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

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We were liberated on April 23, 1945, by the Swedish Red Cross. We were weak, and so scared when we were taken out of the main camp and left standing outside the gates. We thought we were going to be killed, too, and it was a terrible feeling after all we’d experienced and survived. 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. 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. 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-Velleman (born 7 June 1922) is a Dutch–British resistance fighter. [2] During the Second World War, she worked as a courier, a term that at the time acquired a specific connotation as "messenger of the resistance".

Dan de vorm. Ik behandel dit boek met mijn literaire leesclub, dus moet ik er ook naar kijken als een literaire roman. Maar dat niveau vind ik matig. De redacteur en/of vertaler hebben niet echt hun best gedaan om de herinneringen van Selma bij te schaven tot romankwaliteit. De Perre explained that they were short of people helping in the resistance because so many of them were already being imprisoned or had to go into hiding themselves. As others were being imprisoned, hauled off to concentration camps and even killed, De Perre arranged for her family to be taken to go in hiding in the south of Holland, and eventually met a group of doctors who happened to be members of the resistance. After spending time with many members of the resistance, she made a decision to stand up; she joined the fight against Nazi tyranny. Even as a “non-Jew” she was beaten. Desperately ill at times, she avoided hospital as few patients were kept alive. But the Netherlands also had the highest death rate among Jews in Nazi-occupied Western Europe, a figure reached in no small part due to the collaboration of local “Jew hunters,” who were paid for each Jew they delivered to the Nazis. In her book, an English version of which is due to be published in September, van de Perre describes the fear of being recognized by one of them on the street.

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I decided to flirt with the soldiers at the entrance, creating the impression I needed to deliver something to a relative, a brother perhaps, but at the same time enjoyed being the center of attention for a few young men,” she recalled.

Van de Perre is een dochter van de Joodse acteur, zanger en presentator Barend Velleman en Fem Spier. Zij had twee oudere broers, David en Louis, en een jonger zusje, Clara. Het was een liberaal en warm, volledig geassimileerd gezin. Haar oudste broer voer tijdens de oorlog bij de Hollandse Stoomboot Maatschappij, haar jongste broer zat in ­Engeland. In 1942 kreeg zij een oproep om zich te melden maar wist daaraan te ontkomen door in een bontfabriek te gaan werken die opdrachten voor het Duitse leger uitvoerde. Toen later dat jaar haar vader werd opgepakt en naar Kamp Westerbork gebracht, hielp Selma haar moeder en zusje onder te duiken in Eindhoven. But the war years kept encroaching. She stayed in touch with resistance friends and testified for the colleague who had saved her at the cost of betraying others. In 1983, she received the Dutch Resistance Commemorative Cross. She never forgot her mother, father and sister – all, it turns out, murdered by the Nazis. The loss is “a devastating hole inside me that will never heal,” she writes, and this late-life memoir is dedicated to them.De Perre did not stop resisting the Nazis even while she was imprisoned. When they put her to work, she made some of her work unproductive. De Perre said she intentionally assembled the masks in such a way that they would come loose by the time they would be used. In 1947, Van de Perre secured a job at the Dutch embassy in London with the assistance of her brother David. [3] Van de Perre went on to study anthropology and sociology. After graduating, Van de Perre became a teacher of sociology and mathematics at Sacred Heart High School, Hammersmith, London. She subsequently began work at the BBC Radio Netherlands as a journalist. There she met her future husband, Hugo Van de Perre, a Belgian journalist. [3] He was the son of the founder of De Standaard, Alfons Van de Perre. They married in 1955. When her husband died suddenly in 1979, she continued his work as a foreign correspondent. Until her retirement, Van de Perre worked as a journalist for the BBC and as a correspondent for AVRO Televizier and De Standaard. She later became a British citizen.

New distribution cards were introduced for citizens to collect food, and the group’s plan was to use the ­identities of children who had died in infancy to collect fake papers. I really liked that Selma also put an emphasis on how hard it was to keep going after the war and the depression she struggled with and that she knew other people struggled with as well. And the fact that many survivors were told to just 'keep living' and not to think about the atrocity that had happened to them and their families. As well, Semla briefly described the trauma young Jewish children experienced both living during the war as well as from being separated from parents at a young age, loving their foster parents and then bein returned to parents who were, tragically, all but strangers to them. And that many children never really got over this.Liberation came even before peace through the diplomatic efforts of Count Folke Bernadotte, vice president of the Swedish Red Cross. Selma and other camp survivors were whisked off to Sweden, where they were showered with gifts and kindness. She revealed her Jewish identity and discovered that her brothers were alive in England. After a return visit to the Netherlands, she joined them there, leaving a romance behind. Selma describes her postwar life—she’s still alive today! After the war, she learned that her parents and younger sister had been murdered, and that her two older brothers had survived. She moved to England, where she met her husband, with whom she had a son. In the final chapter, she discusses meeting fellow resistance members and prisoners in the decades that followed the war. I speak to students so they can pass it along to their children, because I think it’s very, very important that our stories are getting through in the future so that it won’t happen [again],” she said.