My Name Is Selma

December 1, 2020

Now 98 years old, van de Perre was just 17 and living with her family in the Netherlands when World War II broke out. Joining the Resistance in 1941, she traveled the country under the pseudonym Margareta van der Kuit and was eventually captured and sent to Ravensbr�ck in 1944. She survived only because she continued to use her alias; the rest of her family perished in the camps. With a 70,000-copy first printing.

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March 15, 2021
A harrowing memoir from "one of the few remaining Dutch Jewish survivors" of World War II. With captivating and heartbreaking detail, van de Perre (b. 1922) shares her memories of the Nazi occupation of the Netherlands, offering "a testament to our fight against inhumanity." Though the author enjoyed a happy childhood, in 1936, the Netherlands started taking in immigrants from Germany who "told troubling tales of National Socialism and what happened to people who renounced the Nazis." At first, nobody paid much attention, but soon enough, German soldiers invaded and "beg[a]n to commit acts so horrific that I now struggle to believe they really happened, in spite of having experienced them myself." As a child, being Jewish in Amsterdam never posed a problem. Her family wasn't strictly observant, and people barely mentioned religious differences. While it may not have seemed significant at the time, "the fact that I didn't look Jewish would later save my life." By 1942, van de Perre was working for the resistance as a courier. For her own security, she bleached her hair and assumed a new name and identity, Margareta van der Kuit. Despite her subterfuge, however, she was arrested and put on a train to the female-only Ravensbr�ck concentration camp, where she was greeted by SS officers with whips. She was subjected to hard labor and meals consisting of watered-down coffee for breakfast and a thin slice of bread and soup ("water with a few blades of grass or cabbage") for supper. Throughout her time at Ravensbr�ck, the author remained cautious and quiet, fearing that her true identity would be revealed. Due to perseverance and some good fortune, she managed to survive her brutal circumstances, which she ably conveys in a plainspoken, touching manner, displaying a sharp memory and acute sense of the gravity of her experiences. In April 1945, she was marched to freedom. Next came the task of picking up the pieces. An incredible story of courage and compassion.

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May 21, 2021
Selma, a Dutch Jew, came from an unconventional family and lived sometimes well and sometimes in poverty, depending on her father's work in the theater. At the start of the war, the family felt that the Netherlands might be spared, but, of course, that was not to be the case. Her two brothers were able to leave the country, but her parents and younger sister were swept up by the Nazis. Selma survived by assuming a Dutch identity and working for the Resistance. She was eventually taken as a political prisoner, and though Ravensbr�ck was not as harsh as the death camps, conditions were extreme, with death by starvation and disease common. She survived the war and eventually moved to England, married, and established a career. Holocaust memoirs are all different, all worthy of being told, and all adding to the story that needs to be remembered. This is a somewhat nondramatic telling of the horrors that Selma experienced and witnessed, not the least of which was losing her identity, and offers a slightly different view of camp life. It should find a home in any library that collects Holocaust materials.

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