FOR YEARS, Selma van de Perre was “too busy living” to share her story with the world. She raised a son; taught schoolchildren in London; attended social functions with her husband, BBC correspondent Hugo van de Perre; and later worked as a journalist herself. But thanks in part to her remarkable memory, the former Dutch resistance worker and concentration camp prisoner—who turned 99 in June—was at last able to write her memoirs. The result, My Name is Selma, was published in May.
Born into a Jewish family in the Netherlands, Selma Velleman was 17 when, in May 1940, Germany occupied her home country. She dodged deportation, hiding with Gentile friends and later—under an assumed name, Marga, and
