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

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It was in Malmo, crammed in a town hall to register, that she revealed her true identity for the first time in years. The story transitions to the Nazi occupation. Her brothers would soon leave the Netherlands—one as a merchant marine, and the other with his Dutch army unit that moved to England after the collapse of the Dutch government. Over time, the Van De Perre family began to realize that the occupation would be trouble for the Jewish community. Eventually, Selma’s father was summoned by the authorities and sent to a work camp in the Netherlands. While there, he was able to write letters to the family. However, he was soon sent to Auschwitz, where he was murdered. 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.

One day rumors began spreading around the camp that they were going to be freed. At first, De Perre said they did not believe the news. What a talent, what a career, what a life, and what a treat to relive it all with this most down-to-earth of demigods. 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'. 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.I have a workshop with German students. They are always very emotional; they’re very interested. I ask: “Do you ask your grandparents about the war?” And they all say, “Yes, but they don’t want to talk about it.” After De Perre concluded her talk, Col. Brandon R. Hileman, 86th Airlift Wing vice commander, thanked her and presented her with a gift as a token of appreciation. 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.

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. I definitely think Selma kept the readers at arm's reach in this book, and I'm not sure if I really understood who she was deep down (for example Edith Eger's The Choice, I really felt like I knew Edith and her personality). But also I find this extremely understandable as Selma is telling us about an extremely traumatic time in her life that she might not want to deep dive into too much, 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’s two older brothers survived the war in the United Kingdom, where she moved, too, starting a family and working as a journalist. 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.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. In recent weeks we heard about a story that was almost as remarkable as Ariana’s. It belonged to ninety-eight year-old Dutch Holocaust survivor called Selma van de Perre. Selma was just eighteen years-old when World War Two began. Her family were members of th populous Jewish community in Holland. Until 1940 this had been of little consequence, but in the aftermath of the Nazi invasion they were targeted for deportation. 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 1942, when I was 20, I was called up to go to a work camp. My father said, “No, you don’t go,” and he gave me some chocolate that made me go to the toilet all the time. He called the doctor, who wrote me a note. I soon went to work in a fur factory, making gloves and things for German soldiers in the East. But then my father got his call-up to go to a work camp. I said to my mother, “We have to go into hiding.”

Being in the resistance “maybe sounds scary and dangerous, and it is, but it also gets mundane,” she said.

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.

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. 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. 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) De Perre and her family were of Jewish descent, meaning they too were a target in 1940s Europe. As persecution against the Jews increased, De Perre knew it was no longer safe for them to stay where they were.

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The wartime hero has received both Covid vaccine jabs, and offered a pointed piece of perspective for young people living through the pandemic. Hans van Zon, Verzetsvrouw Selma van de Perre: 'Elke dag ben ik blij dat ik leef'. Het Parool( 7 januari 2020).Geraadpleegd op 13 januari 2010. Selma’s close, loving, perpetually nomadic family dispersed. One brother served in a medical unit of the Dutch military; another became a ship engineer. Selma’s father, an actor whose talents she may have inherited, was sent to a work camp. Her mother and younger sister went into hiding. There was space only for two, leaving Selma, who had barely escaped deportation to Poland, on her own. 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 komt over als een onverschrokken heldin. Het boek leest als een spannend avontuur (want je weet dat het in ieder geval voor haar goed afloopt). Schrijnend vond ik het gat waarin ze viel na de oorlog. Hoe ze door sommige mensen gediscrimineerd werd omdat ze Joods was, hoe ze in haar eentje haar traumatische ervaringen probeerde te verwerken. Hoe ze er achter moest komen dat haar ouders en zusje van 15 vermoord waren.