13. The Teenage Girl Who Joined the Dutch Resistance at Age Sixteen
Dutch Resistance icon Truus Oversteegen was born into a left-wing working-class family, and grew up in an industrial district north of Amsterdam known as the “Red Zone” for its residents’ political bent. Her family actively assisted an organization known as Red Aid, which helped Jewish and political refugees escape Nazi Germany to the safety of the Netherlands and beyond before the war.
In her youth, Truus grew accustomed to fugitives hiding in the Oversteegen household from Dutch police, who were likely to hand them to the Gestapo at the border. She was thus antifascist long before the Germans conquered the Netherlands in 1940, when Truus was fifteen years old. When she was sixteen, Truss joined the Dutch Resistance.