The Teenage Duo That Seduced and Killed Nazis
Tags: History, World War II, Nazis, Women, Bravery

“There were a lot of women involved in the resistance in the Netherlands but not so much in the way these girls were.”

When sisters Freddie and Truus Oversteegen were young, their communist mother made them sleep in the same bed even though the family had more than one mattress. Because they shared their flat with Jewish refugees in the Nazi-occupied Netherlands around 1940.

Their single, working-class, communist mother taught them the importance of fighting injustice. And making sacrifices to serve others.

As a result, they couldn’t tolerate the evils of Nazis against Jews. When the leader of a Dutch resistance group took notice of their radical bent, he asked their mother Trijntje if she would permit her daughters to join. Freddie was 14. And Truus was 16.

Without any hesitations, they said yes.

It was dangerous and subversive work. When the Nazis invaded, Trijntje made sure the refugees they’d been hosting were sent away, fearing they’d be discovered because of her family’s known communist leanings. Many were subsequently deported and killed. This stirred a fire in Freddie and Truus.

“Only later did he tell us what we’d actually have to do: sabotage bridges and railway lines,”

Soon Freddie and Truus learned to shoot Nazis too, and the sisters began to go on assassination missions by themselves. Later on, they focused on killing Dutch collaborators who arrested or endangered Jewish refugees and resistance members.

In no time, they were luring Nazis into the woods and assassinating them.

Their appearance gave them the look of kids. Freddie was said to have looked as young as 12 years old with her hair in braids. Few soldiers took notice of the two girls as they rode bicycles through occupied territory, though they were secretly acting as couriers, transporting paperwork and weapons for the resistance. The duo burned down a Nazi warehouse undetected.

They escorted small children and refugees to hiding spots and secured false identification for them, which they considered of paramount importance even as Allied bombs went off overhead.

Some of Freddie and Truus’s assignments involved acting as bait. Once, while Freddie stood as a lookout, Truus entered a restaurant and struck up a conversation with a high-ranking SS officer. While flirting with him, she asked him to go for a walk in the woods. Once they were isolated, Truus and her companion bumped into a man along the same path. Unknown to the Nazi officer, the man was a resistance member. He proceeded to execute the officer and leave him in a hole that had been dug earlier.

Soon they practiced a resistance form that they called “liquidations.” Sometimes the girls would ride a bicycle, Truus pedaling while Freddie shot from the back. They also followed the officers home to ambush them while their guard was down. While they considered the work necessary, it was difficult for the girls to accept. Sometimes, Freddie said, she would shoot a man and then feel a strange compulsion to try to help him up.

But they declined any missions that involved children. At one point they were asked to kidnap an officer’s kid. Since it might hurt the kids, they said no.

The girls were joined by a 22-year-old former law student named Jannetje Johanna “Hannie” Schaft in 1943. The three women became inseparable, acting as a tightly coordinated unit for sabotage missions. For the next two years, they continued to target officers and elude identification, though the Nazis knew Schaft by her distinctive red hair.

It was this colorful feature that would be the end of the trio’s undoing. In April 1945, just weeks before the end of the war, Freddie and Truus grew worried when Schaft failed to report back after an assignment. They were horrified to discover their friend had been grabbed at a checkpoint when an officer recognized the red roots of her hair, which she had dyed black to avoid detection. Schaft was executed on April 17, and lore has it she taunted her executioner after he failed to kill her on his first attempt. “I’m a better shot,” she reportedly said.

After the war, the sisters dealt with the trauma of killing people and losing their best friend. Truus created sculptures, and later spoke and wrote about their time in the resistance. Freddie got married and had babies. But the experience of war still caused her insomnia.

It’s not known exactly how many Nazis the girls killed, as both were reluctant to discuss it later in life. When asked, Freddie would respond with, “One should not ask a soldier any of that.”

In 2014, they received national recognition for their service to their country by receiving the Mobilisatie-Oorlogskruis, or “War Mobilization Cross.”

Both women died at age 92 — Truus in 2016, and Freddie on September 5, 2018, one day before she turned 93.