Selma van de Perre - The Remarkable Memoir of a Jewish Resistance Fighter and Ravensbrück Survivor

A riveting true story of courage, defiance, and resilience.

ARIANA NEUMANN, author of When Time Stopped

Selma van de Perre

My Name is Selma

The Remarkable Memoir of a Jewish Resistance Fighter and Ravensbrck Survivor

Scribner

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Copyright 2020 by Selma van de Perre

English language translation copyright 2020 by Alice Tetley-Paul and Anna Asbury

Originally published in Dutch in 2020 by Thomas Rap as Mijn naam is Selma

Previously published in English in Great Britain in 2020 by Bantam Press, an imprint of Transworld Publishers

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First Scribner hardcover edition May 2021

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Interior design by Wendy Blum

Jacket design by Math Monahan

Jacket photograph from the private archive of the author

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data has been applied for.

ISBN 978-1-9821-6467-6

ISBN 978-1-9821-6469-0 (ebook)

For my parents and sister

6 September 1944

[to Greet Brinkhuis]

Dear Gretchen,

Im in a cattle wagon with twelve people, in Vught. Probably headed for Sachsenhausen or Ravensbrck. You keep your spirits up. Ill do the same, although I do wish the end was in sight. Ill throw this note out of the train through a crack in the wall. Bye, my darling.

Kisses,

Marga

W e were ordered to pack up our toothbrushes and other belongings and wait outside. It was clear we were to be taken somewhere else, but where? We didnt know. I thought it would be safer to stay at Camp Vught than to go off into the unknown, so I decided to hide under a mattress. I let the other women go ahead and stayed behind in the barracks, but I wasnt quick enough. The female SS guardthe Aufseherinturned up while I was still only half-hidden. She ordered me to hurry up, dragged me outside by my arm, and pushed me into the final wagon. This slight delay worked to my advantage: there werent many women inside that one yet. The others were packed, and the poor women insideincluding my friends from the campspent the next three days traveling in terrible conditions.

There were only twelve or so women in my wagon. I didnt know any of them. Some of them were youngerin their twenties, like me. They werent political prisoners, as I was, but asocials, whod done something the Germans didnt like. They realized I was differenteducated, and so on. Most of them turned out to be prostitutes who had been rounded up to be treated for sexually transmitted diseases.

In the camp theyd worked in the kitchen, and they had managed to sneak a big box of bread and sausage on board, as well as a barrel of soup. This was a huge stroke of luck; I knew the other wagons wouldnt have any such supplies. But as they began to bicker over the foodsome of them wanted to start on it straightawayI realized these women clearly didnt appreciate their good fortune.

We assumed we were on our way to somewhere in Germany, but seeing as we didnt know how long the journey would take, I thought it would be sensible to ration the provisions. I put this to the other women cautiously, and luckily they listened. They asked me to hand out the food, and I was honored to do so. I ladled the soup into portions and sliced the bread and sausagethey could see I was doing my best to give everyone an equal share.

There was sufficient space for all of us to sit down on the floor of the wagon, and some of us had a bit of wall to lean against as well. There wasnt much conversation among us. The kitchen girls talked together a bitthey knew one another already. As time passed they became a little friendlier toward methey shared some supplies of toilet paper, for instance. And on that paper I hastily scribbled a note to my good friend in Amsterdam, Greet Brinkhuis.

I told her I was on a train that was probably heading for Germany. When we stopped at the first stationthe last town in the Netherlands before we did indeed pass into GermanyI pushed the note through a gap between the wooden planks of the wagons wall. Even though it was very unlikely that the message would ever reach her, I thought it was worth a try.

The journey seemed interminable, even for those of us in that privileged final wagon. I was feeling anxious, but there was also a sense that the war wouldnt last much longer. We knew that the Allies were already at the border. I knew that I couldnt do anything to change what was happening, so I tried not to worry about it too much. There was simply no point.

We slept on the bare wooden floor of the wagon. It was uncomfortable, but it must have been far worse for my friends in the other wagonswith fifty or sixty people packed inside they wouldnt even have been able to sit down. And they wouldnt have had any food. Although I didnt realize it at the time, I was lucky.

After three days and two nights locked up in the wagons, we reached our destination on September 8. The sliding doors of the cattle wagon opened and we caught our first glimpse of what we later found out was Ravensbrck, in northern Germany. Ironically, this grim and terrible place is located by a large lakethe Schwedtseein beautiful surroundings, but we couldnt see anything of that. The SS officers waiting for us on the platform had large dogs with them and were brandishing whips. The dogs were barking and the men, as well as the female guardsthe Aufseherinnenwere yelling at us to get out of the wagon.

Schnell, schnell, schnell! Heraus, heraus, heraus!

Quick, quick, quick! Out, out, out!

We were terrified.

I m sitting here in my quiet house in London and looking at a photo taken in 1940. Its of my mother, younger sister, and me. Were relaxing in Aunt Saras garden in Amsterdam, which, at that moment, was still a peaceful spot. My mother, whom we fondly called Mams, was fifty-one at the time; my sister, Clara, twelve; and I was eighteen. Its an everyday snapshot of an ordinary family; we were having a pleasant afternoon, enjoying the garden and one anothers company. A model image of family time: loving, secure, comfortable, predictable. Theres no hint in our faces of what was to come in the following three years: the deaths of my father, mother, and Clara; my grandma; Aunt Sara, her husband, Arie, and their two sons; and so many other family members.

None of these deaths were due to natural causes or accidents. They were the result of the atrocities that were already spreading across Europe when the photo was taken, and which would soon infiltrate the Netherlands. Before those catastrophic events, we hadnt comprehended what a privilege it was to lead an anonymous life. I can still hardly believe that people who should have remained unremarkable ended up memorialized on lists and monumentsbecause they had fallen victim to the most systematic mass murder the world has ever known.