12. The Resistance Sisters
On September 5th, 2018, Freddie Oversteegen, a Dutch Resistance heroine of WWII, passed in her nineties of a heart attack. She had been preceded into the afterlife two years earlier, in 2016, by her older sister, Truus, another resistance heroine in the fight against the Nazis. As part of their underground activities against the German occupiers, the Oversteegen sisters had risked their lives to circulate leaflets, help Jewish fugitives escape the Holocaust, and take out the occasional Nazi when the opportunity presented itself.
However, what was most remarkable about Truus and Freddie Oversteegen was not the cool courage they displayed as they put their necks on the lines to fight the Third Reich. Nor was it the fact that they were a sibling resistance team. While those were remarkable aspects, what stood out the most about them was that they did what they did while they were still teenagers. Truus was only sixteen when she joined the Dutch Resistance, while Freddie was just fourteen when she became an antifascist combatant.