Freddie Oversteegen and her sister Truus were engaged in a ferocious battle for their country's freedom. When Freddie was just 14 years old, her and her big sister left the family home to join the Dutch resistance against the Nazis. They set out with their friend Hannie Schaft, on a campaign of sabotage against the Nazi invaders. Together, they sabotaged bridges and railway lines with dynamite, smuggled Jewish children out of concentration camps and seduced Nazi occupiers then executed them with guns they kept hidden in their baskets. They also gunned down Nazis while ridding along on their bikes. Some of their targets were high-ranking Nazi officers.
In a interview Freddie said this about their heroic actions,
"We had to do it.
It was a necessary evil, killing those who betrayed the good people".
Even before the war the Oversteegen family were heroes. They lived on a barge and would hide people from Lithuania in the hold of their ship. When Freddie's parents divorced, the girls moved with their mother into an apartment. The family hid a Jewish couple in their home.
After the war Truus became a sculptor and a painter. She married Piet Menger and had four children, one of whom she named after Hannie. Truus was regularly a guest speaker at universities and secondary schools about wars, anti-Semitism, tolerance and indifference. Her book about her experiences during the war, Not then, Not now, Not ever, was published in 1982. On May 10th, 1967, She was recognized as Righteous Among the Nations. At her 75th birthday in 1998, she was invested as an Officer of the Order of Orange-Nassau for her services. She died in July 2016.
Freddie married Jan Dekker and went on to have three children. She served as a board member on the National Hannie Schaft Foundation, which was established by her sister, Truus. In 2014, Freddie and Truus were awarded the Mobilization War Cross by Dutch Prime Minister for their acts of resistance during the war. A street named after her in Haarlem as well. Freddie was 92 years old when she passed away a day before her birthday, in a nursing home, on September 5th, 2018.
Hannie's real name was Jannetje Johanna Schaft. She was also known as "the girl with the red hair" and was on the Nazi's most wanted list. When one of her friends and fellow resistance workers was injured in a assassination effort, he mistakenly gave her name to Dutch Nazi nurses disguised as Resistance workers. German authorities arrested her parents and sent them to a concentration camp. Hannie ceased resistance work temporarily; her parents were eventually released. Hannie dyed her hair black to hide her identity and returned to Resistance work. She once again contributed to assassinations and sabotage, as well as courier work, and the transportation of illegal weapons and the dissemination of illegal newspapers. She was eventually arrested at a military checkpoint in Haarlem on March 21st, 1945, while distributing the illegal communist newspaper de Waarheid, which was a cover story. She was transporting secret documentation for the Resistance. After much interrogation, torture, and solitary confinement, Hannie was identified by the roots of her red hair by a former colleague. She was assassinated by Dutch Nazi officials on April 17th, 1945. Two men took her and one shot her at close range, only wounding her. She supposedly said to her executioners:
"I shoot better than you,"
after which the other man delivered the fatal shot.
On November 27th, 1945, Hannie was reburied in a state funeral. Queen Whilhelmina called Hannie "the symbol of the Resistance."
