Selma van de Perre

From Simon & Schuster and the Association of Jewish Refugees: Selma van de Perre, née Velleman, was 17 years old when World War II began. She lived with her parents, two older brothers, and a younger sister in Amsterdam, and until then, being Jewish in the Netherlands had not presented much of 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 the Dutch transition camp of Westerbork, 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 non-Jewish, 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.”

But in July 1944 her luck ran out. She was transported to Ravensbrück women’s concentration camp as a political prisoner. Without knowing the fate of her family — her father died in Auschwitz, and her mother and sister were killed in Sobibor — Selma survived by using her false identity, pretending to be someone else. After the war, she moved to London, where she worked for the BBC and met her husband, Belgian journalist Hugo van de Perre. She joined the BBC radio department for a while, then became a teacher. She also worked as foreign correspondent for a Dutch television station for a number of years. In 1983, Selma van de Perre received the Dutch Resistance Commemoration Cross in recognition of her bravery. She lives in London and has a son.