- Oct 9, 1999
- 46,773
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This woman should be better remembered by all of us.
Freddie Oversteegen, Gritty Dutch Resistance Fighter, Dies at 92
Of the three young women, she was the most reserved, even though she was the first of them to fatally shoot a German soldier. (He had been lured from a bar into the woods.) Asked in 2016 by the online magazine Vice Netherlands how she had later dealt with her participating in wartime brutality, she replied, “By getting married and having babies.”
[...]
Retaining their humanity became more challenging once the sisters joined the seven-member underground cell based in Haarlem (they and Ms. Schaft were the only women) and learned that their job would entail blowing up bridges and railway tracks — and murder.
“Yes, I’ve shot a gun myself and I’ve seen them fall,” Freddie Oversteegen told a TV interviewer. “And what is inside us at such a moment? You want to help them get up.”
Still, she justified killing collaborators, who had betrayed her neighbors, and foreign soldiers, who had invaded and occupied her country.
“We had to do it,” she said. “It was a necessary evil.”
[...]
"The three women drew the line once, though, according to Kathryn J. Atwood’s book “Women Heroes of World War II: 26 Stories of Espionage, Sabotage, Resistance, and Rescue” (2011).
Arthur Seyss-Inquart, reichkommissar of the occupied Netherlands. The plan was to swap the children for imprisoned members of the Dutch underground. The three refused because the children could have been killed if the exchange went awry.
“We are no Hitlerites,” Ms. Schaft was quoted as saying in the book. “Resistance fighters don’t murder children.”
^^^ The sobriquet "hero" is tossed around these days so liberally it has lost its meaning. But Freddy Oversteegen was a genuine hero!
Freddie Oversteegen, Gritty Dutch Resistance Fighter, Dies at 92
Of the three young women, she was the most reserved, even though she was the first of them to fatally shoot a German soldier. (He had been lured from a bar into the woods.) Asked in 2016 by the online magazine Vice Netherlands how she had later dealt with her participating in wartime brutality, she replied, “By getting married and having babies.”
[...]
Retaining their humanity became more challenging once the sisters joined the seven-member underground cell based in Haarlem (they and Ms. Schaft were the only women) and learned that their job would entail blowing up bridges and railway tracks — and murder.
“Yes, I’ve shot a gun myself and I’ve seen them fall,” Freddie Oversteegen told a TV interviewer. “And what is inside us at such a moment? You want to help them get up.”
Still, she justified killing collaborators, who had betrayed her neighbors, and foreign soldiers, who had invaded and occupied her country.
“We had to do it,” she said. “It was a necessary evil.”
[...]
"The three women drew the line once, though, according to Kathryn J. Atwood’s book “Women Heroes of World War II: 26 Stories of Espionage, Sabotage, Resistance, and Rescue” (2011).
Arthur Seyss-Inquart, reichkommissar of the occupied Netherlands. The plan was to swap the children for imprisoned members of the Dutch underground. The three refused because the children could have been killed if the exchange went awry.
“We are no Hitlerites,” Ms. Schaft was quoted as saying in the book. “Resistance fighters don’t murder children.”
^^^ The sobriquet "hero" is tossed around these days so liberally it has lost its meaning. But Freddy Oversteegen was a genuine hero!
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