Freddie Oversteegen, Dutch Resistance Fighter Who Killed Nazis Through Seduction, Dies At 92 [View all]
Source: Washington Post
By Harrison Smith, 4 hrs. ago.
She was 14 when she joined the Dutch resistance, though with her long, dark hair in braids she looked at least two years younger. When she rode her bicycle down the streets of Haarlem in North Holland, firearms hidden in a basket, Nazi officials rarely stopped to question her. When she walked through the woods, serving as a lookout or seductively leading her SS target to a secluded place, there was little indication that she carried a handgun and was preparing an execution.
The Dutch resistance was widely believed to be a man’s effort in a man’s war. If women were involved, the thinking went, they were likely doing little more than handing out anti-German pamphlets or newspapers.
Yet Freddie Oversteegen and her sister Truus, two years her senior, were rare exceptions- a pair of teenage women who took up arms against Nazi occupiers and Dutch “traitors” on the outskirts of Amsterdam. With Hannie Schaft, a onetime law student with fiery red hair, they sabotaged bridges and rail lines with dynamite, shot Nazis while riding their bikes, and donned disguises to smuggle Jewish children across the country and sometimes out of concentration camps.
In perhaps their most daring act, they seduced their targets in taverns or bars, asked if they wanted to “go for a stroll” in the forest-and “liquidated” them, as Ms. Oversteegen put it, with a pull of the trigger. “We had to do it,” she told one interviewer. “It was a necessary evil, killing those who betrayed the good people.” When asked how many people she had killed or helped kill, she demurred: “One should not ask a soldier any of that.”...More...
Read more: https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/world/freddie-oversteegen-dutch-resistance-fighter-who-killed-nazis-through-seduction-dies-at-92/ar-BBNqAy8
Freddie Oversteegen, last remaining member of the Netherlands’ most famous female resistance cell, died Sept. 5, a day before her 93rd birthday. The National Hannie Schaft Fnd. was founded by Ms. Oversteegen’s sister, Truus to promote the legacy of Schaft who was captured & executed by Nazis just before the end of WWII. Schaft became a national icon whose story was taught to schoolchildren & memorialized in a movie, “The Girl With the Red Hair” (1981).
For Truus Oversteegen, being in the resistance was a source of pride & of pain, a 5-yr. experience that she never regretted. As girls Truus & Freddie made dolls for children suffering in Spain's Civil War (1936-1939). In WWII, the family sheltered German & Dutch refugees, including a Jewish couple, and a mother & son who lived in their attic. When German forces invaded in May 1940, the refugees were all deported & murdered.
The sisters began their resistance careers by distributing pamphlets & hanging anti-Nazi posters. Then they joined the underground Haarlem resistance & learned to sabotage bridges & railways, and shoot Nazis.
Photo Top, Freddie Oversteegen, Below, Freddie and Truus Oversteegen.
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