Christian Find, Rosa Zylka & Selma van de Perre

Selma van de Perre (maiden name: Velleman) was born on June 7th 1922 in Amsterdam, Netherlands. She is the daughter of Levi and Fem Velleman, and sister of David, Louis and Clara. Her father was an actor, singer and director and due to his occupation, the family struggled often financially. They had to move several times. Although Levi and Fem were Jewish, the family did not practice the religion. The father was, especially for this time, very liberal and wanted Selma to go to University. He empowered her. But it did not come so far. When the Nazis occupied the Netherlands in 1940, the family started to live in horrible conditions. They were not allowed outside, or to university, they were not allowed to work. After the father got “collected“ by the Nazis and sent to a working camp in Drenthe (Netherlands), the family decided to go into hiding. Selma got separated from her mother and sister because they didn’t have enough money to pay the people who were looking for hiding places. The brothers were in the army. Selma started working for the Dutch resistance and did many brave yet very dangerous trips around Holland and across the border to Paris. She got caught in 1944, went into prison, then to the transit-camp in Vught (Netherlands), and then deported to the women concentration camp in Ravensbrück in September 1944. She had another name, Margarete van der Kuit, which probably saved her life, since she was not deported as a Jew, but “only“ as a resistance fighter. She got freed by the Swedish Red Cross in April 1945. After the war she moved to London, where she worked as a journalist and a teacher. She got married to Hugo van de Perre, whom she met at the BBC, where she worked as a Dutch correspondent. She has a son, who also lives in London. She likes to play golf, to paint, to listen to the radio, to play bridge and she loves plants and colors. She is turning 98 this year. She is very political, very liberal (pro Europe, pro migration) and just published her autobiography in Holland. It will be translated and published in five different languages.

Gift

Good News For You Selma

Duration: 4:50

Special radio news on “LBC Berlin.” A personal gift by Rosa Zylka and Christian W. Find, Berlin to our good friend Selma van de Perre, London in May 2020. We both, Rosa and Christian, we’re happy to donate this present to you, Selma. You remember, that in times of Corona we were sitting outside in the park calling you from there. During our two calls we tried to find out, what makes you happy. Some keywords and terms lead to our idea to give to you good radio news.

Connection

Process

She loves her tiny little garden with colourful flowers or plants. Important for her is the contact with people. In the Corona crisis she thinks about her experience not to be able to leave her home. She remembers her situation in the times of war and repression, when the Jews couldn’t get out and had to hide themselves not only for a few months but also for many years. At home she feels safe. She loves almond cakes and misses playing golf. She’s also painting, but there she has no lack of the supplies. Time is important. Her favourite place at home is her sunny backroom because she loves so much sunshine. The most important point for her is even in this situation her political engagement and her autobiography, she has written. More than two times she emphasizes that she was working as a journalist. Therefore radio is her daily partner, always listening to the news. No wonder that her biggest wish is, to stay alive and to see, that her book is published. After the first conversation with Selma we thought about a gift, which is easy to send to her because we are living in Berlin and Selma in London. So we developed the idea of a short radio piece. In the second conversation we specified the idea with the good news and we tried to find out which radio station she’s listening to. We are not sure but it sounded like LBC, the private talk radio “Leading Britain’s Conversation.” We thought, that the vast energy of this radio station fits to the energy of Selma, which we admire.

Sound in the Silence is an international, multi-disciplinary historical performance project that uses location-based narratives as a prompt for the creation of new work and the intergenerational connection of people and cultures. This immersive project places you in-residence at locations where history happened and takes you through a process that results in a site-specific performance as its culminating act. Since 2018, we have partnered with the Ravensbrück Concentration Camp Memorial site to connect their meeting of survivors called the Generations Forum with the creative inquiry and methodology of the Sound in the Silence project. The result has been a deep connection between the project, our participants, and the survivors of the camp. We believe deeply that this creative and educational methodology is transformational and can be applied to a variety of historical, cultural, and social projects. Past editions of the project include Neuengamme (Germany), Borne Solinowo (Poland), Gdansk/Stutthof (Poland), Auschwitz/Zilina (Poland/Slovakia), Oakland (USA), Ravensbrück (Germany), Warsaw (Poland), and Bunker Valentine (Germany). Sound in the Silence was founded by Jens Huckeriede, Dan Wolf, and die MOTTE (Hamburg). Since 2012 European Network Remembrance and Solidarity (Warsaw) has been a co-partner of the project.

Thumbnail Photo Credit: Selma Velleman 1945 in Sweden.