When German forces invaded in 1940, they were not only annexing another neighbouring country they were adding another key territory from which to launch attacks - and, an eventual invasion - on Britain. The Dutch paid a terrible price. In the aftermath of Arnhem, even with the Allies moving further into Europe after D-Day, the Nazi occupation grew ever-more brutal, with starvation and fuel shortages rife during the winter of 1944. The occupation - at times as fanatical as anywhere in the Third Reich - lasted until the ultimate German surrender in May 1945.
As such, the Dutch commemorate their war history with both sobriety and celebration, even now. Every May, the 4th is a sombre day of remembrance, Dodenherdenking, with a grand ceremony on Amsterdam's Dam Square attended by the Dutch royal family, the government and other dignitaries. At 8pm in the evening, the country falls silent. The following day, the 5th, is Bevrijdingsdag, a much livelier celebration of freedom.
In Amsterdam, as you walk or cycle around the centre you are bound to come across the remarkable Anne Frank House, the living museum which depicts arguably one of the most famous - and infamous - stories of the Nazi persecution of Dutch Jews during the Second World War, a persecution that decimated some three-quarters of the Jewish population. I remember hearing stories of life during occupation from an older colleague of mine at Philips, who was a young boy during the German occupation. Some of his tales were almost comical, when told from a child’s perspective: one in particular was about him being given a toy drum for a birthday, and then having to keep it quiet as his family went into hiding, moving from house to house as the authorities closed in on them. Others were less amusing, but they fascinated me with their unique perspective on life under brutal subjugation, an alternative view of war than that imparted by my own parents who were children growing up at the same time in Britain, and under very different conditions on the home front.
Another perspective has arrived in the form of My Name Is Selma, the remarkable memoir of the sprightly, articulate Selma van de Perre. Now 98, her book tells the story of what happened to Jews and other persecuted minorities in the Netherlands, but framed by her own experience as a member of the Dutch resistance. Selma was 17 when the war began, and once the Nazis commenced their programme of arresting Jews and deporting them to concentration camps, Selma successfully managed to evade capture, much in the same manner as my late colleague and his family did. Eventually, she joined the resistance and, working as an agent under the name ‘Marga’, took part in missions to disseminate underground information. Luck played a major part in her work. In one mission, she went to Paris to exchange documents with a resistance spy based at the Nazi headquarters. Today, she says it was a mission she just got on with, "without thinking about if you have ideals,” she told the Dutch newspaper Het Parool earlier this year. “You can't just talk about them. We were also naive.”
That luck ran out in 1944 when she was arrested as a political criminal, her Jewish heritage still hidden, and sent first to the Dutch transit camp at Vught near Eindhoven (which wasn’t without its atrocities), before being moved to Ravensbrück in northern Germany, a camp almost exclusively for female prisoners. There she remained defiant, continuing to use her adopted name rather than her own, only reclaiming her real identity when the war ended and the camp liberated. There is, however, no doubting that life in Ravensbrück was hell, and at one point a prison doctor even thought she was close to death. “I refused to give the Germans their way,” Selma said to Het Parool. “I clung to thin threads of life and eventually made it.
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| Selma van de Perre and Louise Minchin on BBC Breakfast |
Today, even at the age of 98, she is anything but clinging to life. Interviewed last week on BBC Breakfast by Louise Minchin she appeared remarkably robust, articulately speaking in perfect English - as the Dutch tend to do - the result of having lived in London since the end of the war when she landed a job at the Dutch embassy. "Every day I am happy to be alive,” she says today. She continues to live independently (her husband, Belgian journalist Hugo van de Perre, died in 1979), still cooks for herself and does her own shopping. Even now, she’s the very picture of defiance. “Until recently I played golf, but I stopped,” she told the Dutch newspaper. “I thought it was getting a bit too dangerous. You know, if you fall as an old person and you break something, then you're done.”
Things first became dangerous for Selma after the German invasion of the Netherlands in May 1940. As Jews, Selma’s family were designated second-class citizens. Two years later her father was captured and deported to be murdered in Auschwitz in December 1942. Her grandmother, uncles and aunts, nephews and nieces also suffered the same fate. The following July 1943 her mother and teenage sister were arrested in Eindhoven where they were hiding. Selma didn't hear anything from them again. They, too, were executed almost immediately on arrival at the Sobibor death camp.
Motivated by her family’s fate and inspired by the self-sacrifice of a young activist who’d committed suicide rather than betray compatriots, Selma threw herself into working for the resistance. “They were short of young people, so I said yes.” Taking the name Marga from a dead non-Jewish baby, Selma’s work for the resistance took her all over the country, riding her luck throughout. Her eventual arrest on 18 June, 1944, two weeks after D-Day, led to a continuous fight for life in Ravensbrück, where she assigned to the ‘aisle of death’ part of the camp and known only by the number 66947. Nearly 100,000 women and children died at the camp, from a combination of executions, hunger and disease. Many were subjected to medical experiments, torture and hard labour. “It was three to four people to one bed,” Selma revealed. “Thousands slept on the floor.”
The camp’s liberation brought more than just physical freedom for Selma. In Malmö, where Swedish diplomats had taken freed prisoners, she was asked her name. “Margareta van der Kuit,” she said at first, using her adopted name, before realising that her identify should be restored: “My name is Selma. Selma Velleman [her maiden name].”
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| Selma van de Perre in London, 195 Picture: Selma van de Perre |
Today, Selma's memories are lucid, and the book gathers together in fascinating detail the events of almost 80 years ago. She became a journalist after her husband - himself a Belgian correspondent - passed away, writing for the Belgian newspaper De Standaard, amongst others. Settling in London and taking British citizenship, she started work, "reluctantly," on her remarkable story. “I didn't really want to,” she says, but her brother’s children convinced her otherwise. “‘You must write it down’, they said. ‘You are the last of that generation still alive’.”
Still, though, the writing process didn’t come easily, bringing back many disturbing memories, especially of the disappearance of her own mother and sister. “When I lie awake at night or early in the morning, I think about them,” Selma revealed to Het Parool. “Then I wonder what they experienced in the cattle wagon on their very last trip. You remember that image until you die.”
In the book she writes: "Inside me is a terrible hole that will never heal. In my head I construct in the most horrible detail what has been done to them. I wonder if Mum and Clara knew what was going on, those two lovely, innocent people who had never hurt anyone. I wonder if they were holding hands when they died; I wonder if Dad was thinking about us in his last seconds, or if he panicked too much to think about anything. Even now, 75 years later, I lie awake at night and say to myself, 'Selma, go to sleep; you can't change what happened just by thinking about it'. ”
Despite her age, Selma continues to be active in maintaining public consciousness of the grim piece of human history that is the Holocaust. Every year she lays a wreath at the Women of Ravensbrück memorial on Amsterdam’s Museumplein. She has also given lectures to students at Ravensbrück. Her story isn’t just about what happened to her fellow Jews in the Nazi camps but what happened to those who were able to return home: “Don't forget the cold reception for survivors when they returned to the Netherlands,” she says. “Nobody was interested in what had happened to us.” Selma’s book not only celebrates the true identify she denied herself while working for the Dutch resistance, but also the point that Dutch Jews weren’t rendered entirely helpless by their persecution. “In reality, countless Jews worked with non-Jews together in the resistance – much more than we knew during the war,” Selma writes in her book. “Often, it was assumed that Jews who escaped deportation immediately went into hiding but that wasn’t always the case. It wasn’t in the interest of Jews to be identified as such. This explains to a large degree why so few Jews had been recognized for their actions.”
“I was one of many Jewish people to fight the Nazi regime and my story illustrates what happened to thousands of Jews and non-Jews alike,” she says of her book. “I have recorded the small details that made up our lives, the sheer luck that saved some of us and the atrocities that lead to the deaths of so many. This book is written as a testament to our fight against the inhumanity. The horrors of the Second World War and the bravery of the people who defied them must never be forgotten. I hope this book will contribute to their lasting memory.” It certainly does. What a remarkable woman.
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