Hannie Schaft by Toni West

Hannie Schaft and Truus Oversteegen

lw6800 — 2025-04-25 21:33:42 UTC

Hannie

lw6800 — 2025-04-25 21:37:30 UTC

Timeline

lw6800 — 2025-04-29 17:01:02 UTC

September 16, 1920: Johanna Jannetje Schaft, Hannie Schaft, was born in Harlem, Netherlands.

December 1927: The death of her 12-year-old sister Annie from diptheria.

Fall 1938: Hannie begins her study of law at the University of Amsterdam.

1941: She joined Communist-leaning Raad van Verzet, Council of Resistance, cell in Haarlem.

November 27, 1943: Schaft and her resistance group destroyed the power plant at Velsen

November 29, 1943: They assassinaed a notorious collaborator in the town of Beverwijk.

January 1944: Schaft participated in arson of a Haarlem movie theater.

April 1944: They executed a guerrilla attack on the Krommenie city hall, where they seized documents valuable to the resistance. Days later they carried out another raid on a chemical facility in Amsterdam.

June 12, 1944: Many members of the resistance where executed by Nazis.

June 21, 1944: Schaft and Bonekamp went to Zaandam where he managed to shoot Ragut.

June, 1944: Hannies parents were arrested and sent to German concentration camps.

Spring 1945: The Harlem group blew up a train carrying industrial equipment to Germany.

March 15, 1945: Schaft and the Oversteegens carried out an assassination attempt on Ko Langendijk, who was wounded but survived.

March 21, 1945: Hannie Schaft was stopped at a checkpoint with a pistol and resistance pamphlet in her purse. She was recognized as "The girl with red hair" and placed under arrest.

April 17, 1945: Her and 421 other Dutch men and women of the resistance were led into dunes and executed by Maarten Kuiper, a Dutch officer.

lw6800 — 2025-05-01 19:53:55 UTC

BBC Reel of Hannie Schaft and the two other women resistance members.

“I could shoot better.” -Hannie Schaft

lw6800 — 2025-05-01 20:07:47 UTC

The day of Hannies execution, she got shot once by a pistol that only left her injured. She stayed stanidng to look at her exection and say "I could shoot better". These were last words as she was then leveled with a machine gun.

Running from the Nazi's

lw6800 — 2025-05-02 17:59:08 UTC

Hannie and Truus carried out many attacks against the Nazi force to point the they started to recongnize her. They labled her as "The Girl With Red Hair". When Hannie founds this out, she died her hair dark and started wearing circular glasses as a disguise. This worked for may years until she got stopped at a checkpoint with resistance information on her person.

“I had disguised myself as a man so that Hannie and I could pretend to be a couple in love. Shooting traitors was a terrible thing. But it had to be done. After all, we couldn’t put them in prison.” -Truus Oversteegen

lw6800 — 2025-05-02 18:08:52 UTC

Truus Oversteegen was another resistance member that Hannie worked closely with. What she is refering to in this quote is when her and Schaft would lead Nazi soilders or Jewish betrayers with false pretense to execute them.

Hannie's Pistol

lw6800 — 2025-05-05 15:55:00 UTC

Hannies Executioner

lw6800 — 2025-05-05 16:27:32 UTC

Maarten Kuiper was one of the known, major betrayers of Jews in hiding during the Nazi occupation of Holland. It is told that Kuiper was both the arresting officer and the betrayer of the Franks and Schafts. He became invested in National Socialist Movement in the Netherlands earlier in his life making him a well known Dutch collaborator for the Nazi's. The NBS was a Dutch fascist organization that was aligned with Nazi ideology. April 17, 1945, Kuiper led Hannie and 421 Dutch resistors to the dunes. He shot Hannie first then leveled the rest with a machine gun. They were all buried their by other officers. On August 30, 1948, he was executed for being guilty of war crimes.

lw6800 — 2025-05-05 16:31:52 UTC

Oversteegen Sisters and Schaft

lw6800 — 2025-05-05 16:42:10 UTC

Truus and Freddie Oversteegen were Dutch sisters who, became active members of the Dutch resistance as teenagers, ages 16 and 14. Alongside Hannie, they made many resistance actions like distributing anti-Nazi pamphlets, sabotaging bridges and railway lines, and assisting Jewish children in reaching safe houses. They also participated in direct actions against Nazi officers and collaborators, luring them to exectution.

Impact

lw6800 — 2025-05-05 20:22:42 UTC

Her acts disrupted Nazi operations and protected many Jews. Hannie's legacy is inredibly impactful because she represented the active, widely overlooked role of women in resistance movements. Her arrest and execution by the Nazis before the war’s end made her a martyr and a national hero in the Netherlands. Her bravery has since inspired many, reinforcing the importance of moral courage and resistance against oppression. Her story continues to be taught in Dutch schools, memorialized in statues, films, and books.

Acts of Resistance

lw6800 — 2025-05-05 20:30:53 UTC

A list of a few resistance acts she committed:

Refusal to sign the declaration supporting the Nazi occupation of Holland
Stole Nazi ID cards for Jewish
Distributed illegal resistance papers
Encouraged student solidarity that led to the closing down of the Dutch universities
Many attacks on Germans and traitors like: destroying the power plant at Velsen, setting fire to a Harlem theater, and multiple assassination attempts

lw6800 — 2025-05-05 20:34:13 UTC

lw6800 — 2025-05-06 01:12:47 UTC