When Nazi Germany invaded the Netherlands on May 10, 1940, the Luftwaffe used paratroopers to seize tactical points and support the advance of ground troops. Heavy aerial bombardment accompanied the invasion, and Rotterdam was devastated on May 14, with its entire historic center destroyed. Because the Germans threatened to bomb Utrecht in the same way, the Dutch forces surrendered one day later.
Soon after, the Nazis began occupying the whole country and passed anti-Jewish laws designed to exclude Jewish people from society and restrict their livelihoods. The systematic deportation of Dutch Jews to death camps began in July 1942. Some Dutch citizens could not bear to see what was happening to their country and their people, and they joined the resistance. Among them were two sisters who would become known for resisting the German occupation and killing Nazis.
Truus Oversteegen was born on August 29, 1923, in Schiedam, the Netherlands. Her younger sister Freddie was born two years later, on September 6, 1925. The sisters lived with their parents on a barge.
The sisters grew up in a socially aware household, and their mother, a communist, had a strong intolerance for injustice. When their parents divorced, the girls stayed with their mother and were raised in a small apartment in the city of Haarlem. The family lived in poverty and slept on improvised mattresses stuffed with straw.
They were taught compassion for those less fortunate than themselves. The sisters would often share the same bed to spare the other one for the Jewish refugees from Germany who were regularly housed in their small apartment.
World War II started on September 1, 1939. On May 10, 1940, Germany invaded the Netherlands. Soon after, a civil administration was installed under the SS, and Arthur Seyss-Inquart was appointed Reichskommissar of the Netherlands. Among his first steps were a series of laws imposing economic discrimination against the Jews.
Soon after the occupation, a commander of the Haarlem Council of Resistance knocked on the Oversteegen family's door and asked their mother if the girls could join the underground fight against the Nazis. She agreed. At the time, Truus was 16 years old and Freddie was only 14.
In an interview in 2016, Freddie recalled the horrifying moments following the German occupation. She said she remembered how people were taken from their homes, and how the Germans banged on doors with the butts of their rifles, making so much noise it could be heard in the entire neighborhood. They would always yell, and it was very frightening.
On February 22 and 23, 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 started on February 25, 1941. German officials brutally suppressed the strike.
This action was followed by a hardening of Nazi policy. The 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.
Signs forbidding Jews appeared on the doors and gates of cafes, 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 April 29, 1942. Those caught without the badge after May 5, when it came into effect, were arrested and detained for a six-week period to serve at Mauthausen. In the Netherlands, everyone knew that this was a death sentence.
Deportations of Jews from the Netherlands began in July 1942. The last train left Westerbork for Auschwitz on September 3, 1944. During these 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 too, as the buildings were regularly bombed by the Allies. Those who refused to go were forced into hiding.
Freddie and her sister 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 be starting a kind of secret army very soon. However, the girls were doing much more than just handing out and distributing leaflets and literature.
They were 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. This resistance, 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 12-year-old schoolgirl, and her innocent looks made her invaluable, as 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. However, when it was necessary, the Oversteegen sisters would also kill.
Freddie was the fastest shooter, and she did so while riding a bicycle. Truus soon began killing Nazis as well. On one occasion, she witnessed a horrifying scene in which 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 smashed the baby against the wall until the baby was dead. When Truus was passing by and saw the horrific scene, she stopped, pointed her gun in the direction of the Nazi, and shot him dead without any regrets.
On a different occasion, they were both riding a bicycle, and while Truus was pedaling, 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 and 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 would target 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 they were asked by resistance commanders to kidnap the three children of Reichskommissar Arthur Seyss-Inquart, they refused and argued that resistance fighters do not kill children. They said they only fought against real fascists, not their children.
In 1943, the Oversteegen sisters were joined by the then 22-year-old former law student named Hannie Schaft, and 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 in 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.
Both Freddie and her sister Truus survived the war, but unfortunately Hannie Schaft was captured by the German authorities in 1945, just weeks before the liberation of the Netherlands. She was interrogated, tortured, and ultimately executed by firing squad on April 17, 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 May 5, 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 Menger, 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 about war, anti-Semitism, tolerance, and indifference. On May 10, 1967, Yad Vashem recognized Truus Oversteegen as a 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. To this day, their story, as well as others like theirs, serves as a beacon of courage in the face of the unjust and cruel forces in the world.