocaust survivor who fought in the Dutch resistance has spoken about the moment she came terrifying close to being caught by the Nazis while travelling under a false name.Women who were disabled or impaired started being singled out and put into groups, said De Perre. The Nazis told them that these women did not have to work anymore-- they were gassed. En toen..., en toen..., en toen... wordt afgewisseld met -dus- zinnetjes. Iedere redacteur heeft toch wel gehoord van " show don't tell"? En dat -dus- niet nodig is, en zelfs irritant is? Vooral in het begin had ik moeite om hier doorheen te lezen. Staccato zinnen, soms teveel feitjes en namen en kinderlijk woordgebruik. Heel zonde, want deze inhoudelijk zo belangrijke getuigenis greep mij daardoor niet zo aan als je zou verwachten met dit onderwerp.

Selma van de Perre, neé Velleman, was born in the Netherlands on 7 June, 1922. She was the child of liberal Jewish parents, had three siblings and lived in Amsterdam. Van de Perre is the daughter of Jewish actor, singer, and presenter Barend Velleman and Fem Spier. [3] [4] Van de Perre had two older brothers, David and Louis, and a younger sister, Clara. The family was liberal and, while Jewish, were not practicing Jews. [3] [4] Her eldest brother sailed with the Dutch Steamboat Company during the war, while her youngest brother was in England. [3] In 1942, Van de Perre was called to report to work in a fur factory that supplied the German army, but she managed to get an exemption. [4] When her father was arrested later that year and taken to Camp Westerbork, Selma helped her mother and sister go into hiding in Eindhoven. [3] Resistance [ edit ] During another mission, she made out with a German officer and stole documents from him to help the resistance forge Nazi papers they could use to infiltrate bases where their fighters were being kept. The book begins with her early days, introducing many members of her extended family and describing her family’s nomadic life as they moved around the Netherlands because her father was in show business. There are many details about the interpersonal relationships within her extended family and how these impacted Selma as a girl and young woman. We also meet her two older brothers and younger sister. She found herself delivering what she called “illegal papers” for the resistance around Holland and in other European countries. She also transported money used for the cause and also to pay families which housed Jews hiding from persecution.Selma had learnt enough about the resistance to find someone who could hide her mum and sister with a family, but it was too costly for her to stay with them. The title of the book is pivotal and when 'my name is Selma' comes up in the narrative, it was so poignant that I cried as I read the words.

Selma van de Perre was seventeen when World War II began. Until then, being Jewish in the Netherlands had not been an issue. But by 1941 it had become a matter of life or death. On several occasions, Selma barely avoided being rounded up by the Nazis. While her father was summoned to a work camp and eventually hospitalized in a Dutch transition camp, her mother and sister went into hiding—until they were betrayed in June 1943 and sent to Auschwitz. In an act of defiance and with nowhere else to turn, Selma took on an assumed identity, dyed her hair blond, and joined the Resistance movement, using the pseudonym Margareta van der Kuit. For two years “Marga” risked it all. Using a fake ID, and passing as Aryan, she traveled around the country and even to Nazi headquarters in Paris, sharing information and delivering papers—doing, as she later explained, what “had to be done.”

It was in Malmo, crammed in a town hall to register, that she revealed her true identity for the first time in years. In January this year we released a compelling and deeply moving episode of Travels Through Time which looked at the year 1944. Our guest for that episode was the Venezuelan author Ariana Neumann. Over the course of an hour Ariana told us what had happened to her Czech Jewish family over the course of that year. She explained how her grandparents had been transported east to the camps and how her father, Hans, had found refuge and evaded the Nazis in the most unlikely of all places: Berlin. My Czech friend told me, ‘Keep your chin up’... to think of nice things. I learnt to push bad thoughts away.” Byli ludzie którzy ryzykowali własnym życiem ,ukrywając Żydów ,ale i byli tacy którzy "sprzedawali" jednych i drugich czerpiąc z tego korzyści :(.

Selma van de Perre and her son, Jocelin, during a presentation of her book at the National Holocaust Museum, Jan. 9, 2020. (Cnaan Liphshiz) Her interrogators didn’t question her identity, though one asked why her hair was dyed – her roots were showing. Early in her double life, she was stopped by German officers while holding a ‘huge suitcase’ full of boxes of illegal documents, en route to Poland.Even as a “non-Jew” she was beaten. Desperately ill at times, she avoided hospital as few patients were kept alive. Apart from being beaten and tortured, De Perre and her fellow prisoners were also subject to starvation. De Perre said they were not given lunch despite working for so many hours and not being paid. After a long day of work the prisoners would be given a slice of bread and so-called coffee. Selma’s story is one of huge courage. She has written of her experiences in a memoir called My Name is Selma, and we thought that the best person to talk to her about her story was Ariana Neumann – whose own family were persecuted in such a similar way.