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The Night Witches and Other Warrior Women of World War II

Khalid Elhassan December 8, 2019 31 min

Lyudmila Pavlichenko - World War II — WWII Red Army snipers. Pintrest

17. Moving On

Truus Oversteegen in later years. Yad Vashem

Courageously, Truus and Freddie Oversteegen soldiered on and kept up the fight, evading capture despite sizeable rewards that were placed on their heads. After the war, Truus put down her arms, and went about settling down and raising a family. She got married in November of 1945, and had four children. She made a name for herself as a respected artist and sculptress, and as a public speaker about war, antisemitism, and tolerance.

Freddie Oversteegen, shortly before her death in 2018. National Hannie Schaft Foundation

In 1967, Yad Vashem, Israel’s official memorial to the Holocaust, designated her as one of the Righteous Among Nations – an honorific for non-Jews who risked their lives during the Holocaust to save Jews from the Nazis. In 1982, she wrote a memoir about her wartime experiences, When Not, Now Not, Never. Truus died on June 18^th, 2016. Her younger sister Freddie passed away on September 5^th, 2018.

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.