The Gestapo executioner’s first shot missed Hannie. ‘Idiot, I shoot better,’ she taunted him
ing on a mattress below. On a mission in June 1944 Hannie and a male resistance fighter attacked a Nazi police officer in Zaandam, who returned fire, killing her comrade. “Hannie thought the work was so terrible it only made her cry,” says Poldermans. “But his death made her more fierce and determined. She preferred to fight.
“Hannie had become infamous by then. Hitler demanded the capture of the ‘redhaired girl in the Dutch resistance’ and she went into hiding.”
Her parents were arrested and sent to a concentration camp in a bid to force Hannie to give herself up.
“She dyed her red hair black and donned fake glasses to disguise her looks, and used a fake Swiss identity card,” says Poldermans.
Truus and Freddie pleaded with Hannie not to turn herself in, and her parents were eventually released.
As the Allies invaded
Europe,
Hitler
UNDER THREAT: Freddie Oversteegen, top, in 1945 when Holland was liberated. But flame-haired Hannie Schaft was executed just 18 days before that
ordered all resistance fighters to be shot on sight, only intensifying the trio’s resolve.
In September 1944 Hannie shot and wounded a Haarlem criminal investigator, but her 9mm gun jammed. Her target shot back, hitting Hannie in the thigh. Treated by a resistance doctor, she was lucky to survive.
Hannie and Truus disguised themselves as workmen to assassinate a Dutch police inspector collaborating with the Nazis in March 1945 – a shooting that sparked Nazis to kill 15 hostages in revenge.
Days later the duo fled from another assassination attempt and ran to a nearby café, closely pursued by German troops. Truus pulled her gun on the patrons and threatened to kill them if they revealed the two women to the Nazis.
When a senior Nazi officer entered, Truus acted drunk, calling out: “Heinz, come here,” and draping herself around the soldier’s neck. Disgusted, the Germans left empty-handed.
Yet the girls were not without compassion. “They tried to shoot their targets from behind so they wouldn’t know they were about to die,” says the author. “They saw the killings as justice, but every murder took its toll on them.
“Hannie and Freddie were always extremely nervous before their missions. Truus would faint afterwards or become overwhelmed.”
Hannie was captured by the Nazis in March 21, 1945, carrying resistance propaganda and a gun. Under interrogation she was recognised as the girl with red hair sought by Hitler. “Although Hannie was questioned day and night and was beaten and tortured, she did not divulge any names,” says Poldermans.
The frustrated Gestapo took her to isolated sand dunes near Overveen on the North Sea to execute her. But when her captor fired, it’s reported, his first shot missed.
“Idiot!” said Hannie, staring coldly at her failed assassin. “I shoot better!”
ABURST from his machine gun ended her war, and Hannie was buried in the wilderness – among hundreds of other resistance fighters later unearthed. Just 18 days later Holland was liberated by the Allies.
Exhumed after the war, Hannie posthumously received a hero’s burial, the Dutch Cross of Resistance, and the Medal of Freedom from American General Eisenhower. A statue of her was erected in 1982, and streets have been named after Truus and Freddie.
The sisters survived the war to marry and have children, but were reluctant to discuss their wartime horrors, forever scarred by their experiences as assassins and femmes fatales.
“Do you know what it does to your soul?” said Truus.
“Both sisters suffered depression and PTSD and woke screaming from horrific nightmares,” says Poldermans, who befriended the duo. “Freddie could not leave her bed for days.”
Truus died in 2016, aged 92. Freddie died last year, also 92.
The three girls’ final death toll was probably in the hundreds, but Truus and Freddie were loath to discuss their victims.
“You shouldn’t ask a soldier how many people he shot,” said Freddie. “I was also a soldier – a little one, a child soldier – but I was a soldier.”