a Few months after the nazi invasion of Holland in may 1940, saw the newly minted modstandskvinde Truus Oversteegen something so cruel, that it changed her life.
She saw a German soldier commit a horrible war crime. He gathered the baby up and swung it into a wall until it was lifeless.
“the baby’s father and sister stood by, and so on. They were completely hysterical. The child was dead,” remembered then-17-year-old Truus Oversteegen.
She reacted instinctively by grabbing his gun, raise it resolutely and shoot the German soldier, writes the New York Post.
“It was not as such a task. But I don’t regret it. We had to do with the cancerous growth in our society, as we had to cut away like a surgeon,” said Truus Oversteegen, according to the New York Post.
the Shooting was the beginning of a war effort, where Truus, her sister Freddie and their friend Hannie’s schaft went extremely heavy-handed approach was to liquidate several nazis.
An effort, which the authoress Sophie Poldermands has just written a book with the title ‘Seducing and killing nazis’.
the Vast majority of women in the Dutch resistance worked as spies or in other functions, which kept them away from the direct violent confrontation.
But Hannie’s schaft and Freddie and Truus Oversteegen specialized quite simply to liquidate the German soldiers and the Dutch nazis.
“These women never saw themselves as heroines. They were extremely dedicated and believed sincerely that they had no other choice than to make resistance. They never regretted what they had done in the course of the war,” writes author Sophie Poldermans in the book.
The three women had a very specific approach when they worked.
They wrap themselves in nice clothes, lipstick and went out in the city, where they flirted with German soldiers and the Dutch people, who had chosen to cooperate with the occupying power.
If they got one on the hook, lured them out in a nearby forest to go for a romantic evening stroll.
In many cases, anticipated the women’s male colleagues in the resistance, which then jumped up from their hiding place and shot the soldiers or collaborators down.
sometimes liquidated the women themselves, their victims.
It was done most often by that they were shot down from behind, because the three women agreed that it was a more merciful way to die.
Their victims discovered simply never, they were at a dødstur, which would end with their liquidation.
But it was not easy for women. Truus tells, for example, that she once passed out after a liquidation, and that she sometimes cried, after they had shot a victim.
As the war progressed, was the nazi occupying more and more desperate to get hold of the women.
It was in this context that the Oversteegen sisters friend and business partner Hannie’s schaft had established himself as a legend to such an extent that today she has 15 streets in the Netherlands named after her.
She was one of the most wanted resistance fighters in Holland, and although she managed to elude the nazis – among other things, to color his red hair dark – ended up she to be caught in march 1945.
She was tortured, thrown in a cell, and 18 days before, the Netherlands was liberated, she was led out of his cell and lined up against a wall.
According to several police reports, and eyewitness accounts hit the first ball that was fired at Hannie’s schaft, past the target.
It got her to stare at his banemænd and say:
“Idiots. I shoot better than you.”
Then she was executed in a flurry of bullets.
The two Oversteegen sisters lived a long life.
Truus died in 2016 as the 92-year-old. Freddie died in 2018. All three were honored with the various decorations for their efforts during the war.
