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= Teenager kills Nazis =

Freddie Oversteegen was a normal teenager when World War II struck. She began to smuggle Jewish refugees throughout the war and killed German soldiers as a part of the Dutch resistance.

Freddie Nanda Dekker-Oversteegen was born in a small town called “Schoten”, located north of Amsterdam, in the Netherlands, on the 6th of September 1925. The town has since been renamed to "Haarlem". Freddie was born into a socially aware household with a 2 year older sister named Truus Menger-Oversteegen. They were born into a poor family and lived in a small apartment together. Freddie and Truus had to share their bed together as they couldn't afford separate beds. The family lived in a so-called "Red-Zone," a zone that was made just for communists and where they were forced to live. Their parents were divorced, and they were raised independently by their lone mother, who continued to work in industrial factories.

Her parents were members of the International Red Aid, a social service group for communists, including their father, who was involved in politics before he left them. Before the war, the sisters helped Lithuanian refugees. Freddie also made dolls for the Spanish refugees that were trying to escape from the ongoing civil war. Her mother, Trijin, considered herself a communist, and she raised the sisters with an awareness of justice and taught them to fight back against suppressors and injustice.

Freddie’s war against the Nazi-Germans began in the morning on May 10th. Freddie noticed planes roaring and the smell of smoke everywhere. Freddie had realized that the Germans had declared war on the Netherlands and were on their way to invading it.

When war broke out in the Netherlands with the German invasion on May 10th, 1940, the most natural thing for the sisters to do was to fight back. Freddie was only 14 years old, and her sister was only 16 years of age when the war broke out in the Netherlands. The sisters began working as nurses near the German border with the Netherlands at an emergency hospital near a German military base. They secretly watched the military base and reported all secret activity they saw. Firstly, the sisters helped by hiding Jews, gay people, and dissidents as they fled Germany and German-occupied territory through the late 1930s. Secondly, they helped by stealing identity papers and moving German weapons and supplies. The sisters also planted communist flags on the National Socialist Movement headquarters. The sisters also began to use dynamite and other tools in order to stop the Germans from using their railroad system & bridges, with the assistance of one of their closest friends, Hannie Schaft. Hannie Schaft was a student studying at the University of Amsterdam to become a lawyer. Hannie was notorious to the German soldiers as “The Girl with the Red Hair”. Truus, one of the sisters begun handing out anti-Nazi pamphlets and newspapers

They wore their hair in pigtails, to throw off any suspicion from the Nazi-collaborators.

The sisters began vandalising Nazi posters all over Amsterdam and giving out anti-Nazi newspapers. This caught the attention of the leader of the Dutch resistance, “Frans van der Wiel”, so with the permission of their mother, the sister officially joined the Dutch resistance against Nazi-Germany. Hannie Shaft joined the resistance later on in 1943, but still helped them with assignments before her enrollment. An early assignment that the sisters got was to commit arson at a German warehouse. The two sisters managed to successfully complete the task as they flirted with the German soldiers as a means of distraction. After that, they were taken into a “potato shed” by the resistance and taught how to properly fire weapons. After the two sisters would learn how to properly fire firearms, the sister began to seduce German soldiers, Nazi collaborators, and SS-officers with romance into the woods with one of the sisters, and then the sisters, with the help of Hannie, would kill the German soldiers. Freddie was the first of the 3 to assasinate someone. Freddie’s son speculates that her first victim was a Dutch woman who planned on handing over a list of Jewish people to the Nazi collaborators.

The sisters, with Hannie, began making themselves missions, and going out on missions to seduce and kill German soldiers.

In an interview with Ellis Jonker, Freddie stated these things about their first assassination: “It was tragic and very difficult and we cried about it afterwards,” and “We did not feel it suited us - it never suits anybody”. According to the Washington Post, Freddie described the killings as an obligation, saying, “We had to do it.".

Freddie stated that after the sisters successfully managed to kill a German soldier, other resistance members started digging graves, stripping the killed soldiers naked, and throwing them into a hole. These moments and scenes later in life traumatised the sisters. The sisters also refused one assignment they were given by the resistance. They were asked to abduct the children of a high-ranking Nazi official. They refused to do that, as they thought that the children were innocent and had nothing to do with the war. The deeds that she was doing with the help of her sister and her best friend, Hannie, were for the good, but Freddie stated that it had traumatised her life and she found no pleasure in doing said deeds.

Hannie Schaft, unfortunately, was captured by the Germans when she was performing tasks / assignments given by the resistance. The Nazis stopped Hannie when she was on her bicycle. She was smuggling illegal anti-Nazi newspapers. They found a pistol and documents containing information that she was a part of the Dutch resistance. Hannie endured three weeks of torture by the Germans and was executed on April 17th, 1945.

Hannie Schaft was then executed at the age of 24, just 18 days before the Netherlands was liberated from Nazi-Germany.

“Hannie was her soulmate friend," as said by “Manon Hoornstra," a filmmaker whom Freddie had told many wartime memories to.

After the war ended in 1945, people in the Netherlands looked down on the sisters as communists; therefore, they were ignored and hushed. Their valor would subsequently be honored, and in 2014, the Dutch Prime Minister awarded them the "Dutch Mobilization War Cross" as a recognition for their bravery during the war. .

Freddie went on to marry Jan Dekker, an engineer at a steel factory, and raised three children with him. When asked in an interview, Freddie stated that getting married and having her own children was a misguided attempt at coping.

Though she wanted to keep her children out of her war memories, Freddie kept having trauma over those memories. Freddie later suffered from insomnia due to the trauma.

On the other hand, Truus married a fellow resistance fighter, and had four children of her own. Truus named her first daughter “Hannie”. Truus was open about her memories of the war. Truus worked as an artist and wrote a

popular memoir titled “Not Then, Not Now, Not Ever”. Truss, like Freddie, was suffering from insomnia and depression as a result of the trauma of the war. Both sisters were later diagnosed with Post Traumatic Stress Syndrome (PTSD).

Truus later created the “Hannie Schaft Foundation '' to honour their dead best friend, Hannie Schaft. Freddie also joined the foundation.

Though the sisters led different lives, they always remained close.

Truus later died at the age of 92 on June 18th, 2016.

Both sisters repeated, “Always remain human." A late-quote told by their mother before the war.

Freddie Oversteegen died on September 5th, 2018 after experiencing multiple heart attacks.

Freddie’s son Remi said, “The war actually lasted 80 years for Freddie," as she never stopped talking about her memories and sharing them with those in her life.

Personally, I think that the story of Freddie Oversteegen, her sister, and Hannie Schaften should be talked about and remembered because what they did was extremely brave and the right thing to do. Even though Freddie and I have quite the opposite political views and my family is extremely against communists, as my father had to forcefully flee Poland and was banished from Poland for over 10 years by the communists, I think that personal views should be put aside in this situation and honour the never-surrendering sisters.

Even though the sisters knew they’d suffer from extreme trauma and risk getting killed in the process, they still fought against injustice and oppression. From her story, we and future generations can learn about the importance of fighting & standing up for ourselves and our rights.

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