My Name Is Selma: The Remarkable Memoir of a Jewish Resistance Fighter and Ravensbr�ck Survivor

by Selma van de Perre

Overview

An international bestseller, this powerful memoir by a ninety-eight-year-old Jewish Resistance fighter and Holocaust survivor “shows us how to find hope in hopelessness and light in the darkness” (Edith Eger, author of The Choice and The Gift).

Selma van de Perre was seventeen when World War II began. Until then, being Jewish in the Netherlands had not been an issue. But by 1941 it had become a matter of life or death. On several occasions, Selma barely avoided being rounded up by the Nazis. While her father was summoned to a work camp and eventually hospitalized in a Dutch transition camp, her mother and sister went into hiding—until they were betrayed in June 1943 and sent to Auschwitz. In an act of defiance and with nowhere else to turn, Selma took on an assumed identity, dyed her hair blond, and joined the Resistance movement, using the pseudonym Margareta van der Kuit. For two years “Marga” risked it all. Using a fake ID, and passing as Aryan, she traveled around the country and even to Nazi headquarters in Paris, sharing information and delivering papers—doing, as she later explained, what “had to be done.”

In July 1944 her luck ran out. She was transported to Ravensbrück women’s concentration camp as a political prisoner. Unlike her parents and sister who she later found out died in other camps—Selma survived by using her alias, pretending to be someone else. It was only after the war ended that she could reclaim her identity and dared to say once again: My name is Selma.

“We were ordinary people plunged into extraordinary circumstances,” she writes in this “astonishing, inspirational, and important” memoir (Ariana Neumann, author of When Time Stopped). Full of hope and courage, this is Selma’s story in her own words.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781982164676
Publisher:	Scribner
Publication date:	05/11/2021
Pages:	224
Sales rank:	1,102,644
Product dimensions:	6.10(w) x 9.10(h) x 1.10(d)

About the Author

Selma van de Perre was a member of the Dutch resistance organization TD Group during World War II. Shortly after the war she moved to London, where she worked for the BBC and met her future husband, the Belgian journalist Hugo van de Perre. For many years she also worked as foreign correspondent for a Dutch television station. In 1983, Selma van de Perre received the Dutch Resistance Commemoration Cross. She lives in London and has a son.

Table of Contents

Prologue xi

1 The Artist and the Milliner: My Family 1

2 Jumping over Ditches: My Childhood 11

3 Second-class Citizens: The Occupation 25

4 Away from Home: A Family in Hiding 43

5 Bleached Hair: In the Resistance 67

6 Secret Drawers: My Arrest 105

7 Blue Overalls: Camp Vught 119

8 The Passageway of Death: Ravensbrück 129

9 My Real Name: The Liberation 159

10 Living Life: London 183

11 Remembering the Dead 195

Epilogue 203

Editorial Reviews

In My Name is Selma, van de Perre has written an amazing firsthand account of the fear and uncertainty she encountered after the Nazi occupation... [a] powerful book."
—Fredericksburg Free Lance-Star

"Holocaust memoirs are all different, all worthy of being told, and all adding to the story that needs to be remembered ... [My Name is Selma] offers a slightly different view of camp life. It should find a home in any library that collects Holocaust materials."
—Booklist

“A Holocaust story of incredible luck, breathtaking bravery and incalculable loss... It has taken [Selma van de Perre] a long time to be able to look back. Now that she has, the most appropriate response is gratitude – for her survival, her mostly fulfilling postwar life, and the details she adds to our remorselessly accumulating knowledge of the period. Selma’s self-portrait is of a woman of courage and heart, who took great risks and suffered greatly, too — but whose luck, cleverness and resilience saw her through.”
—The Forward

“My Name is Selma provides a unique overview of what European Jews experienced between 1933 and 1946, from the perspective of a Jew in disguise... There is much to learn from this memoir of Jewish resistance. [van de Perre’s] book merits wide readership and long employ in the annals of Holocaust scholarship.”
—Jewish Book Council

”A harrowing memoir from “one of the few remaining Dutch Jewish survivors” of World War II. With captivating and heartbreaking detail, van de Perre (b. 1922) shares her memories of the Nazi occupation of the Netherlands, offering “a testament to our fight against inhumanity" ... An incredible story of courage and compassion."
—Kirkus, starred review

“There are many extraordinary books written by survivors of the Holocaust, and this numbers among them. [van de Perre’s] voice, strength, and pain are palpable throughout; everyone can benefit from reading her story.”
—Library Journal

"Every page was so meaningful to me. She describes how difficult it was to survive with a false identity and then to reclaim her true self and be a role model to us all. She shows us how to find hope in hopelessness and light in the darkness.”
—Edith Eger, author of The Choice and The Gift

"My Name is Selma is astonishing, inspirational and important — a remarkable tale of a young Jewish woman who, in unimaginable circumstances, makes the audacious decision to resist the Nazis, and survives the horrors of the war using an assumed identity. A riveting true story of courage, defiance and resilience, this timely testament from a 98-year-old Holocaust survivor is also filled with hope. Now more than ever, we all need to hear Selma Van de Perre's words and experiences. Her book is a treasure.”
—Ariana Neumann, author of When Time Stopped

From the Publisher

12/01/2020

Now 98 years old, van de Perre was just 17 and living with her family in the Netherlands when World War II broke out. Joining the Resistance in 1941, she traveled the country under the pseudonym Margareta van der Kuit and was eventually captured and sent to Ravensbrück in 1944. She survived only because she continued to use her alias; the rest of her family perished in the camps. With a 70,000-copy first printing.

Library Journal

★ 2021-03-03
A harrowing memoir from “one of the few remaining Dutch Jewish survivors” of World War II.

With captivating and heartbreaking detail, van de Perre (b. 1922) shares her memories of the Nazi occupation of the Netherlands, offering “a testament to our fight against inhumanity.” Though the author enjoyed a happy childhood, in 1936, the Netherlands started taking in immigrants from Germany who “told troubling tales of National Socialism and what happened to people who renounced the Nazis.” At first, nobody paid much attention, but soon enough, German soldiers invaded and “beg[a]n to commit acts so horrific that I now struggle to believe they really happened, in spite of having experienced them myself.” As a child, being Jewish in Amsterdam never posed a problem. Her family wasn’t strictly observant, and people barely mentioned religious differences. While it may not have seemed significant at the time, “the fact that I didn’t look Jewish would later save my life.” By 1942, van de Perre was working for the resistance as a courier. For her own security, she bleached her hair and assumed a new name and identity, Margareta van der Kuit. Despite her subterfuge, however, she was arrested and put on a train to the female-only Ravensbrück concentration camp, where she was greeted by SS officers with whips. She was subjected to hard labor and meals consisting of watered-down coffee for breakfast and a thin slice of bread and soup (“water with a few blades of grass or cabbage”) for supper. Throughout her time at Ravensbrück, the author remained cautious and quiet, fearing that her true identity would be revealed. Due to perseverance and some good fortune, she managed to survive her brutal circumstances, which she ably conveys in a plainspoken, touching manner, displaying a sharp memory and acute sense of the gravity of her experiences. In April 1945, she was marched to freedom. Next came the task of picking up the pieces.

An incredible story of courage and compassion.

Kirkus Reviews