When Nazi Germany invaded the Netherlands on May 10, 1940, the attack came with paratroopers, tactical strikes, and heavy aerial bombardment. The bombing of Rotterdam culminated on May 14 with the destruction of its historic center, and after the Germans threatened to bomb Utrecht in the same way, the Dutch forces surrendered one day later.
The occupation that followed brought 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 was a young woman who would become the Nazis' most wanted woman in the Netherlands during World War II. Her name was Hannie Schaft.
Hannie Schaft was born as Jannetje Johanna Schaft on December 16, 1920, in Haarlem, the Netherlands. She had an older sister, Annie, who died tragically from diphtheria at the age of seven.
Partly because of that loss, her parents raised Hannie with great caution and kept a close eye on her. She developed a political consciousness from a young age, as both parents followed world affairs and discussed them openly at the dinner table with their daughter.
Her father, Pieter Schaft, was an active supporter of the Social Democratic Workers Party, or SDAP, and conveyed his leftist tendencies to Hannie. Guided by her socialist parents, she developed not only a strong sense of social justice but also a deep hatred of fascism.
While Hannie was open and talkative at home, she remained rather quiet at school. Her bright red hair also made her the target of teasing and mockery.
After high school in Haarlem in 1938, Hannie began attending the University of Amsterdam in the hope of becoming a human rights lawyer. During her university studies, she became friends with the Jewish students Sonja Frank and Philine Polak, which made her feel strongly about actions against Jews.
World War II started on September 1, 1939, when Nazi Germany invaded Poland. Already in the early stages of the war, Hannie's resistant spirit began to show, and through the Red Cross she started sending food and other supplies to imprisoned Polish soldiers.
After Germany invaded the Netherlands on May 10, 1940, a civil administration was installed under SS auspices, and Arthur Seyss-Inquart was appointed Reichskommissar of the Netherlands. Among his first steps was a series of laws imposing economic discrimination against Jews.
During 1940, the German occupation authorities banned Jews from the civil service and required Jews to register the assets of their business enterprises. In January 1941, the German authorities required all Jews to register themselves as Jews.
The Germans claimed the registration requirement was for the Jews' own safety, but in truth it enabled their future deportations, as the Nazis could easily track them down. A total of 159,806 persons were registered, including 19,561 persons born of mixed marriages, and the total included some 25,000 Jewish refugees from the German Reich. A Jewish Council was established in February 1941.
Around this time, Hannie founded a debate group called Gamma, where critiques against the Nazi occupation and anti-Semitism were frequent topics of discussion. She also started writing articles in the university paper criticizing the segregation of Jewish students and teachers, who were later banned from the campus.
On February 22 and 23, 1941, German forces raided the Jewish quarter in Amsterdam, arresting and deporting more than 400 Jewish men to 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 in 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 Vught camp.
Signs reading "forbidden for 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 a badge after May 5, when the rules 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 transport left 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.
In 1943, university students were required to sign a declaration of allegiance to the occupation authorities. When Schaft refused to sign the petition in support of the occupation forces, like 80 of the other students, she could not continue her studies.
In the summer of 1943, she moved back in with her parents, taking her Jewish friends Sonja Frank and Philine Polak with her. She managed to obtain fake IDs for them to evade Nazi checkpoints as the Nazis continued stripping Jewish citizens of their basic rights.
Upon leaving university, Hannie joined the Council of Resistance, a movement that had close ties to the Communist Party of the Netherlands. While in the resistance, she met two sisters, Truus and Freddie Oversteegen, with whom she became close friends and who would survive the war.
Despite being young and female, they formed a famous trio in the Dutch resistance, feared by German occupiers as well as by Dutch Nazi collaborators. Hannie, who was pursuing a career in human rights law, served as the intellectual member; Truus emerged as their decisive and practical leader; and the feminine and fierce Freddie would map out their missions.
Armed resistance was an extremely dangerous activity, with many fighters arrested and executed. Rather than act as a courier, Schaft wanted to work with weapons. She was responsible for sabotaging and assassinating various targets.
It is unclear how many attacks can be attributed to Hannie, but it is believed there were at least six. Before confronting her targets, she would put on makeup, including lipstick and mascara, and style her hair. She once explained her reasoning to Truus: "I'll die clean and beautiful."
Hannie and the Oversteegen sisters gathered vital information, provided Jewish children with safe houses, stole identification papers, and bombed railways. Hannie could speak fluent German, and with Truus and Freddie she became involved with German soldiers. They would seduce high-ranking Nazi officers, lure them into the woods, and kill them.
Hannie was also involved in killing or wounding a baker who was known for betraying people, a hairdresser who worked for the Nazi intelligence agency, and a Nazi police officer named Willem Zirkzee. Soon she became famous as "the girl with the red hair" and was placed on the Nazis' most wanted list. Adolf Hitler had personally ordered her capture.
Hannie and the Oversteegen sisters targeted mostly Nazi offices but also Dutch collaborators who gave the Nazis details of Jewish and dissident families. They did, however, refuse to target the children of high-ranking Nazis.
When they were asked by their resistance commanders to kidnap the three children of Reichskommissar Arthur Seyss-Inquart, they refused and argued: "Resistance fighters do not kill children. We only fight against real fascists, not against children."
Hannie also worked closely with one of the founders of the resistance, Jan Bonekamp, whom she admired greatly. Bonekamp was charismatic, fearless, and good-looking, and the two are rumored to have had a romantic relationship.
On June 21, 1944, Hannie Schaft and Jan Bonekamp carried out an assassination on a Dutch police officer and collaborator, Willem Ragut. Hannie fired first and hit Ragut in the back, but Bonekamp was shot in the stomach by Ragut before killing him.
Bonekamp died nevertheless, and the two resistance fighters fled in different directions. While Hannie managed to get away, the fatally wounded Bonekamp was arrested and taken to the hospital. While there, he unintentionally gave Hannie's name and address to Dutch Nazi nurses who were pretending to be resistance workers.
Soon after, Jan Bonekamp died from his injuries, and a week later the Nazis raided Hannie's parents' house and sent her parents to a Dutch concentration camp. Hannie, overwhelmed with grief, nearly turned herself in, but resistance members ordered her to stay with the Oversteegens until she calmed down.
She then temporarily stopped working for the resistance due to the distress of the situation and her grief over Bonekamp's death. When her parents were released several months later, she decided to return to the resistance.
She disguised herself by dyeing her hair black and wearing wireframe glasses. She once again contributed to assassinations and sabotage, as well as courier work, the transportation of illegal weapons, and the dissemination of illegal newspapers.
But her dedication was short-lived. On March 21, 1945, Hannie Schaft was caught during a police patrol while in possession of two resistance-friendly newspapers and a pistol. She was arrested and brought to a prison in Amsterdam, where she was tortured and interrogated.
When she was forced to wash her hair, the Nazis knew they had finally found the red-haired assassin they had been searching for for over two years. Although at the end of the war there was an agreement between the occupier and the Dutch resistance to stop executions, the Nazis nevertheless decided to kill her.
Hannie Schaft was executed by Nazi officials Maarten Kuiper and Martin Kaper only three weeks before the liberation, in the dunes of Overveen near Bloemendaal. When Maarten Kuiper leveled his gun at Hannie, the first bullet struck her in the head but only wounded her.
Still standing, she said her final words, which were allegedly: "I shoot better." She was then hit with another bullet, fired by Martin Kaper, that killed her.
Hannie Schaft was only 24 years old when she died on April 17, 1945. The Netherlands was liberated from the Nazi occupation only 18 days later, on May 5, 1945.
The dunes where Schaft was killed became a mass grave for over 400 Dutch resistance fighters, including Hannie Schaft herself. On November 27, 1945, Schaft was reburied in a state funeral at the Dutch honorary cemetery in Bloemendaal.
Members of the Dutch government and royal family attended, including Queen Wilhelmina, who called Schaft "the symbol of resistance." Following her death, Hannie became known as one of the bravest resistance fighters of World War II, both in the Netherlands and abroad.
Supreme Allied Commander Dwight Eisenhower awarded Hannie a posthumous Medal of Freedom. Her legacy suffered during the Cold War because of her communist ties, though most recently, in 2020, Deputy Prime Minister Kajsa Ollongren honored her for the 100-year celebration of her birthday.
Ollongren said Hannie "fought for liberty and a society in which everyone has the right to participate. Her life teaches us that we must not look away from the fight against evil."