The Nazis had different symbols for different categories of prisoners: Greenish triangles were for criminals, pinkish for LGBTQ, black or brown was for the Roma or Sinti, and the majority had a red triangle signifying that they were “a-socials,” which could mean anything from vagrant to nonconformist to Resistance worker.

The Dutch-Javanese Toto Koopman went from being a celebrated top model to a despised Ravensbrück pink triangle because she was lesbian. She was much admired by the Jewish Evelyn Samuels, who had also been born in Indonesia. Toto survived and in Switzerland, she met her life partner art dealer Erica Brausen with whom she opened the famous Hanover Gallery in London. Not much is known about what became of her admirer, Evelyn Samuels, other than that she had a brother in England and was with “Mammie Mies” in the Corelli Street house, in Camps Vught and Ravensbrück, and in Sweden.

This young Polish Girl arrived in Auschwitz in December 1942. She did not march to Ravensbrück nor survived, yet the colorized version of her picture makes her so heart-breakingly real that what happened in the death camps to vulnerable, young children like Eddie is even more unfathomable. A person had to be “Tough as Tags” to survive.

A person who survived both Camp Vught and Ravensbrück was known as “Marga van der Kuit” (pronounced/Mahrr-gha van darr Kuyt/), but she was in fact Jewish resistance fighter Selma Velleman (married name “van de Perre).” Like Mies Boissevain, she was rescued by the Red Cross white buses which took them to Sweden to recuperate. Unlike Mies, she was Jewish and hid it until the white rescue buses of the Red Cross made it to Göteborg. In neutral Sweden, she finally felt safe enough to say what was later to become the title of her amazing book, “My Name is Selma.”

On June 7, 2024, Selma van de Perre celebrated her 102nd birthday, outliving all the cruel Nazis who tried to dehumanize her…!