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Selma van de Perre was born in 1922, the third of four children, to actor Barend Levi Velleman and milliner Fem Velleman. She grew up in a liberal Jewish environment in Amsterdam. After the German occupation of the Netherlands, she lived illegally under the false name Marga van der Kuit and joined a predominantly non-Jewish resistance group that helped Jewish families go into hiding. Her parents and younger sister were deported via Westerbork to Auschwitz and Sobibor. In June 1944, Selma was arrested and, at the age of 22, deported from the Vught Concentration Camp to the Ravensbrück Women's Concentration Camp. Here, among other things, she was forced to perform hard labour in the Siemens workshops. She was able to keep her Jewish identity secret until her liberation by the White Buses of the Swedish Red Cross.

In Malmö, the liberated prisoners were registered using the SS lists. She was called ‘Marga van der Kuit’. For the first time in months, she dared to say, ‘My name is Selma.’ This is also the title of her autobiography, which was published in the Netherlands in 2020 and has been translated into numerous languages.

After liberation, Selma returned to her homeland. She was conscripted by the Dutch authorities to work in the medical service of a Dutch unit in London. Only gradually did she learn that her father, mother and sister Clara had been murdered, while her brothers had managed to escape to Great Britain as members of the Dutch navy.

She began studying anthropology and sociology in London, where she worked as a teacher and in the radio department of the BBC. There she met the Belgian journalist Hugo van de Perre, whom she married in 1955. In 1957, their son Jocelyn was born. After Hugo died in 1979, she took over his work as a foreign correspondent for Belgian broadcasters and newspapers, reporting mainly on British art and cultural life.

In 1945, she had decided never to set foot on German soil again. At the urging of other Ravensbrück survivors, she accepted an invitation to attend the 50th anniversary of the liberation at the Memorial in 1995. After that, she became a frequent guest here. From 2015 to 2022, she participated in the annual Ravensbrück Generations Forum, which the Memorial Museum had established together with the Dr. Hildegard Hansche Foundation, and shared her story with teenagers and young adults. She often sat with the participants until late into the night, captivating her listeners with her stories. But she was also a listener herself, sometimes picking up on threads of conversation that had begun months earlier.

In 2021, Selma van de Perre was honoured by the Dutch royal family in London with the title ‘Ridder in de Orde van Oranje-Nassau’. She was a passionate theatregoer and concertgoer, and played golf and bridge with enthusiasm into her old age. On the occasion of her 100th birthday, an exhibition of colourful paintings she had created was held in London.

Selma passed away in London on 20 October 2025 at the age of 103. After her imprisonment in the concentration camps of Vught and Ravensbrück, she was able to live in freedom for another eighty years.

The staff at the Ravensbrück Memorial Museum mourn the loss of Selma, who had become a good friend to many, and express their deepest sympathy to her family, especially her son Jocelyn.