953: Slave Labour In Ravensbrück September 6, 1944: Selma van de Perre is imprisoned in Ravensbrück for her part in the Dutch resistance: Selma van de Perre Read Full Text Home Memories People Places Experiences About Contact Menu Close Home All Memories About Menu Close ← Previous Memory All Memories Next Memory → ← Previous Memory Credits & tags Edited from Selma van de Perre's interview with Dr Bea Lewkowicz for AJR Refugee Voices Testimony Archive, August 2020 • Learn More → Selma van de Perre Encounter With Nazi Officials False Identity Near Escape Ravensbrück Resistance Slave Labourer Read AJR biography Next Memory → See Instagram & Facebook posts Germany See Locations Full Text 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. 953: Slave Labour In Ravensbrück Selma van de Perre Edited from Selma van de Perre's interview with Dr Bea Lewkowicz for AJR Refugee Voices Testimony Archive, August 2020 • Learn More → Text adapted and edited by Susanna Kleeman Facebook & Instagram Posts

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994: Grass Snakes At The Beacon Lilly Lampert Credits & tags Home Memories People Places Experiences About Contact Menu Close Lilly Lampert came to Britain from Vienna on a Kindertransport in 1939: All I know: I wanted to come to England to be with my sister Gertie. I didn't know I wasn't going to see my parents again, because they landed up in Theresienstadt. I shared a bedroom with my parents until my sister left & then I got her room. She came to England 6 months before me. She got somebody to guarantee me, because in those days you couldn't just come to England. She had a hell of a job to get somebody to put £50 pounds forward. I was always doing things. Playing with my dolls, making dolls clothes. Television stops all that, a lot of things I used to do. I brought 2 suitcases. Clothes & one doll. You know, you can't just bring things to England. It had to be a certain weight only. When Hitler marched in, they welcomed him with open arms, didn’t they, the Viennese? That's all I really remember. Things were hidden from me, because I was a little girl. Now all the young kids, they know everything. But in those days, anything not nice was sheltered. My parents were going to follow me. My sister tried desperately to find somebody to – for my mother to be a cook somewhere & my father, a gardener, which he'd never done his life before. But somebody had to say, ‘Yes, he can come & do my garden’, just to get out. But war came. The train ride was at night time. We left on the 13th. I always tell people 13 must be lucky for me, otherwise I wouldn't be alive. I wouldn't have left Vienna. I would be dead like the rest of my family. It was just a normal journey. I was 9. My sister met me at the station. She took me back to her place, one room somewhere. She went to Bloomsbury House. They managed to find me a place in The Beacon in Rusthall. A girl's hostel. She put me on the train & someone met me on the other side. I must have been quite nervous. You don't know the language. You don't know where you are. Terrible, but I survived. But we had three lakes. It was a lovely place we lived in. Now it's a sort of hotel. Five days after I arrived someone I knew from Vienna came there. Mela. She was thrilled to see me. We became good friends until she died. Most people either were German or Austrian. From Czechoslovakia we got one or two. They discouraged us to speak German. They wanted us to speak English. We were quite happy there. I stayed till I came to London in 1947. It was a lovely place & they were nice to us. Most of them. We had snakes in the garden. Mainly grass snakes, apparently. But a snake is a snake, isn't it? They always told us they were only grass snakes, but I wasn't so sure. I couldn't write letters to my parents anymore under normal postage, it had to go through the Red Cross. Only a certain amount of words. I had to write it in an office in Tunbridge Wells, tell them the words. They wrote them down. All I was allowed to do is sign my name, wasn't allowed to even write it myself. Send it to Vienna & my parents answered on the same bit of paper. It's like a boarding school, only a bit rougher. No luxuries. It was quite impersonal, because the staff really, I think they did it just for money. They didn't care for us. There was one matron we quite liked, Mrs Fisher. She was nice because she had her own daughter there. They squashed us in, about 8 in a room. It's not nice sleeping with so many people, squashed in very close to each other. It's hard to remember VE Day because I've wiped these memories out. I don't think about them anymore. It's a different world. Everyone was happy, I suppose. After the war, in 1946, I got a letter from my mother. She wrote that letter in 1943 & gave it to an aunt of mine who was in the concentration camp with her. This aunt survived, went to America & she sent me the letter that my mother wrote. My father was already dead. It says she's now all alone & would bear anything if she could see me for just a second. She must have been very, very, very low. It hurts when you read a thing like that. You should never know anything like that again happening. But it still goes on. That's all I can tell you. Previous Memory Next Memory ← Previous Memory Credits & tags Adapted from Lilly Lampert's interview with Deborah Koder for AJR Refugee Voices Testimony Archive, April 2024 • Learn More → Lilly Lampert Boarder Close Family Murdered Homesick Hostel Kindertransport Red Cross Letters Read AJR biography Next Memory → See Instagram & Facebook posts England Text adapted & edited by Susanna Kleeman See Locations Facebook & Instagram Posts

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