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Freddie Nanda Oversteegen: The 14 Year Old Assassin 

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Freddie Nanda Oversteegen: The 14 Year Old Assassin 

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Freddie Nanda Oversteegen was born on September 6, in 1925 to a single mother in the Netherlands. Her mother was a firm disbeliever in the Nazis and their mission, but even more hateful towards the Dutch supporters of Hitler, and as such they helped hide Jewish families in their home in addition to fighting the propaganda. Freddie was only 14 when she had first began participating in the resistance on her own, passing out pamphlets and tearing down propaganda, getting her strong sense of justice from her mother. But, after Freddie and Truus were recruited by the Haarlem Resistance, they had become lethal Nazi assassins, from pamphlets to guns (it is said that Freddie was the first one of their duo to kill an officer from on her bike). Later after the war, Freddie settled down in the Netherlands, and married Jan Dekker, who she had 3 children with. In interviews, Freddie talks about her desire for normalcy, for peace after the war and all she has done. To this day, no one knows exactly how many people Freddie killed, she would never say. Now, she rests in peace as a hero after she passed away in 2018, and her secrets are between her and God.

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Freddie, Truss, & Hannie: Sisters in Arms

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Freddie, Truss, & Hannie: Sisters in Arms

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Freddie and Truus Oversteegen, in league with their friend Hannie Schaft, were a tightly bonded and equally lethal group of the Haarlem Resistance. Freddie was only 14 during the start of the resistance, Truus 16, and Hannie, the oldest and integrated into the Haarlem Resistance already, was 18. When talking about the trio, you can’t create a sense of awe by listing numbers of kills and their specific operations. Freddies response to questions about just how many they had killed: “Soldiers don't tell. And we are soldiers”. What is so awe inspiring about the trio is their commitment to the cause. They were never counting how many Nazis they executed, because no numbers mattered to them until it was 0, as in 0 Nazis left in the Netherlands, 0 traitors performing crimes against humankind. Freddie and Truus had a tight bond as sisters, but with Hannie, it was purely faith in her character that attached the 3 of them. Sisters in arms, working together to perform drive-by bicycle shootings, planting dynamite on railways supplying Nazi outposts, and seducing high ranking Nazi officials, luring them into the forest to execute them. Young girls, 14-18, bravely executed armed Nazi soldiers, soldiers responsible for the deaths of children even younger than them. Seeing the brutal injustice in their own homeland, they serve as an example of what courage is supposed to be, what answering a call to action looks like.

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Railroad sabotage, a lesser known act of resistance the trio had been involved in. Like their kills, as a secret resistance group, we don't have all of the specifics. However, in league with the Haarlem resistance, the girls were responsible for both planting and igniting dynamite along the railways and at the rail stations, stopping the Nazi supply chain from parts of the Netherlands, and in turn, made the capture and transport of Jewish people a much slower, more difficult, process for the Nazis.

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“It had to be done”, an impactful line by Truus Oversteegen. The first person they had ever killed in the name of the resistance, was a Dutch man. Truus recounts the scene her and Freddie witnessed, of a Dutch Nazi soldier, bashing an infant to death. She tells this first encounter very disturbingly, how they watched him continue to bash and beat the baby's dead body, hitting it against a wall till unrecognizable. The two girls atop their bikes were mortified, and it was 14 year old Freddie, who without hesitation shot him dead from the back of her bicycle, Freddie’s first kill.

In a second encounter the sisters share, they tell of a woman in a park. Yet again, a Dutch woman. This time it was an assignment, they were sent after this woman specifically. She had a list of names of all the Jewish citizens of their town, and was going to turn it into a Nazi officer. With that list, not only is everyone’s name on it doomed, but also the people and families helping shelter them. Freddie once again is the one to kill in this instance, she says she asks the woman her name, once the woman confirms, she delivers a singular but fatal shot. Because, it had to be done. They weren’t willing to stand and stare blankly at the face of injustice, they reached out and shattered the bridge of its nose.

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Hannie Schaft Memorial Statue “The Girl With The Red Hair”

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Hannie Schaft Memorial Statue “The Girl With The Red Hair”

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BBC Documentary & Interview With Freddie and Truus’ Children

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BBC Documentary & Interview With Freddie and Truus’ Children

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Seducing and Killing Nazis: A True Story

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Seducing and Killing Nazis: A True Story

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The Haarlem Resistance was comprised of Dutch citizens, forming militias and plotting assassinations of Nazi military officials in the Netherlands. Being that all of it’s members were Dutch citizens, it was hard to identify exactly who was a part of the resistance or just the average civilian, making it difficult for soldiers already disliked by the population to catch members. If caught, Resistance members refused to speak, extremely loyal to their cause and their comrades. The Resistance spanned all across the Netherlands, organizing operations wherever they had members. Age, gender, class, it didn’t matter, it was the Dutch Vs. Nazi Germany, and they were the most loyal to their homeland of the Dutch.

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Freddie & Truus: The Mobilization War Cross Award

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Freddie & Truus: The Mobilization War Cross Award

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The Mobilization War Cross Award is a medal given to civilians and military personnel who made significant contributions to defending The Netherlands in World War II. Both Freddie and Truus had received the award for their contributions to the Haarlem Resistance group.

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I think this song encapsulates the three girls and their mission in the songs demeanor but also the lyrics themselves. They were fighting for what they believed was right, eager to defend their cause. But, the bell has rung, they lose Hannie, their found-family, captured by a cruel merciless enemy, taking her away from them forever. It’s easy to read about their killings and sabotage, but more difficult to imagine the intensity of their lives, knowing they were either on their way to kill someone else or avoiding being killed themselves, under watch by armed Nazi officers who didn’t hesitate to kill. The bells rings for everyone, but Freddie, Hannie, and Truus made sure the Nazis would never forget the sound.

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The Nazis had started searching for Hannie due to her assassin work, placing her on their most-wanted list, looking for “the girl with the red hair”. Her red hair had become iconic, along with wearing mascara and lipstick when she did her jobs, having said to Truus Oversteegen, “I‘ll die clean and beautiful”. Hannie had disguised herself by dying her hair black and wearing glasses, which held them off for a short time, but she was still captured. She refused to say anything about her fellow resistors. As a result, she was executed with two shots: the first bullet ricocheted off of the back of her skull, and then a second shot was fired with less distance than the first.