8. Seducing Nazis to Their Doom
After she received some military training and learned how to operate a firearm, Truus Oversteegen’s early Resistance assignments included flirting with and seducing German soldiers. She would then lead them into the woods, where they would be ended by her comrades. As Freddie described it decades later: “[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 apologised, 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 had begun to put her weapons training to good use, and shot 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. They carried out hazardous missions to help some of them escape from detention centres en route to extermination centres, and even sprang some from concentration camps.
