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Daily Mail
3 days ago
- Politics
- Daily Mail
The forgotten story of WWII's baby-faced assassins who, aged just 14 and 16, seduced Nazis in bars before luring them to their deaths
Sisters Freddie and Truus Oversteegen blew up bridges and railway tracks with dynamite, smuggled Jewish children out of concentration camps and executed as many Nazis as they could, using a firearm hidden in the basket of their bike. They were only teenagers at the outbreak of World War II, but they soon used their harmless appearance to gain the trust of the officers before luring them to their deaths. Now, their stories are back in the spotlight after being shared on Instagram, with fans calling for their heroic acts against the face of evil to be made into movies, bemoaning the 'seven million Spider-Man or Batman reboots' viewers get instead. Freddie and Truus joined the Dutch resistance at the ages of 14 and 16, respectively, after witnessing horrifying violence by the Nazis, who invaded their home nation, The Netherlands, in 1940. Truus, born on 29 August 1923, in Schoten, had been protecting Jewish children, dissidents and homosexuals in safe houses across Haarlem, near Amsterdam, during the Second World War. But aged 16 she saw a baby battered to death in front of its family by a Nazi - and following the terrifying moment, she and her younger sister Freddie turned to killing all the soldiers they could. Truus recalled in Sophie Poldermans' Seducing and Killing Nazis: Hannie, Truus And Freddie: Dutch Resistance Heroines Of World War II: 'He grabbed the baby and hit it against the wall. 'The father and sister had to watch. They were obviously hysterical. The child was dead,' the resistance fighter said, according to the New York Post. Truus claimed she aimed her gun at him and fired, adding she did not regret slaying the 'cancerous tumours in our society'. Alongside her sister Freddie, born in Haarlem, near Amsterdam on September 6, 1925, and raised by their communist mother, and their law student friend Hannie Schaft, the trio became played a clandestine role in the resistance. The team had a routine: first approach the Nazi men in bars, and, having successfully seduced them, ask if they wanted to 'go for a stroll' in the forest, where, as Freddie herself put it, they would be 'liquidated'. 'We had to do it,' she told one interviewer. 'It was a necessary evil, killing those who betrayed the good people.' When asked how many people she had killed or helped kill, she demurred: 'One should not ask a soldier any of that.' Freddie acted as a courier for the resistance to begin with but was soon drafted into seducing Nazis with bright-red lipstick and pretending to be drunk alongside her sister and a 20-year-old Hannie. The law student, who had red hair and crystal-white teeth, through herself into the role by learning German and perfecting casual conversations with the soldiers. After luring them into the woods, she or a male companion would quickly shoot the unassuming officer. Author Ms Poldermans explained: 'They were killers, but they also tried hard to remain human. They tried to shoot their targets from the back so that they didn't know they were going to die.' The sisters have never revealed how many people they killed and despite Ms Poldermans being friends with them for 20 years, it does not feature in her book. But Truus did confess to breaking down in tears or fainting after killing someone, adding 'I wasn't born to kill.' Freddie - who died on September 5, 2018, one day before her 93rd birthday - was the last surviving member of the Netherlands' most famous female resistance cell, who dedicated their lives to fighting Nazi occupiers and Dutch 'traitors'. The female members of the Dutch resistance are often overlooked, and it was and still is often thought of as a man's effort. However, this kind of thinking proved to be a fatal mistake to many Nazi men, who did not recognise the threat posed by the Oversteegen sisters as they rode their bikes around Haarlem, scouting out targets or acting as lookouts for other executions. Both Oversteegen sisters survived the war. Truus found work as an artist, and was inspired to write a memoir and based on her experiences in the resistance. She died in 2016. Freddie told Vice that she coped with the traumas of the war 'by getting married and having babies.' She married Jan Dekker and their three children survive her, as do her four grandchildren. However, speaking after his mother's death in 2018, Freddie's son Remi Dekker told the Observer: 'If you ask me, the war only ended two weeks ago. 'In her mind it was still going on, and on, and on. It didn't stop, even until the last day... She shot a few people, and these were the real, real bad guys. But she hated it, and she hated herself for doing it.' In the years leading up to her death, Freddie suffered from several heart attacks at the nursing home in Driehuis where she lived - about five miles outside Haarlem. The Oversteegen siblings' friend Hannie Schaft, a onetime law student with fiery red hair, was captured and executed by the Nazis just weeks before they surrendered. 'Hannie was her soulmate friend. Freddie could never understand why the Nazis killed her just before the end of the war. She always took red roses to her grave,' revealed Manon Hoornstra, after the youngest Oversteegen sister shared many of her war time memories with the documentary maker. In Hannie's honour, Truus founded the National Hannie Schaft Foundation in 1996. Freddie served as a board member. 'Schaft became the national icon of female resistance,' said Jeroen Pliester, the foundation's chairman. Her story was taught to Dutch children and retold in a 1981 Dutch film, 'The Girl With the Red Hair'. For the sisters, their work with the resistance wasn't something they would ever regret, but it left its emotional scars. They both dealt with 'post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), enduring severe nightmares, screaming and fighting in their sleep,' revealed human rights activist Ms Poldermans to Time magazine in 2019. The author added: 'These women never saw themselves as heroines. They were extremely dedicated and believed they had no other option but to join the resistance. They never regretted what they did during the war.' 'It was tragic and very difficult and we cried about it afterwards,' Truus said, about the feeling of having killed somebody. 'We did not feel it suited us - it never suits anybody, unless they are real criminals. One loses everything. It poisons the beautiful things in life.' Their mother gave Truus and Freddie only one rule, 'always stay human', the sisters once recalled. The Dutch newspaper IJmuider Courant, reported that Freddie once told an interviewer: 'I've shot a gun myself and I've seen them fall. And what is inside us at such a moment? You want to help them get up.' During the later years of her life, Freddie strived for more acknowledgment of her role, and both sisters eventually received the Dutch Mobilization War Cross in 2014, before a street was named after each of them. 'So many years after doing their work in the shadows, they were glad for the public recognition,' Ms Poldermans told the publication. 'They wanted their stories to be known - to teach people that, as Truus put it, even when the work is hard, 'you must always remain human.''
Russia Today
08-05-2025
- Entertainment
- Russia Today
The long-forgotten concert that helped defeat Hitler – and it didn't happen in Moscow
As the world celebrates the 80th anniversary of the defeat of the Nazi Germany by the Red Army and its allies, there is a little-known story waiting to come to light about music masterpiece that helped raise funds in Africa for Soviet Russia during the Second World War. On 9 July 1944, Dmitri Shostakovich's Seventh Symphony, a work that became a music manifesto of resistance to Nazism, was premiered at the Metro Theatre of Johannesburg, South Africa. In a concert hall filled to capacity, conductor Jeremy Schulman raised his baton, and the orchestra began playing the opening theme: a mechanical march that exemplified the stomping sound of Nazi boots. That's how South Africa joined the world premiere of a symphony written during the siege ofLeningrad (presently – St. Petersburg, Russia's northern capital), which lasted almost 900 days: from 8September 1941 up to 27 January of 1944. By the time of its South African debut, the Leningrad Symphony had already acquired the status of a legend. Shostakovich began to compose it in September 1941 when the Germans were about to encircle Leningrad. He finished the first three parts under Nazi shelling, completing the score after evacuation from the city. The premiere took place on 5 March 1942 in the city of Kuibyshev (now Samara), and on 9 August of the same year – in Leningrad itself. Musicians had to be urgently rotated from the frontline to perform in the besieged city; some of them died of exhaustion and malnutrition. The symphony was not only a work of art – it was also an act of psychological warfare. German and Finnish soldiers deployed on the outskirts of the city realized: it is impossible to crush Leningrad's will for resistance. The musical score was brought to South Africa via Iran and Egypt as a part of cultural diplomacy of the USSR. Solomon 'Solly' Aronowsky, a Russian Empire-born Jewish violinist, helped to organize the concert. He saw the symphony as an instrument for uniting the voices of millions fighting for freedom. Eventually, the symphonic masterpiece was performed in Johannesburg and Cape Town. Johannesburg, 9 July 1944. The concert opened with the first performance of the symphony in Africa. Jeremy Schulman conducted the orchestra. One of South African newspapers described it this way: 'The first movement is the most outstanding, with its stirring and fascinating intermingling of themes, expressive of battle clashes and warm human suffering, and the exaltant determination to beat back the ominous threat of tyranny. The second and third movements are more subdued, but the fourth recaptures the spirit of triumphant resurrection.' The program also included arias from Rimsky-Korsakov and Tchaikovsky operas sung by soprano Xenia Belmas. The proceeds from the ticket sales were donated to the Medical Aid for Russia, a prominent South African charity. Two month later, on 11 September 1944, the Cape Town Municipal Orchestra conducted by Dr William Pickerill played the symphony at the Cape Town City Hall. Organizing such events turned out to be a challenge for South African society, then divided by racial and ideological contradictions. At that time the Non-European majority was raising its voice through resistance campaigns and trade unions, while everyday life remained riven by degrading segregationist laws that excluded most black Africans, Indians, and Coloureds from fair land ownership, political representation, and public education. Such policy of racial discrimination laid the foundations of the apartheid regime that lasted in South Africa until 1994. Who supported the premiere? The Friends of the Soviet Union (FSU), a left-leaning formation ofwhite intellectuals and black activists, that used the symphony to promote anti-fascist ideas. FSU pamphlets calling for solidarity with Soviet Russia were distributed at the concerts. Who opposed it? The National Party of South Africa. Its leaders called the symphony 'communist propaganda.' However, despite these disputes, all shows were sold out. In Cape Town, during the celebration of Russian national day on 7 November 1944, the City Hall was full. After the German capitulation, the symphony did not lose its relevance. In 1945, it was included in the program of a concert to raise funds for a hospital in Stalingrad. The Cape Town Municipal Orchestra performed the first part, and violinist Ralph Koorland captivated the audience with Tchaikovsky's 'Serenade'. In January 1946, the symphony was performed again as part of the 'Russian Evening' in Johannesburg. Thus, Shostakovich sent a message to the post-war world: even though the war is over, the ideas of Nazism may still be smoldering.
