September 1943. In the occupied streets of Haarlem in the Netherlands, a young girl pedaled her bicycle through the afternoon shadows. Her dark hair was woven into two long braids that swung gently as she rode. She looked no more than 12 years old, innocent and unthreatening, the sort of child one might expect to see carrying schoolbooks or running errands for her mother. Nazi soldiers stood at checkpoints along the route, scanning pedestrians and cyclists for anything suspicious. When the girl with the braids approached, they glanced at her, saw a child, and waved her through without a second thought. They did not check the wicker basket mounted on the front of her bicycle.
That oversight would cost some of them their lives.
Hidden beneath a cloth in that basket, nestled among ordinary items, was a handgun. The girl knew exactly how to use it. Her name was Freddie Oversteegen, and she was 14 years old. By then, she was already part of the Dutch resistance and would become one of the most daring members of a legendary trio of female fighters. She was the first of the group to kill a Nazi soldier. She used makeup and charm to lure German officers into wooded areas where they were executed. She smuggled Jewish children to safety, transported weapons, planted explosives, and helped carry out targeted killings of collaborators—all before she was old enough to vote.
For much of her life, however, Freddie lived in the shadow of others. She was overshadowed by her more famous sister, by their red-haired comrade who became a national symbol, and by a postwar society reluctant to acknowledge what women—especially communist women—had done in the resistance. Near the end of her 92 years, she said simply, “Women don’t count. They still don’t. That hasn’t changed.” Her story challenges that claim.
Freddie Mender Oversteegen was born on September 6, 1925, in Schoten, a village that would later become part of Haarlem in North Holland. Her family lived in poverty on a barge that served as both home and livelihood. Her father, Jacob Oversteegen, struggled to provide. Freddie had an older sister, Truus Oversteegen, born in 1923. The two girls would become inseparable.
Their mother, Trijntje van Moorsel, known as Trien, was a committed communist and an active member of International Red Aid, a social service organization affiliated with the Communist International. Her beliefs were not abstract. Despite the family’s poverty, she opened their home to refugees fleeing persecution, including individuals from Lithuania and later Jewish refugees from Germany. The girls grew up understanding that helping others, even at personal risk, was a moral obligation.
After Trien and Jacob divorced, Freddie saw little of her father. Trien moved with her daughters into a small apartment in Haarlem. The sisters shared a bunk bed and slept on straw mattresses. Money remained scarce, but their mother instilled in them a deep sense of justice and a firm opposition to fascism. She enrolled them in the Dutch Youth Federation, a communist youth organization. They made dolls for children affected by the Spanish Civil War, learning that even small acts could matter.
By the late 1930s, the rise of Adolf Hitler in Germany and the persecution of Jews cast a shadow across Europe. Refugees arrived in the Netherlands hoping it would remain neutral, as it had during World War I. Trien sheltered Jewish refugees in her home, and through them Freddie learned firsthand about the brutality unfolding under Nazi rule.
In 1939, after Germany invaded Poland and war began, the Oversteegen household became a center of quiet resistance. Even before the German invasion of the Netherlands, the family printed illegal anti-Nazi pamphlets in their living room. The press was so loud that lookouts were posted. Freddie and Truus pasted resistance slogans over German propaganda posters urging Dutch men to work in Germany. Their messages warned that every Dutch worker sent east meant a German soldier freed for the front.
On May 10, 1940, Germany invaded the Netherlands. After the bombing of Rotterdam and 5 days of fighting, the Dutch army surrendered. Wilhelmina fled to London to form a government in exile. The occupation began.
The Oversteegen family burned incriminating materials and relocated the refugees they were hiding. Many of those refugees were later discovered and deported. They were murdered. Decades later, Freddie still wept when speaking of them.
Despite the danger, Freddie and Truus continued distributing illegal newspapers and posting anti-Nazi messages. In 1941, they attracted the attention of Frans van der Wiel, commander of the Haarlem Council of Resistance. He visited their home and proposed something far more dangerous than distributing pamphlets. He needed fighters willing to commit sabotage and, if necessary, assassinations.
Truus asked the question that hung in the air: would they have to kill? The answer was yes. Targets would be Gestapo officers, collaborators, and those directly involved in persecuting Jews and resistance members. The girls sought their mother’s guidance. Trien gave her permission, with one condition: “Always stay human.” No matter what they did, they were not to lose their conscience.
Freddie was 14; Truus was 16. They joined the resistance cell.
They trained in an underground potato shed, learning to shoot, throw grenades, and handle explosives. Their first major operation involved arson. Dressed attractively, they distracted SS guards by flirting while resistance members set fire to warehouses. The tactic worked. The sisters realized their youth and femininity were powerful assets. The occupiers underestimated them.
Freddie soon crossed a line that could never be uncrossed. She became the first of the trio to shoot and kill a Nazi soldier. The precise circumstances remain unclear, but she fired the fatal shot. Later, she described not the mechanics of pulling the trigger but the instinct that followed. When she saw a man fall, she felt an impulse to help him up. That reflex, she said, never left her. It was the measure of her struggle to “stay human.”
The sisters adopted what became known as the “honey trap” tactic. Freddie or Truus would enter a bar frequented by German officers, flirt, and suggest a walk in the woods. Once isolated, the officer would be shot—either by the woman herself or by a resistance fighter who appeared at a staged moment. It was calculated and ruthless. They justified it as targeted resistance against occupiers and collaborators.
In 1943, they were joined by Hannie Schaft, a law student from Amsterdam with striking red hair. Schaft had refused to sign a loyalty oath to the Germans and left university in protest. She became known as “the girl with the red hair,” a figure so elusive that she reportedly drew the personal attention of Adolf Hitler. She later dyed her hair to avoid recognition.
Together, the three women formed a tightly bonded unit. Schaft was intellectual and fluent in German; Truus was decisive and pragmatic; Freddie was meticulous in planning. They sabotaged rail lines, destroyed bridges, transported weapons, and smuggled forged identity papers. Freddie bicycled past checkpoints with guns hidden in her basket. German soldiers waved her through.
They also smuggled Jewish children to safety. Holding a child’s hand, they posed as sisters walking through the streets. They escorted children to safe houses and escape routes. Some of those children survived because of them. Others were lost in air raids, adding to the emotional toll.
They witnessed atrocities that fueled their resolve. On one occasion, Truus saw a Dutch SS soldier kill a baby by smashing it against a wall. She shot him immediately. It was not a planned operation but a spontaneous act of rage against cruelty.
The psychological burden was immense. They endured nightmares and later what would be recognized as post-traumatic stress disorder. During the war, there was no time to process trauma. Survival demanded focus.
On March 21, 1945, Hannie Schaft was arrested at a checkpoint carrying illegal newspapers and a pistol. She was imprisoned, tortured, and eventually identified. Despite rescue attempts, she was executed on April 17, 1945, in the dunes near Haarlem. She was 24 years old. After the war, she received a state funeral attended by Queen Wilhelmina and was reburied with honors.
Freddie and Truus survived. On May 5, 1945, the Netherlands was liberated. Freddie was 19. The war had defined her adolescence.
Afterward, she briefly worked for the Political Investigation Service, arresting collaborators. She resigned when she observed that only the poor were being prosecuted. She married and had three children, seeking healing in family life. Yet she struggled with depression, insomnia, and recurring trauma.
In postwar Netherlands, Hannie Schaft became a national icon. Schools and streets bore her name. Truus became a public figure, an artist and speaker, and was honored as Righteous Among the Nations by Yad Vashem. Freddie remained largely unrecognized. As a communist in a country shaped by Cold War politics, she and her sister were initially denied resistance pensions. Only in the 1960s did they receive them, without back pay.
In 2014, Dutch Prime Minister Mark Rutte awarded Freddie and Truus the Mobilisatie-Oorlogskruis, a significant military honor. It was a long-delayed recognition. Streets in Haarlem were named after both sisters. A documentary, Two Sisters in the Resistance, brought renewed attention to their story.
Truus died in June 2016 at 92. Freddie followed on September 5, 2018, one day before her 93rd birthday.
Freddie Oversteegen’s life illustrates the complexity of resistance: courage intertwined with trauma, necessity shadowed by moral weight. At 14, she chose to fight an occupying regime. She carried weapons in her bicycle basket and walked children to safety. She killed and struggled to reconcile that act with her conscience. She tried to remain human.
Her story endures not as myth but as history. It stands as testimony to the role women played in armed resistance and to the cost borne by those who fought in the shadows. Freddie Oversteegen counted—even when the world failed to count her.
