Aftermath
Life as armed partisans was a difficult row to hoe for the Oversteegen sisters, full of dangers and marked by tragedy as often as success. Early on, Truus, who had undertaken numerous missions to help Jews escape the Nazis’ clutches, was present at a failed rescue mission of Jewish children that ended with the fugitives caught in searchlights in an open field, where most were mown down with machineguns. Before the war was over, many of her Resistance comrades were arrested and executed.
Among them was Truus’ best friend, Hannie Schaft. When the redheaded resistance heroine was seen at the site of an assassination, the issued an all points bulletin, alerting their forces and security personnel to be on the lookout for “the girl with the red hair”, who was placed on the Nazis’ most wanted list. Dyeing her hair black to hide her identity, Hannie continued her resistance work, until she was arrested at a checkpoint while distributing an illegal newspaper. After a series of brutal interrogations and tortures, she was executed on April 17th, 1945, just weeks before the war ended. Reportedly, her killers’ first fusillade only wounded her, so she taunted them “I shoot better than you“, before they managed to finish her off.
Suspicion was rife that Truus’ and other left wing cells had been deliberately betrayed by right wing members of the resistance, who had been backwards in the actual fight, but came forward at the hour of liberation to claim the lion’s share of the credit. Notwithstanding the setbacks and daily dangers, Truus and Freddie Oversteegen courageously soldiered on and kept up the fight, evading capture despite sizable rewards that were placed on their heads.
After the war, Truus put down her arms, and went about settling down and raising a family. She married Piet Menger in November of 1945, and the couple had four children. She named the oldest after her martyred comrade, Hannie Schaft. Truus made a name for herself as a respected artist and sculptress, and as a public speaker about war, antisemitism, and tolerance. In 1967, Yad Vashem, Israel’s official memorial to the Holocaust, designated her as one of the Righteous Among Nations – an honorific for non Jews who risked their lives during the Holocaust to save Jews from the Nazis. In 1982, she wrote a memoir about her wartime experiences, When Not, Now Not, Never. Truus Menger-Oversteegen died on June 18th, 2016.
Like Truus, her sister Freddie put down her arms after the war, and beating swords into ploughshares, settled down and raised a family. She married Jan Dekker, and the couple had three children. When her sister established the Hannie Schaft Foundation, Freddie served on its board. In recognition of their wartime exploits, the Oversteegen sisters were awarded their country’s Mobilisation War Cross in 2014. Freddie died on September 5th, 2018, one day shy of her ninety third birthday.
_______________
Where did we find this stuff? Some sources and further reading
NY Post – Meet the Dutch Girls Who Seduced Nazis and Lured Them to Their Deaths
History – This Teenager Killed Nazis With Her Sister During WWII
OMG Facts – The Sisters Who Fought Nazis by Seducing Them
Vice, May 11th, 2016 – This 90 Year Old Lady Seduced and Killed Nazis as a Teenager