My secret life
Selma van de Perre changed her name & risked everything to help defeat Hitler
UNTIL recently, when age finally stopped Selma van de Perre pacing her local high street, she would stealthily check reflections in shop windows to see who was behind her. It was automatic.
“I’d hear people talking and I’d glance in a window,” the 98-year-old says, halfchuckling. “It’s an instinct.”
Now, she can smile about it. But nearly 80 years ago, it was an instinct that helped keep her alive.
Selma, who lives in West London, started to practice the trick when she wasn’t Selma at all, but Margareta van der Kuit – a Dutch resistance fighter living in Nazi-occupied Amsterdam.
Then she was scanning windows for anyone who might be on to her.
It was dangerous work for all in the underground movement, covertly fighting Hitler’s rule – even more so for the then 20-year-old, who had been forced to abandon her real name, Selma Velleman, because it was Jewish.
In 1942, with her father already sent to a work camp, soon to be murdered in Auschwitz, and Jews snatched off the streets and even shot before her eyes, it fell to Selma, whose brothers were serving abroad, to decide the fate of her mum, younger sister, and herself.
Like so many, she arranged for “Mams” and 15-year-old Clara, to go into hiding. But, unable afford to pay the hosts to take her too, she was left to flit between the houses of a network of non-Jewish friends and acquaintances, many of whom were working for the resistance.
She did not remain in a room and hide, her spirit simply wouldn’t allow it. Instead, she changed her identity, “pushed Selma away”, and asked to join the underground group.
Her terrifying work as a courier would eventually take her to Paris, where, on a secret mission, she boldly walked into Nazi headquarters at notorious Fresnes Prison where spies were held and tortured.
And though it would lead to her arrest and transportation to the women’s concentration camp of Ravensbruck in northern Germany, she managed to keep her Jewish identity secret. As Marga, she escaped the death Jewish Selma would have surely met.
“I knew what was happening to Jews there – they were kept completely separately, but rumours went around,” she recalls, her voice unwavering. “I knew they were being killed, although to start with we didn’t know how. “I was so frightened. I didn’t get lice for the first few months, when others did, and I was scared to death they would think I had different blood – they would discover it is Jewish blood.
“Of course it is ridiculous, but I was so pleased when I got my first louse.” She questions whether she would have volunteered for resistance work if she had known about the gas chambers.
All she knows for sure is that, despite being warned she was putting herself in grave danger, she needed to fight.
Selma says: “I didn’t want to hide. I was angry and I wanted to fight the Nazis, I wanted to fight back.”
She explains: “I dyed my hair blonde and pushed everything about Selma away. I stopped thinking about my past, my family, although I worried I would talk in my sleep and give myself up.
“Even most of the resistance fighters, and all my friends in Ravensbruck, did not know I was Jewish. Selma disappeared and never returned – although a new Selma did. Marga saved my life.”
Aged 18, Selma was still considered a child in her family when Holland was invaded in spring 1940.
Persecution of Jews intensified, until rounding up became frequent. Selma knew little about death camps, but when her actor father was taken to a work camp in May 1942, she had to act.
Selma had learnt enough about the resistance to find someone who could hide her mum and sister with a family, but it was too costly for her to stay with them.
She had no choice but to take her chances and moved around numerous homes, obtaining false ID papers.
“I didn’t have typically Jewish features and dyed my hair,” she explains.
Finally she landed on her identity of Margareta thanks to contacts she had made with the resistance.
New distribution cards were introduced for citizens to collect food, and
I didn’t get lice for months & feared they would think I had different blood.. Jewish blood
SELMA ON FEAR HER REAL IDENTITY WOULD DISCOVERED IN CAMP
it was leaving,” she recalls. Then the conductor approached her with a case and ordered her to open it to see if it was her’s. Thankfully, it wasn’t – it was full of clothes. She took it and fled.
Another time she was approached by an Austrian Nazi at her regular bus stop, who invited her back to his flat.
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.
“It was so frightening – but also I felt sorry for him in the end,” she sighs. “He
HORROR
Selma dyed her hair as disguise soldiers in the waiting room. They responded and gave suggestive looks, so it was clear my plan was working.
“I assume it didn’t occur to the Germans a young Jewish woman in the resistance would dare to enter their building.” The mission was a success. The prisoners survived.
“I don’t know why I was so convincing,” she says. “People never thought I looked Jewish, and my papers were excellent – real even though I was not. But Marga got through a lot by smiling as if nothing was wrong.”
In reality, an awful lot was wrong. Selma had seen her mother and sister just four times while they were hiding.
Then, in June 1943, they were betrayed and captured. “I cried for nights,” she says. Both were murdered the next month in Sobibor, a death camp in Poland.
Ultimately, Selma could not avoid capture herself, although thanks to Marga she lived. Arrested at the home of a resistance fighter, Selma was taken to
HELL Women prisoners at Ravensbruck
prison. In her crowded cell she did not dare sleep, initially, for fear she would talk and give away her true identity. She also worried about being spotted.
“The cell opposite had ‘ Jew’ on the door,” she says. “I was fearful someone in that cell would recognise me.”
Her interrogators didn’t question her identity, though one asked why her hair was dyed – her roots were showing.
But he accepted the explanation that “there was little else for women to do”.
Even so, she was later transferred to a Dutch concentration camp, Vught, and then by train to Ravensbruck.
She arrived on September 8, 1944. It was there the horror truly began.
“The SS had whips and dogs – dogs in the same uniforms,” she recalls.
Even as a “non-Jew” she was beaten. Desperately ill at times, she avoided hospital as few patients were kept alive.
Selma says: “Although it was not an extermination camp then, we knew people were being killed.”
Gas chambers were built, and, after Auschwitz was liberated in January 1945, the Nazis sent more Jews to Ravensbruck. “We could smell the daily massacres,” she recalls, shuddering.
For her, meanwhile, forced labour in the Siemens factory nearby offered some protection and close friendships.
“My Czech friend told me, ‘Keep your chin up’... to think of nice things. I learnt to push bad thoughts away.”
Finally, in April 1945, the Swedish Red Cross arrived at Ravensbruck, and began liberating prisoners.
It was in Malmo, crammed in a town hall to register, that she revealed her true identity for the first time in years.
“First, I said ‘Marga’,” she recalls. “I was very scared. They told us we were free, but people told us lots of things. We worried the Germans would get us.”
Later, she returned hesitantly to the line. She thought her brothers might be in England and carried the tiniest hope her real name might lead them to her.
It proved to be so – her brother David, scouring lists of camp survivors, saw her name. Ultimately she would join him and fellow sibling Louis, here. Selma settled in London, married, had a son and became a teacher.
But admitting who she really was, was perhaps the most terrifying test of all. “I was silent for quite a while... Really hesitantly, I said, ‘ My name is Selma.’ He didn’t say anything – he just scribbled out Marga and put Selma.”
My Name is Selma, by Selma van de Perre, is published by Bantam Press. RRP £16.99.