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Historic Figures Who Set Out to Save Jews From the Holocaust

Khalid Elhassan December 15, 2020 32 min

Hanns Albin Rauter - World War II — A Dutch Resistance cell during WWII. For God and Country

2. An Attempt to Save Jewish Children That Ended in Tragedy and Massacre

A Dutch Resistance cell during WWII. For God and Country

In 1941, following a massive Dutch workers’ strike, the Nazi occupation authorities cracked down hard. That further radicalized Truus, and spurred her to join an armed resistance that engaged in direct action against the Germans. After receiving military training and learning how to operate a firearm, Truus’ early assignments included flirting with and seducing German soldiers, and leading them into the woods, to be killed by her comrades. Before long, the teenager was shooting Germans herself, and using explosives to blow up bridges and railroad tracks.

Life as an armed partisan was a difficult row to hoe, full of dangers and marked by tragedy as often as success. Early on, Truus was present at a failed mission to save Jewish children from German clutches. It ended with the fugitives caught in searchlights in an open field, where most were massacred, mown down with machine guns.

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.