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

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Selma van de Perre was seventeen when World War Two began. Until then, being Jewish in the Netherlands had been of no consequence. But by 1941 this simple fact had become a matter of life or death. Several times, Selma avoided being rounded up by the Nazis. Then, in an act of defiance, she 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 travelled around the country delivering newsletters, sharing information, keeping up morale - doing, as she later explained, what 'had to be done'. 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. Mathijs Deen, Het Spoor Terug, Mijn naam is Selma deel 1. VPRO( 5 januari 2020).Geraadpleegd op 13 januari 2020. 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 sagt am Ende des Buches, dass sie dieses Buch geschrieben hat, damit man nicht vergisst. Dieses Schreiben gegen das Vergessen finde ich unglaublich wichtig und bemerkenswert. Ich kann nur immer wieder betonen, dass es bald keine lebenden Zeitzeug*innen der Shoah mehr geben wird. Deshalb ist ein Buch wie "Mein Name ist Selma" so wichtig. Wir müssen diese Zeitzeugenberichte lesen. Wir dürfen nicht vergessen. Wir dürfen nicht vergeben. After hours of waiting, there was a little sports car arriving with this very nice tall, blonde Swedish man in it. He told us that he was… a friend of the head of the Swedish Red Cross.” 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. 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. In 1947 kreeg ze op voorspraak van haar broer David een baan op de Nederlandse ambassade in Londen. Ze ging antropologie en sociologie studeren en kreeg een baan bij de BBC Wereldomroep. Daar leerde ze haar latere man kennen, de Belgische journalist Hugo Van de Perre, zoon van de oprichter van De Standaard, Alfons Van de Perre. Ze trouwden in 1955. Na haar afstuderen werd zij lerares sociologie en wiskunde aan de Sacred Heart High School, Hammersmith, Londen. Toen haar man in 1979 plotseling overleed, zette ze zijn werk als buitenlandcorrespondent voort. Tot haar pensioen werkte ze als journalist voor onder meer de BBC en als correspondent voor Avro Televizier en De Standaard. Ze werd Brits staatsburger.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. 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. 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. 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. 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.

After her father left, Selma’s mother and sister left Amsterdam and went into hiding. As there wasn’t room for her, Selma, now twenty years of age, stayed in Amsterdam, working various jobs, and staying with extended family. Eventually, she moved on and began living under a false, non-Jewish identity. Dieses Buch soll Zeugnis unseres Kampfes gegen die Unmenschlichkeit sein. Denn die Grausamkeiten des Zweiten Weltkrieges und die mutigen Taten der Menschen, die ihnen stolz entgegen getreten sind, dürfen nie in Vergessenheit geraten. Mit meinem Buch hoffe ich, einen Beitrag zum Gedenken daran zu leisten." - Selma van de Perre, "Mein Name ist Selma" This book records despair and horror, courage and conviction to a cause, and shows how much a human can use the power of positivity and the will to carry on, to survive. 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.Selma van de Perre and her son, Jocelin, during a presentation of her book at the National Holocaust Museum, Jan. 9, 2020. (Cnaan Liphshiz) 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)