Three Ordinary Girls

Truus Oversteegen was born in 1923 in Haarlem, a city in the western Netherlands, to a family steeped in leftist politics. Her younger sister, Freddie, arrived two years later. Their mother, Trijntje van der Molen, raised the children in poverty after their father left the family. The girls attended socialist demonstrations from infancy, and Trijntje sheltered German leftist refugees fleeing Hitler as early as 1934 through her work with Red Aid, a communist relief organization, teaching her daughters the importance of secrecy.

In a more middle-class Haarlem neighborhood, Johanna "Jo" Schaft grew up as the only surviving child of Pieter, a teacher, and Aafje. Jo's older sister had died of diphtheria in 1927, leaving her parents fiercely protective. Bright and politically engaged, Jo had distinctive red hair that made her self-conscious. In 1938, she enrolled at the University of Amsterdam to study law, where she befriended two Jewish students, Philine Polak and Sonja Frenk, and co-founded a women's political club called Gemma.

On May 10, 1940, Germany invaded the Netherlands. The Dutch military, which lacked a single tank, was overwhelmed within five days. Queen Wilhelmina, the royal family, and the entire government fled to London, leaving the population feeling abandoned. German bombers devastated Rotterdam on May 14 despite a Dutch agreement to surrender, and the Netherlands capitulated the next day. Truus watched German tanks roll into Haarlem's central square with blood in their tracks and returned home declaring, "The scum is here."

The occupation, administered by Austrian Arthur Seyss-Inquart, quickly nicknamed "6¼" by the Dutch, brought escalating anti-Jewish measures. Jews were dismissed from civil service, identity cards were stamped with a large "J," and by spring 1942, all Jews had to wear yellow stars. In February 1941, after police arrested 425 young Jewish men in Amsterdam and deported them to concentration camps, Dutch communists organized the February Strike, the only strike in all of occupied Europe in direct response to the persecution of Jews. The Germans crushed the strike with live ammunition, killing nine and executing 20 organizers. The Oversteegen sisters participated in related activities, distributing pamphlets and posting resistance banners.

Shortly after, Frans van der Wiel, who had heard of the family through Communist Party connections, visited the Oversteegen home and proposed the girls join a resistance group engaging in sabotage and armed violence. He asked the teenage sisters directly whether they could shoot someone. Their mother told them they were free to fight but implored them to "stay human always and under all circumstances." At a subsequent meeting, Frans tested the sisters by pulling a gun on them and posing as the Gestapo, the Nazi secret police. The girls attacked him physically, kicking the weapon away. He revealed it was a loyalty test, and they agreed to join.

In spring 1942, Frans's cell coalesced into the Haarlem branch of the Raad van Verzet (RVV), or Council of Resistance, dedicated to armed resistance against the occupation. The group included the Oversteegen sisters, Jan Heusdens, Cor Rusman, Jan Bonekamp, and Jan Brasser. Their first major action came when Truus and Freddie lured an officer of the SS (Schutzstaffel), the Nazi paramilitary organization, from a café to nearby woods, where Frans shot him. The sisters cried together that night. The cell's first killing of a suspected Dutch informer, Joseph Gerritsen, followed shortly after, leaving both sisters deeply shaken.

Jo committed her first illegal act by stealing identity cards to provide counterfeits for her Jewish friends. In early 1943, when the Germans imposed a loyalty oath on university students and 85 percent refused to sign, Jo returned to Haarlem. She brought Philine and Sonja to hide at her parents' home, where her father had built a concealed space. Jo volunteered for resistance work through the local RVV liaison and was assigned to Frans's group, adopting the name "Hannie." Frans sent Hannie to Enschede in eastern Holland, where the Oversteegen sisters had been lying low after hanging a Communist flag over the headquarters of the NSB (Nationaal-Socialistische Beweging), the Dutch fascist collaborationist party. The three young women met for the first time with pistols at the ready, but a coded message from Frans broke the tension and they embraced as comrades.

Back in Haarlem, the trio practiced shooting and began carrying out missions together. Hannie partnered with Bonekamp, developing an intense personal bond while assassinating informers and collaborators across the province of Noord-Holland. She also mapped German coastal defenses from IJmuiden to The Hague, passing intelligence to Allied forces in London. Truus undertook a harrowing mission transporting Jewish children from Amsterdam toward Dordrecht, disguised as a Red Cross nurse. When a searchlight caught their boat during a nighttime river crossing, a 14-year-old boy stood defiantly and was shot dead. The boat capsized, and Truus saved only the youngest child, a girl named Rosy.

Two days after D-Day on June 6, 1944, Hannie and Bonekamp assassinated Piet Faber, a Haarlem pastry chef whose sons served in Operation Silbertanne, an SS death squad that murdered suspected resisters in retaliation for resistance attacks. On June 21, they targeted police captain Willem Ragut in Zaandam. Bonekamp killed Ragut but suffered a mortal gunshot wound and died in custody. In his delirious final hours, he gave the Sicherheitsdienst (SD), the Nazi intelligence service, the address of Hannie's parents. The SD raided the Schaft home, sending Pieter and Aafje to Vught concentration camp.

Hannie sank into depression, devastated by Bonekamp's death and her parents' imprisonment. Her red hair was dyed black and she adopted glasses to become unrecognizable. Her friend Sonja, who had left the Schaft home against everyone's advice, was captured in France and died at Auschwitz. Hannie never learned of Sonja's fate.

On September 5, 1944, the Dutch celebrated prematurely as German forces retreated, on what became known as Dolle Dinsdag, or Crazy Tuesday. The RVV attacked three targets: Truus and Heusdens assassinated officer Harm Smit, while Hannie's gun jammed during an attack on officer Franciscus Willemse, who shot her through the thigh before she escaped. The celebrations proved illusory: Operation Market Garden, the Allied airborne assault on Arnhem in mid-September, failed, and the Netherlands remained under occupation.

The Hunger Winter of 1944-1945 brought desperate scarcity of food, fuel, and electricity across western Holland. The girls continued operating under a Velsen-led Forces of the Interior command, growing resentful when they discovered that dangerous missions had been delivering luxury goods for commanders' wives. Despite an order to cease armed resistance after new recruits mistakenly killed an innocent farmer who had been hiding Jews, the commanders continued directing liquidations. In March 1945, Hannie and Truus assassinated NSB police inspector Willem Zirkzee. In reprisal, Germans executed 15 young men in a Haarlem market square, including several from a list Freddie had provided to the Velsen commanders believing they would only face post-war trial. Friends noticed Hannie's growing recklessness, and Truus later wondered whether Hannie had a death wish.

On the first day of spring 1945, Hannie was stopped at a German checkpoint carrying illegal newspapers and a concealed pistol. Gestapo agent Emil Ruhl, who had been hunting the "Girl with the Red Hair" for years, realized her identity during transport to Amsterdam. She confirmed it: "Yes." Under interrogation, Hannie confessed to several attacks but never revealed her comrades or their hideouts. On approximately April 17, she was taken to the dunes beyond Bloemendaal. German guard Schmitz fired first and only grazed her. Dutch SD detective Maarten Kuiper then shot her twice in the back of the head.

The Netherlands was liberated on May 5, 1945. Hannie's body was discovered in the dunes on June 1, among 422 exhumed from mass graves in the area. On November 27, she was reburied in a ceremony attended by Queen Wilhelmina, chosen to represent all the martyrs found there. Post-war Cold War politics marginalized communist resistance fighters; when authorities denied leftist groups permission to hold commemorations at Hannie's gravesite in 1951, police with armored vehicles blocked five thousand marchers led by Truus. Truus married Piet Menger, her comrade from the Velsen resistance, and became a sculptor creating works dedicated to the resistance. Freddie married Jan Dekker and raised three children. Both sisters received the War Mobilization Cross in 2014 and had streets named after them in Haarlem, intersecting with Hannie Schaftstraat. Truus died in 2016 and Freddie in 2018, both at age 92, remaining unrepentant about their wartime actions.