Selma van de Perre and her son, Jocelin, during a presentation of her book at the National Holocaust Museum, Jan. 9, 2020. (Cnaan Liphshiz)

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. Spears’ vulnerability shines through as she describes her painful journey from vulnerable girl to empowered woman. 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. The debate about Jewish resistance in the Netherlands is of enduring significance because the country spawned one of Europe’s most formidable anti-Nazi networks. The Netherlands saw the first public act of mass insubordination over the fate of the Jews in the 1941 February Strike. It also has the world’s second-highest number of people recognized by Israel for having risked their lives to save Jews from the Holocaust. 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.Es ist nun schon eine Weile her, dass ich dieses Buch beendet habe. Und es fällt mir auch mit etwas Abstand immer noch schwer, darüber zu schreiben. Kurz: Es ist wirklich sehr sehr lesenswert. Und es bewegt. Sehr sogar. Nach all den Jahren im Studium mit dem Schwerpunkt "Jugendwiderstand im Dritten Reich" und nach all den Büchern, die ich schon zu diesem Thema gelesen habe, berühren mich solche Geschichten, solche Lebensläufe immer noch zutiefst. Und ich bin froh und erleichtert, dass es so ist, dass man da offenbar nicht abstumpfen kann. Being in the resistance “maybe sounds scary and dangerous, and it is, but it also gets mundane,” she said. For her, meanwhile, forced labour in the Siemens factory nearby offered some protection and close friendships. 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.”

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. She repeatedly relied on her instincts to skirt disaster. “I didn’t allow the fear to overwhelm me – the desire to thwart the Nazis and help people in danger was stronger,” she writes. The costs included stomach aches and a traumatizing state of constant vigilance. Every day is a danger. Every job is a danger, but you have to do it. You took it on to do, and it becomes almost a daily job, like going to the office except it’s more dangerous.” It only vaguely occurred to me at the time, but a young girl traveling along with a large suitcase was actually a pretty conspicuous figure,” she said in her lecture. “I’m not sure how I made it. It was just a series of close escapes.”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. 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. It was in Malmo, crammed in a town hall to register, that she revealed her true identity for the first time in years. This was a really interesting look at the war from the eyes of someone who truly lived it, experiences the trauma of losing family members and almost dying herself and finding ways to rebuild her life afterwards. The tone of this book is very conservational and Selma's story is an easy one to follow and understand. Her love for her family really comes through in every word she writes about them which makes it all the more heartbreaking when we know they didn't survive the war.

Selma van de Perre (97) doet nu pas haar verhaal over het concentratiekamp. ‘Ik gunde het de Duitsers niet dat ik doodging’. Trouw( 10 januari 2020).Geraadpleegd op 13 januari 2020. 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. 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 van de Perre-Velleman ( Amsterdam, 7 juni 1922) is een Nederlands-Britse verzetsstrijder. Zij werkte in de Tweede Wereldoorlog als koerierster.

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. 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's love of her family, her friends and her country runs through this book, and that love clearly remains. I would love to meet her. I have Jewish heritage and am extremely proud of this, the fate of my father's relatives is unknown to me, it was something no one spoke of. There just isn't the words to thank this amazing woman for her tenacity and devotion to the lives of others. Mrs van de Perre moved to the UK in 1945 at the behest of the Dutch Ministry of War and met her husband, the journalist Hugo van De Perre, while working at the BBC. She later became a teacher. 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.

They were very clever, the Germans. They didn’t want the Dutch people to be upset and fight against them, so they were careful to introduce measures very slowly. But then, of course, the rules came in that non-Jews were not to visit Jewish people, and Jewish people were not allowed to visit them; Jews were not to have things or be allowed lots of things. Life began getting very difficult. Thus began an itinerant, often solitary existence. “I was strong-willed and decisive,” she writes. Merely hiding, with its uncertain guarantee of safety, did not suit her. Helped by resistance members, she joined their ranks, taking on increasingly challenging missions.

Her interrogators didn’t question her identity, though one asked why her hair was dyed – her roots were showing.