On the evening of the 10th of May 1940, two sisters on a barge in the Netherlands heard a sound that would reshape their lives: the roar of German aircraft overhead. Truus Oversteegen was sixteen years old, her younger sister Freddie only fourteen. The Nazis had invaded their country, and within days, the occupiers began passing laws designed to strip Jewish people of their livelihoods and push them out of Dutch society. The systematic deportations to death camps would begin in July 1942.
But some Dutch citizens could not bear to watch what was happening to their country and their people. They joined the resistance. Among them were Truus and Freddie, who would become known for resisting the German occupation and killing Nazis. The sisters were born into a socially aware household.
Truus was born on the 29th of August 1923 in Schoten, the Netherlands. Her younger sister Freddie was born two years later, on the 6th of September 1925. The girls lived with their parents on a barge until the marriage fell apart. Their mother, a communist with a strong intolerance for injustice, kept the girls and moved them into a small apartment in the city of Haarlem.
The family lived in poverty, sleeping on improvised mattresses stuffed with straw. They were taught compassion for those less fortunate than themselves, and the sisters would often share the same bed to spare space for Jewish refugees from Germany, who were regularly housed in their small apartment. World War II began on the 1st of September 1939. Ten months later, on the 10th of May 1940, Germany invaded the Netherlands.
Soon after, an SS civil administration was installed, and Arthur Seyss-Inquart was appointed Reichskommissar of the Netherlands. Among his first steps were a series of laws imposing economic discrimination against Jews. Not long after the occupation began, a commander of the Haarlem Council of Resistance knocked on the Oversteegens’ door and asked their mother if the girls could join the underground fight against the Nazis. She agreed.
Truus was sixteen at the time; Freddie was just fourteen. In an interview in 2016, Freddie recalled the horrifying moments following the German occupation. “I remember how people were taken from their homes,” she said. “The Germans were banging on doors with the butts of their rifles and made so much noise you’d hear it in the entire neighborhood and they would always yell.
It was very frightening. ”
On the 22nd and 23rd of February 1941, German forces raided the Jewish quarter in Amsterdam, arresting and deporting more than 400 Jewish men to the Buchenwald and Mauthausen concentration camps. The Dutch people’s reaction was unique among Nazi-occupied Europe: they organized the February Strike, a two-day general strike that began on the 25th of February 1941. German officials brutally suppressed it.
The action was followed by a hardening of Nazi policy. German authorities, as well as collaborating Dutch authorities and civil services, segregated Jews from the general Dutch population and incarcerated 15,000 of them in German-administered forced labor camps. The Germans then ordered the concentration of Jews in Amsterdam and sent foreign and stateless Jews to the Westerbork transit camp in the northeastern part of the country. Some of the remaining provincial Jews were sent to the first camp there.
The sign “Forbidden for Jews” appeared on the doors and gates of cafés, swimming pools, sports fields, museums, zoos, libraries, theaters, markets, and many other public places. Jews had to hand over their valuables, and their businesses were confiscated. Regulations forcing Jews to wear a yellow Star of David on their clothing as a means of identification were announced in the Netherlands on the 29th of April 1942. Those caught without the badge after the 3rd of May, when the rules came into effect, were arrested and detained for a six-week period to serve at Mauthausen in the Netherlands.
Everyone knew this was a death sentence. Deportations of Jews from the Netherlands began in July 1942. The last train left Westerbork for Auschwitz on the 3rd of September 1944. During those two years, the Germans and their Dutch collaborators deported some 107,000 Jews, mostly to Auschwitz and Sobibor, where they were murdered.
Only 5,200 survived. In addition, 25,000 to 30,000 Jews went into hiding, assisted by the Dutch underground, and two-thirds of those managed to survive. During the war, the Oversteegen family hid a Jewish couple in their home. One of the biggest impacts on the Dutch people during the occupation was caused by the German Arbeitseinsatz, or labor deployment, which forced every man aged between 18 and 45 to work in German factories.
As part of this program, approximately 500,000 Dutchmen were transported by force to Germany. Life in the factories was hard and dangerous; the buildings were regularly bombed by the Allies. Those who refused to go were forced into hiding. Freddie and her sister Truus played a crucial role in distributing anti-Nazi propaganda, spreading leaflets and pasting warnings to discourage Dutch men from working in Germany.
Their efforts were aimed at disrupting the German war machine and undermining the occupier’s control. Their messages read “Don’t go to Germany” or “For every Dutch man working in Germany, a German man will go to the front. ”
The Oversteegen sisters were the only two women in the seven-person underground cell of the Haarlem Council of Resistance. Freddie later recalled that at the beginning of her time with the resistance, she thought they would soon be starting a kind of secret army.
But the girls were doing much more than just handing out and distributing leaflets and literature. They would be shown how to fire a weapon, the basics of sabotage, and tricks on how to rig railways and bridges with dynamite so travel paths could be cut off. The resistance’s counterintelligence, domestic sabotage, and communications networks helped provide key support to Allied forces throughout the liberation of Holland. Members of the resistance, if discovered, were immediately sentenced to death.
With her hair in braids, Freddie looked like a twelve-year-old schoolgirl. Her innocent looks made her invaluable; she could slip by Nazi controls unnoticed. Few soldiers took notice of her as she rode a bicycle through occupied territory, secretly acting as a courier, transporting paperwork and weapons for the resistance movement. Together with her sister, Freddie would burn down a Nazi warehouse and plant a communist flag at the headquarters of the National Socialist Movement.
They would escort small children, homosexuals, and Jewish refugees into hiding spots and arrange false documentation for them, helping them escape concentration camps. But when it was necessary, the Oversteegen sisters would also kill. Freddie was the fastest shooter among the Nazis’ enemies, and she did so while riding a bicycle. Truus soon began killing Nazis as well.
On one occasion, she witnessed a horrifying scene: a Nazi grabbed a baby and hit it against a wall. The father and sister of the baby, both crying hysterically, had to watch as the Nazi smacked the baby against the wall until it was dead. When Truus passed by and saw the scene, she stopped, pointed her gun at the Nazi, and shot him dead without any regrets. On a different occasion, they were both riding bicycles.
While Truus pedaled, Freddie shot a Nazi traitor from the back. One notable aspect of Freddie’s involvement in the resistance was her work as a seductress. Being young and attractive, she would approach German soldiers and collaborators under the pretext of a romantic encounter. At night she would put on makeup, find a target in a bar or restaurant, and start flirting with him.
Then she would lure the target out, asking him to go for a walk in the woods. Once they were alone, Freddie and her companion would bump into a man along the same path. Unknown to the Nazi officer, the man would be a resistance member who would shoot the Nazi dead and leave him in a hole that had been dug earlier. They targeted mostly Nazi officers, but also Dutch collaborators who gave the Nazis details of Jewish and dissident families.
However, they refused to target the children of high-ranking Nazis. When resistance commanders asked them to kidnap the three children of Reichskommissar Arthur Seyss-Inquart, they refused, arguing, “Resistance fighters do not kill children. We only fight against real fascists, not their children. ”
In 1943, the Oversteegen sisters were joined by a then 22-year-old former law student named Hannie Schaft.
The three women became inseparable. For the next two years, they would continue to be involved in acts of sabotage, distributing illegal newspapers, and carrying out targeted assassinations of German soldiers and collaborators. As a law student, Hannie used her knowledge and skills to aid the resistance. She would gather intelligence, forge identity papers, and participate in clandestine operations to undermine the Nazi occupiers.
She caused so much damage and killed so many Nazis that her capture was considered a high priority, ordered by Adolf Hitler himself. She was known as “the girl with the red hair,” and her determination and courage made her an iconic figure within the Dutch resistance movement. Freddie and Truus both survived the war. Unfortunately, Hannie Schaft was captured by German authorities in 1945, just weeks before the liberation of the Netherlands.
She was interrogated, tortured, and ultimately executed by firing squad on the 17th of April 1945. Her sacrifice and bravery made her a symbol of Dutch resistance against Nazi oppression. The Germans officially surrendered all their troops in the Netherlands on the 5th of May 1945, three days before the general capitulation of Germany. After the war, Supreme Allied Commander Dwight Eisenhower awarded Hannie a posthumous Medal of Freedom in November 1945.
Truus married Piet Manga, and the couple had four children, the eldest of whom was named in remembrance of Hannie Schaft. Truus was a regular guest speaker at universities and secondary schools, speaking about war, anti-Semitism, tolerance, and indifference. On the 10th of May 1967, Yad Vashem recognized Truus Oversteegen as Righteous Among the Nations, Israel’s highest honor for non-Jews who risked their lives to save Jews during the Holocaust. In 2014, for their services during World War II, both Truus and Freddie were awarded the Mobilization War Cross by the Dutch prime minister.
Truus passed away in 2016 at the age of 92, and Freddie passed away two years later at the same age. Their story, as well as others like theirs, serves as a beacon of courage in the face of unjust and cruel forces in the world.
