Selma Meyer

• Comment: Requires inline citations to reliable secondary sources Dan arndt (talk) 00:10, 12 October 2018 (UTC)

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Sara Cato (Selma) Meyer (also Meijer) (Amsterdam, 6 July 1890 - Berlin, 11 February 1941) was a Dutch pacifist and resistance fighter of Jewish origin.

She was born in a Jewish family in Amsterdam, father Moritz Meyer (1865-1906) and mother Sophie Meyer-Philips (1868-1955), who is a cousin and a niece of the founders of Philips. She started working at the age of 18. She worked for ten years as a shorthand typist. In 1923 with Annette Monasch she took over the Holland Typing Office, a company that provided typing and copy services, as well as being one of the first employment agencies, providing shorthand typists, and selling typewriters

In 1923 she became a member of the Pacifist Women's League; the Dutch section of the Women's International League for Peace and Freedom, of which she became secretary. She was a member of several committees: For German refugees (including the Committee for the assistance of young German refugees), for victims of the Spanish Civil War, For the Wuppertal Committee and for the support of the resistance in Germany. From 1930 to 1936 she was a member of the SDAP. She belonged to the founders of the National Peace Center (NVC) in the autumn of 1932 and on 13 August 1936 attended with CPN chairman Ko Beuzemaker and railway unionist Nathan Nathans an International Conference for Aid to Republican Spain, which was held in Paris in 1936. In 1937 she met Hans Ebeling, with whom she became friends. Selma Meyer and the HTO played an important role in the publication of " Kameradschaft", a magazine by Ebeling and Theo Hespers, and helped both to create living space. She also financially supported "Kameradschaft" and other publications by Ebeling and Hespers. In addition, she was in charge of the Holland Typing Office, which she also enlisted for her activism and which only employed women. The Magazine "Kameradschaft" was printed at the HTO in Amsterdam. By the end of 1939 Selma was a key-person at the Sonderfahndungsliste by the Abwehr Wilhelmshaven who would have to be traced and questioned after the German invasion.

In April 1940 Meyer became ill, and when the German troops invaded the Netherlands on 10 May 1940, she had traveled to Zeeland to recover. She fled to France from Zeeland. Because of concern for her mother, her employees and her assistants she returned to Amsterdam and joined the Dutch resistance. On October 26, 1940 she was arrested. After being interrogated in Amsterdam and The Hague, Selma was transferred to Berlin in mid-November to be interrogated at the Gestapo prison of Berlin-Moabit. In January 1941, after mediation by the Gestapo, she was admitted to the Jüdisches Krankenhaus der Gemeinde zu Berlin because of peritonitis. She died at the age of 50 of complications that occurred after the peritoneal surgery. Selma Meyer was buried in an unmarked grave at the Jewish cemetary in Weißensee.

In January 2013, the book Van Vrouwen, Vrede en Verzet, written by Bart de Cort, was published about Selma Meyer. (ISBN 9789079567034)

In October 2018, 1001 Vrouwen in de 20ste Eeuw was published by Els Kloek. (ISBN 9789460043864