Resistance fighter Selma van de Perre died on Monday at the age of 103. This is reported by publisher Thomas Rap, who published her autobiography My name is Selma (2020) published. Van de Perre, who was Jewish himself, was part of the group of resistance fighter Joop Westerweel during the Second World War.
The resistance group smuggled hundreds of Jews to Southern Europe during the war. Van de Perre forged identity cards, organized addresses for people in hiding and traveled through the Netherlands to deliver messages. Her father was deported to Westerbork and her mother and sister went into hiding in Eindhoven.
Van de Perre had a non-Jewish appearance and initially managed to avoid the Nazis. In June 1944 she was arrested and deported via camp Vught to Ravensbrück concentration camp. She was held there for ten months until the liberation of that camp in April 1945.
After the war she went to live in England, where she studied anthropology and sociology and started working as a journalist for the BBC, among others. She had initially decided never to speak about the war again, she said in 2020 NRC. She started writing in the early 2000s after a cousin said to her: “Selma, you are almost the last of your generation still alive. You must write down your memories before it is too late.”
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