The Liberation of Ravensbrück: Selma van de Perre (1945)
Selma van de Perre by Chris van Houts
Welcome to a different and very special episode of Travels Through Time. Today’s interviewee is the extraordinary Holocaust survivor and resistance fighter Selma van de Perre. At the age of ninety-eight, three quarters of a century after she was liberated from Ravensbrück Concentration Camp, Selma tells her remarkable story to the New York Times bestselling author Ariana Neumann.
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In January this year we released a compelling and deeply moving episode of Travels Through Time which looked at the year 1944. Our guest for that episode was the Venezuelan author Ariana Neumann. Over the course of an hour Ariana told us what had happened to her Czech Jewish family over the course of that year. She explained how her grandparents had been transported east to the camps and how her father, Hans, had found refuge and evaded the Nazis in the most unlikely of all places: Berlin.
Ariana’s extraordinary story arose from her debut book, When Time Stopped, which shortly afterwards went on to become a New York Times Bestseller. Ever since it has remained one of the most popular episodes that we have produced at Travels Through Time.
In recent weeks we heard about a story that was almost as remarkable as Ariana’s. It belonged to ninety-eight year-old Dutch Holocaust survivor called Selma van de Perre. Selma was just eighteen years-old when World War Two began. Her family were members of th populous Jewish community in Holland. Until 1940 this had been of little consequence, but in the aftermath of the Nazi invasion they were targeted for deportation.
Unlike her family, Selma managed to evade the round ups. In an act of defiance she joined the nascent Dutch resistance movement and travelled under a fake identity as ‘Marga’, carrying messages and newsletters across the country. In July 1944 this life was ended. She was captured and sent away to Ravensbrück concentration camp near to Berlin where 45,000 female prisoners were kept in terrible conditions. She survived the horrors she found there and experienced the liberation of April 1945.
Selma’s story is one of huge courage. She has written of her experiences in a memoir called My Name is Selma, and we thought that the best person to talk to her about her story was Ariana Neumann – whose own family were persecuted in such a similar way.
As you will hear, Selma remains full of vigour, ideas and resolve. We are hugely grateful that she took the time to speak with us and Ariana from her home in West London. As with all of our guests, we asked Selma which year she would like to travel back to. She chose the events that surrounded the liberation of Ravensbrück in April 1945.
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Click here to order Selma van de Perre’s book from John Sandoe’s who, we are delighted to say, are supplying books for the podcast.
Listen to the podcast here
Show notes
Scene One: 23 April 1945. A man from the Swedish Red Cross arrives at Ravensbrück. He offers the women chocolate and cigarettes.
Scene Two: Late April 1945, After leaving Ravensbrück for Sweden, the aid convoy is mistakenly attacked by the British.
Scene Three: Late May/early June 1945. At a refugee “holiday”camp in Sweden. Selma is in the dining room and hears someone call her by her real name for the first time in years.
Memento: A dressing gown, specially made by the Swedish family that Selma stayed with after being liberated.
People
Presenter: Peter Moore
Interview: Ariana Neumann
Guest: Selma van de Perre
Production: Maria Nolan
Podcast partner: Colorgraph
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About Selma van de Perre
Selma (b. 1922) was a member of the Dutch Resistance organisation TD Group during the Second World War. 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 a number of years she also worked as a foreign correspondent for a Dutch television station. In 1983 Selma received the Dutch Resistance Memorial Cross. She lives in London and has a son.
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“In no other Western European country was the persecution of the Jews as efficient and the death toll as high s it was in the Netherlands. At least three-quarters of the Jewish population was murdered, among them my father, mother and little sister Clara, my grandmother, aunts, uncles and cousins.
“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. I have recorded the small details that made up our lives, the sheer luck that saved some of us and the atrocities that led to the deaths of so many.”
~ Selma van de Perra
Click here to order My Name is Selma by Selma van de Perre from our friends at John Sandoe’s Books.
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