Selma van de Perre, welcome to
The Daily Social Distancing Show.
You're welcome.
You have lived a life that is remarkable.
It has been a life filled with triumphs, trials, tribulations,
and you are now telling your story.
You have lived as a Jewish resistance fighter.
You survived a concentration camp.
And now, on May 5, the Netherlands are celebrating
76 years of liberation from the Nazi occupation.
Why do you think May 5 is so important to many people
and especially to yourself?
May the 5th. Oh, well, because it is, um...
It is a rather good thing to remember
because we were freed from German occupation.
I know people are celebrating today,
but many people lost lives and families
and are not ready to celebrate every time freedom.
I think the day before, yesterday,
was very much more important
because that was the day of the dead.
Although, of course, today is very important-- Liberation Day.
And in your new book, My Name is Selma,
you talk about your life.
You talk about how you grew up in the Netherlands,
you talk about how your family weren't even practicing Jews.
You were just living a normal life, and all of a sudden,
that got turned upside down
when the Nazis started invading Europe.
I would love to know what that felt like to you as a person,
where one day, you felt like you were part
of a community and a society, and the next thing you know,
you were in danger just because of your family's history.
Although my...
my great grandparents were very religious,
but my father was very a great liberal,
and so, I got that on from him.
And we lived a life amongst all Christian people,
-and, uh, just were one of them. -Mm-hmm.
Well, I mean, as civilians.
And, um, so it was not felt you were Jewish. You knew.
My girlfriends knew I was Jewish,
and I knew who was Catholic, and I knew who was Protestant.
But it didn't make any difference.
-Mm. -We were all friends.
And that changed when the Germans came in.
You talk about in the book how your life changed
over the course of a few months, where, in one moment,
you were a young girl who was 17 years old.
And then, because of what was happening in the Netherlands,
the Jewish community-- you had to come together
to try to fight the scourge of the Nazis.
As a young girl who is dying her hair
to change how she looks,
as a young girl who is trying to help fellow members
of the Jewish community with passports and papers
and food and transport,
what was going through your mind when this was happening?
We were thinking that the end would come soon.
In fact, it came later than we thought.
But it was said all the time,
-it will only be six months or something. -wow.
Don't forget. Don't forget, the Netherlands were neutral
in the First World War.
And the whole population thought
that this time, we would be neutral, as well,
and no occupation was considered.
So when it did come, it was a great surprise.
After a year or so, the... the, um...
declarations came in
that Jews were not allowed in the... on the trams,
and not allowed in the cinemas, and not allowed
to visit Christian friends anymore, etcetera.
And so that then, one was made to feel an outsider,
a Jew.
When you were captured by the Germans, they forced you
to work on an assembly line,
um, manufacturing gas masks for the Germans.
And you talk about how what you would do
is leave some of the screws loose,
so that the gas masks wouldn't work properly.
I have two questions about that.
Firstly, weren't you afraid that you would be caught?
And secondly, where did you get that idea from?
Well, I was on the assembly line,
and one of the first days,
I was sitting on this side of the assembly line,
the other girl-- uh, Hetty Voûte Was her name,
became very important in the resistance--
um...
she said, "Don't... don't tie the screws too tight."
She told me to. So I was very...
I thought it was wonderful, because some...
we tried to do, you see,
not realizing how dangerous it was, really.
We thought, uh, we were Dutch and we could do anything.
And later on, when I had my thumb broken
and couldn't work on the assembly line for a week,
and afterwards, I had to put the gas masks in the box
and check them.
And of course, I knew that the screws were loose,
but I still put them in,
because they were sent straight to Germany and Poland
for the soldiers.
When you look at the world today,
you are one of the few remaining survivors of that time.
Many people worry that society will forget that story,
as fewer survivors are able to recount what happened to them,
those stories will be lost to history,
and part of the fear is that history will then repeat itself.
Why do you think it's so important for us
to keep on talking about what happened during that time
when Nazi Germany was invading the world?
Because that's why I think commemorations are so important.
Because when you commemorate, you tell the story,
and people tell the stories which has happened.
And I personally go every year back to Ravensbrück,
which is a group of women and men
who have just finished teaching training... teacher's training.
And, um, they tell the children, when they become a teacher,
what has happened and what they've heard.
-Wow. -And I've had...
and I've had... and so that's why it's good.
I do this every year.
And, um...
and I've done it for the last 20 years by now.
And I have... now I often get, um, letters
from-- or e-mails-- from these students,
some of these students, who have become teachers,
and who are telling the children.
I often wondered how many of them really did something
with this workshop information.
But, of course, they did.
That's very good to hear.
I didn't think the book was going to be important.
I didn't think the book was going to be
top of the Bookseller's list.
I was very pleased when it was going to be published,
but never, never in...
my life thought that it was going to be so read...
much read, you know.
I think... I think the reason everybody should read the book,
and I think the reason so many people have read the book,
is because, not only have you lived an unbelievable life
through one of the most unbelievable and horrific times,
but what you're teaching people about life beyond that
is so important.
And-and before I... before I... before I leave you--
you are now 98 years old,
and you still live life, you enjoy yourself,
you play bridge-- I was told that you play golf.
I don't know if that's true.
-So, you play golf? -Until-until last November.
Right. So, playing golf, playing bridge, living life--
I would love to know what inspires you
to find your joy and what keeps you going in the world
every single day.
I enjoy every day. I ty to enjoy every day.
(clears throat)
So, um...
I try to eat sensibly...
(chuckles): behave sensibly...
and...
I try to have friends, which I have,
and are very good to me, especially now I'm old.
Every morning when I wake up, I'm glad that I'm alive.
I'm very much...
realize the fact that I am alive
and many, many, many thousands of people are not.
I've written the book also in commemoration
of all those people who...
the resistance fighters... (audio breaks up)
helping other people
to stay alive, really.
Well, I will say this, um, from my small little world:
Thank you for inspiring us,
thank you for writing the book,
um, thank you for sharing your story, and, um,
thank you so much for joining me on the show.
I hope you get back to your bridge and your friends
and continue enjoying every single day.
Selma van de Perre... (speaks Dutch)
You're welcome. Thank you.