Selma van de Perre

Van de Perre was born in Amsterdam on 7 June 1922^[3] the daughter of actor, singer and presenter Barend Velleman and his wife Fem Spier, who had trained as a milliner.^[4][5] She had two elder brothers, David and Louis, and a younger sister, Clara. The family was liberal and, while Jewish, were not practising Jews.^[4][5] Her father had renounced the Jewish faith.^[6] Her elder brother sailed with the Dutch Steamboat Company during the war; her younger brother was in England.^[4] In 1942, Van de Perre was called to report to work in a fur factory that supplied the German army, but she managed to get an exemption.^[5] When her father was arrested later that year and taken to Camp Westerbork, she helped her mother and sister to go into hiding in Eindhoven.^[4]

After her mother and sister Clara were arrested in 1943, Van de Perre joined the Resistance and became a member of the "TD Group", a Dutch resistance organization.^[4] She operated under the alias Wil Buter, and later as Margareta ("Marga") van der Kuit,^[4] performing courier work throughout the Netherlands with suitcases containing newsletters and pamphlets; and money, food stamps and fake identity cards for people in hiding.^[7] In June 1944 she was betrayed and arrested. Officials did not know of her Jewish heritage and she was interned as a political prisoner.^[4] She was sent to Ravensbrück concentration camp in north-east Germany via Camp Vught, and while interned she was severely beaten^[8] and was not expected to survive.^[9] After recovering, now suffering from typhus and dysentery, she applied for work in the production hall of Siemens & Halske AG because conditions there were better. In April 1945 Ravensbruck was liberated by the Russian Army and through the Swedish Red Cross Van de Perre was taken to Gothenburg, where she revealed that her name was Selma Velleman. She worked with the authorities in Sweden who were helping to repatriate liberated prisoners.^[10] When she returned to the Netherlands, she learned that her parents, sister and other family members had been murdered in Auschwitz and Sobibór.^[5]