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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

8. Drawing the Line on Ruthlessness

Truus Oversteegen, right, during the war. Pintrest

Hannie Schaft wanted to do heavier lifting than what had been assigned to her. So she convinced the Resistance Council to train her in weapons. Before long, with the assistance of the Oversteegen sisters, she was carrying out attacks against German occupiers, Dutch Nazis, traitors, and collaborators. Hannie also learned how to speak German fluently, and got involved with German officials and soldiers, seducing information out of them and passing it on to the resistance.

Hannie’s conscientiousness, however, prevented her from unquestioning obedience and accepting all tasks given her by the resistance. Among the assignments, she turned down was the kidnapping of a Nazi official’s children. If things went wrong, the children would have had to be killed to keep them from identifying the resistance members with whom they had come in contact. However, killing children was a step too far for Hannie.

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.