18. Racking Up the Resistance Exploits
It did not take long before Truus Oversteegen got to put her weapons training to good use, by 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 sites, and even sprang some from concentration camps.
However, life as armed partisans was a difficult row to hoe for the Oversteegen girls, full of dangers and marked by tragedy as often as success. Early on, Truus, who had undertaken numerous missions to help Jews escape the Nazis’ clutches, was present at a failed rescue mission of Jewish children. It ended with the tiny fugitives caught in searchlights in an open field, where most were cut down with machine guns. Before the war was over, many of her Resistance comrades were arrested and executed.
