Freddie Oversteegen was 14 years old and her sister Truus was 16 when a man from the Haarlem resistance knocked on their door in 1941 and asked their mother if the girls could join. Their mother, a communist who had taken in Jewish refugees, said yes.

The sisters began by distributing anti-Nazi pamphlets and sabotaging bridges and railway lines. Then their commander asked if they were willing to do something harder. "We did not think of it as murder," Freddie later recalled. "We saw it as something necessary."

The Method

The girls would approach German soldiers or Dutch collaborators in taverns, flirt with them, and suggest a walk in the woods. Once isolated, they or other resistance members would execute the target. Truus described it matter-of-factly: "We had to do it. It was a necessary evil, killing those who betrayed the good people."

Freddie was once asked how many people she had killed. She replied: "One should not ask a soldier any of that." She then smiled and added: "I was a soldier."

Beyond the Killings

The Oversteegen sisters also helped Jewish children escape from a crèche across from the Hollandsche Schouwburg, the theater in Amsterdam used as a deportation center. They would sneak children out in backpacks, laundry baskets, and even potato sacks, delivering them to safe houses with foster families.

Both sisters survived the war. Truus became a sculptor and painter, creating works about the resistance. Freddie lived quietly and rarely spoke of her wartime experiences until late in life. In 2014, both sisters were honored as war heroes by the Dutch government, receiving the Mobilisation War Cross. Freddie died in 2018 at the age of 92. Her obituaries noted that she was, to most of her neighbors, simply a kindly elderly woman who liked gardening.