September 6, 1944: Selma van de Perre is imprisoned in Ravensbrück for her part in the Dutch resistance:

They transported us to Ravensbrück. Terrible. Screaming, shouting, dogs & whips. The dogs had the same clothes as the soldiers. Same green-grey colour material. They even wore hats. We were marched to the main camp & put in tents.

Selma was there under a non-Jewish false identity & called herself Margarete van der Kuit. No one knew that she was Jewish.

It was a lice colony. Within a few weeks everybody was full of lice. We were taken in fives to the shower, made to strip, give up all your clothes. Then the doctor’s investigation. I can’t remember if he had gloves on. But he didn’t wash his hands at least.

I was given a very thin blue-grey striped prison dress. That was all. And some wooden shoes. No underwear or anything. But in the barracks they gave me my jumper back. We each had a hollow flannel which we hung at the end of our bunk with a toothbrush & toothpaste in. When we woke up, it had disappeared. Stolen by other women. We learned later on that was quite a normal thing to do.

In Ravensbrück, Selma was forced to work as a Siemens slave labourer:

You had to solder very fine wire together. At the start I was so nervous I fainted. One evening I couldn’t get up from the loo. My tummy was completely out of order. We were given what they called ‘soup’: water with a few grass sprits in it & that was it. No wonder I was ill. So an SS came & started beating me with his belt, with all these iron things on it. So I fainted again. These two girls had to pick me up & hold me up while he was counting. Then they took me to the hospital barrack for 4 days. Then I went back to Siemens.

One day we were told to stand outside the barrack, & they told us that the old women over 50 didn’t have to work anymore, & were to be given better food etc. They were taken to the Jugend camp in Uckermark. We later heard that they were gassed & killed.

In October it got very cold. Someone said to me 'There's a Jewish woman who works in the textile barrack. She wants bread for her children. She’ll give you some warm clothes.” So I saved up the week’s sliced bread & went to see her. She gave me a man's long johns. They kept me warm the whole time I was in Ravensbrück. Fantastic.

There were so many nationalities there. Polish, Slovaks, Czech, Dutch, French. But no more Jews in the Siemens barracks. They'd all been deported to Auschwitz by then. By then we slept in the Siemens barracks. Better conditions: only two in a bed. Three tiers mind you. But no dogs & no big SS fellows screaming away.

Selma was liberated by the Swedish Red Cross on 23 April 1945.

We were told to stand outside the Siemens barrack. We thought we’d get the same treatment as the old people a few months beforehand. You couldn’t flee because there were Germans on the side of you with dogs.

Then we passed Uckermark, luckily & got to the big camp. We were very pleased in a way, but still scared because what’s going to happen! Every day we thought we’d be taken out because we knew they were killing women. You could smell it. The crematorium was going all the time.

One day my Czech friend said 'You’re going to be freed Marga: you've got a Red Cross parcel.' So, we said, “Well we hope so.” I gave her a piece of bread, biscuits, & some sausage. She had been very good to me. We then stood outside. That was morning. Nothing came for a while. In the afternoon suddenly a little sportscar came. Out jumped a young Swede. He told us Count Bernadotte was coming with white buses to drive us to Sweden. But the buses didn’t come. We stood there the whole night. Suddenly military trucks came. We were told to jump in.

A friend & I fought for the seat next to the driver, ‘cause we wanted to see. The driver said, “We’ll stop in an hour’s time, then you can change.” So I went with my friend in the next truck. After an hour we stopped in a beautiful wood. We were given chocolate & sandwiches & drinks & so by the drivers who had it all ready for us. Beautiful flowers & beginning of the pale green that comes out in the spring. So wonderful to sit there in freedom.

Suddenly there were shots. The drivers said, “Leave everything, come quickly back in the truck." So we went in & I wanted to sit next to the driver. But my friend fought with me again, so I had to let her sit, because my friend Dit pulled me back to the other truck. Lo & behold, the truck I should have sat in, was shot. The woman & the driver were shot—by the Allies. They thought they were German. And I was saved again.

Selma van de Perre

Memories

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