The Sex Saboteur Sisters Who Lured Nazis To Their Death
By: Reuben Salsa
Tags: Nazis, Resistance, Salsa, History, World War II

This remarkable woman, alongside her sister and best friend Hannie Schaft, were super-agents for the resistance in World War II. From a young age, she was raised in a socialist household by a mother who taught her the value of life. Her mother, Trijn, raised her children as a solo mum in the Dutch city of Haarlem. As the politics flared in Germany, people were fleeing the country and crossing the border to escape persecution. The 1930s saw the Oversteegen household harbor Jews, dissidents, and gays. All smuggled in the dead of night.

Soon the war arrived in the Netherlands. Trijn realized that her library of communist literature was a major attraction to the Nazis who wanted nothing more than to lock up people with free thought. It pained her dearly to lose the books in the burning but she held fast to her beliefs and the importance of fighting injustice.

The resistance had noticed.

The sisters were already causing a nuisance among the authorities. They could be seen handing out anti-Nazi pamphlets and “glued warnings across German posters in the street calling men to work in Germany.” recalled Freddie in a later interview.

Freddie (left) and Truus. Photo sourced from Manon Hoornstra

Joining the resistance was the logical progression. The younger Freddie looked angelic. When she wore her hair in braids she could be mistaken for 12. The Nazi’s didn’t suspect a thing. Nobody was on the look-out for a sweet twelve-year-old girl who liked nothing more than to blow up bridges and sabotage railways!

The two sisters began as couriers, moving weapons and stealing identity papers to help Jewish people escape. Then arson followed by assassination. The two were remarkably efficient at it. Taken one night to a warehouse, they were both taught how to use a pistol and where best to shoot. Their favorite method was to saddle up behind their mum on a bike and shoot Nazis as they rode past. Again, the thought of a petite young girl shooting to kill as she rode past on her pretty bicycle was way beyond the German’s comprehension.

Some targets were Dutch collaborators who gave the Nazis details of Jewish and dissident families. Others were high-ranking Nazi officers.

Truus Oversteegen with a Sten gun. Photo by Sophie Poldermans

One night, their assignment was to “liquidate” a member of the SS. The sisters found their target in a restaurant. Truus, now an attractive 18-year-old, smiling coyly at the officer. With a flash of leg, a hint of sex to come, Truus lured him out. Like many men who were to die at her hands after him, the officer couldn’t resist the suggestion of a proposed walk in the forest. Gleefully he followed Truus, the seductive trap sprung as a resistance fighter stepped out of hiding and shot him.

“They were unusual, these girls,” says Bas von Benda-Beckmann, a former researcher at the Netherlands’ Institute for War, Holocaust and Genocide Studies. “There were a lot of women involved in the resistance in the Netherlands but not so much in the way these girls were. There are not that many examples of women who actually shot collaborators themselves.” Source — History.com

It wouldn’t take long before they were going on missions by themselves. They never revealed how many Nazis and Dutch collaborators they assassinated.

Their friend Hannie join them and the trio became inseparable. A hardcore resistance machine taking down Nazis wherever they went. Hannie became known as the ‘Girl with the Red Hair’ which made her easy to spot. She would be captured by a German guard who saw through her disguise. Her distinctive red hair was showing through the roots. The sisters were devastated when the Nazis arrested and killed her in 1945, just three weeks before the war ended in Europe. Hannie’s infamous last words were “I’m a better shot,” after initially only being wounded by her executioner.