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A Ballerina Who Stabbed an SS Guard With a Stiletto and Other Historic Rebels

Khalid Elhassan August 10, 2020 34 min

10. Deadly Flirting

As Freddie Oversteegen described flirting with and seducing Germans to their death: “[Truus] was like: ‘Want to go for a stroll?’ And of course, he wanted to. Then they ran into someone — which was made to seem a coincidence, but he was one of ours — and that friend said to Truus: ‘Girl, you know you’re not supposed to be here.’ They apologized, turned around, and walked away. And then shots were fired, so that man never knew what hit him. They had already dug the hole, but we weren’t allowed to be there for that part“.

Before long, Truus was putting her weapons training to good use, and shooting Germans herself. Along with her sister, she also rigged up bridges and railroad tracks with explosives for destruction. The Oversteegen girls also helped smuggle Jewish children out of the country, carried out daring missions to help some of them escape from detention centers en route to extermination camps, and even sprang some from concentration camps.

Written by

Khalid Elhassan

A lifelong history buff, I developed a particular passion for WW2 history as a child, when I spent hours listening to my grandfather, enraptured, as he recounted his wartime experiences in the British East African Campaign and with the British 8th Army in North Africa.

I graduated with a history BA from George Mason University, then went on to get a JD from the University of Virginia School of Law. After lawyering for a decade, I moved to sunny Rio de Janeiro and a less demanding career, opening a tourism agency in Copacabana.

A big chunk of my free time is spent blogging (you can follow me on Quora https://www.quora.com/profile/Khalid-Elhassan ) or freelance writing, mostly about my favorite subject, history.