The Noord-Hollands Archief has mapped out more than 1,300 names of women from Noord-Holland who resisted during the war years. Some of them distributed illegal newspapers, others forged identity cards, helped people in hiding or risked their lives in the armed resistance. All of them were brave enough to stand up to the German occupier. One of them is Freddie Oversteegen from Haarlem. The war will haunt her for the rest of her life.
Freddie Oversteegen is very young when the war breaks out, only 14 years old. And yet she grows into one of the most important resistance heroes in North Holland. Together with her sister Truus Oversteegen and later also with Hannie Schaft, she is part of the armed resistance in Haarlem.
Illegal newspapers and liquidations
Freddie grows up, together with sister Truus, in a committed environment. Her single mother is communist and very anti-Nazi. As early as the 1930s, it provided shelter for German Jews who had fled. When the Communist Resistance Haarlem is looking for people to deliver illegal newspapers, Freddie’s mother says, “Oh, my girls will.”
The resistance work for Freddie and Truus soon expands. In addition to looking for hiding places and transporting weapons, the sisters are used after a while to seduce Germans and the wrong Dutch and to lure them into the woods to liquidate them there. Around this time they also get to know Hannie Schaft. The three of them form the heart of the armed resistance in Haarlem.
‘Hannie was a friend of mine’
Freddie’s son Remi is in grade school when he first learns of his mother’s resistance work. One of his school books contains a small piece about Hannie Schaft. “When my mother read that, she started crying and said, ‘She was a friend of mine’.”
Remi still does not understand much about his mother’s war story. She will only tell little about the war later on. Remi: “She didn’t want to talk about it, the subject was too heavy for her. She always had ailments or was sick on the couch. As a family we understood that it had to do with the war.”
An example for young women
Freddie only starts talking about her experiences in the resistance years later. If writer Conny Braam asks about it. Braam writes the book ‘The scandal’ about the Velser affair. The main character in the book is modeled after Freddie Oversteegen.
The writer, herself one of the founders of the Anti-Apartheid movement in the early 1970s and active in the South African resistance for many years, recognizes a lot in Freddie. She sees in her an example for young women: “It is important that girls and women know: we can do that too. The time when everything revolved around men is over.”
Award
Hannie Schaft is caught and shot. After the war she became a symbol of the resistance. But for the rest, there was no mention of the women who were active in the post-war Netherlands for years. Only in 2014 are Freddie and Truus awarded the Mobilization War Cross. A few months later, two streets are named after the Oversteegen sisters. Freddie passed away in 2018, a day before her 93rd birthday.
In the Heemsteedse chapel in the Janskerk, the Noord-Hollands Archief now permanently exhibits colored photo portraits of 135 Women in Resistance. It is a small monument to all those women who risked their lives in the war to help others. Freddie’s photo hangs in between, next to that of her sister Truus and that of her friend Hannie Schaft.
Click on one of the portraits below to read the other stories.