Selma van de Perre was part of the Dutch Resistance & incarcerated in Ravensbrück. Her parents & sister were murdered in Auschwitz & Sobibór. She is a Holocaust educator & best-selling memoirist.

I didn’t speak at all the first 30 years! To anyone or anything or myself. It was in 1975 with the opening of the Ravensbrück Memorial in Amsterdam. They asked me again to come. I went. For the first time. They said, 'Why didn’t you come before?' But I was building up a new life in Britain. You know. But since then, I've been every year.

My nephews said to me: 'You must write it down Selma because you’re the last one of the family, & it must be told.' I made a few notes but I never did anything about it.

But it was at this painting class, where I said, 'I can’t come next week because I’m going to Holland'. The teacher said 'How nice, have a lovely holiday.' I said 'it’s really not a holiday. It’s you know, it’s that & that. I'll give a few talks.' She said, 'What about?' So, I said a few things. She asked for more. She said 'I never knew this! Concentration camps in Holland? Resistance workers? I didn’t know there were resistance workers in Holland.' She'd never heard of Ravensbrück. And people never thought that there were non-Jewish resistance workers, certainly not Jewish resistance workers. That's why I think it's necessary to talk & write.

Because so very little is known about Jewish resistance workers. Because if they—when they were caught, they were killed! Nobody was alive after the war. Hardly anyone. Very few, like me. That’s why it’s not known. That’s why I thought it needs to be written. I'm glad I did. Now I'm used to talking about it. I’ve done that so often in Holland & Germany, workshops.

During the war, Selma was a slave labourer for various German companies including Siemens.

The archives of Siemens were closed for years. Until, one day I received an invitation. One of the directors of Siemens asked me to come over at a dinner. The Director of Ravensbrück arranged the dinner. That’s when Germans started asking me. First of all Siemens asked me to give a talk to the young employees. They took me to the factory.

My experiences had a big impact on me, of course. I tell myself to enjoy every day & I try to do that. I’m very glad I’m alive still every day, & every morning I know that. Also I don’t attach so much thought about things that go wrong or break. It’s not a human life.

Amsterdam

Memories

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