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

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

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

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Four months later she was able to return home, where she first found shelter with a friend from school days. After a few weeks, the War Office called on her to go to London to work in the medical services there. The posting was probably initiated by her brother. Through a friend she got a post in the radio department of the BBC, where she continued to work for eight years and would meet her future husband. During her work for BBC radio, she fulfilled an earlier dream of hers to study anthropology and sociology. Thanks to a scholarship, she was able to study the last two years full time. After her studies, she decided to become a teacher because she liked the variety of subjects and fields. As she had had very good results in a number of subjects including mathematics on her school qualification in 1941, she was also asked to teach maths alongside sociology at a grammar school.

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.” It was a job,” Selma recalls, simply. But the stakes were terrifyingly high and near-misses frequent.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. 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.” In her debut memoir, “My Name is Selma,” Van de Perre recounts sabotaging the Nazis—and enduring the Holocaust. When the Second World War broke out, Selma Velleman was seventeen, an intelligent girl who had hoped to go to university. She lived with her mother, two older brothers, her younger sister and her father, who worked in the theatre. Until then, being Jewish had never played a large role in her life — like many, her family were non-practising Jews. Now suddenly it became a matter of life or death. Sum- moned to register for a work camp in 1942, she managed to evade it by adopting a false identity. She became Margareta van der Kuit, Marga for short, and left her family to live undercover in Utrecht. The people housing her belonged to the resistance and before long she had joined the cause herself, forging documents and delivering them throughout the country. 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.

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. 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. 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.

In Case You Missed It

Selma's work in the Resistance was interesting to follow though I felt at times, she almost rushed through her stories and I would have loved some deep dives into particular trips she had to take undercover. I think Selma herself seems really humble about her war efforts and it seems like she really doesn't understand what an extraordinary woman she is! 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. Spears’ vulnerability shines through as she describes her painful journey from vulnerable girl to empowered woman. Selma Van De Perre was just a young woman when World War II broke out in Europe. She remembers the day when her older brother came home with the news. The wartime hero has received both Covid vaccine jabs, and offered a pointed piece of perspective for young people living through the pandemic.



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