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These World War II Heroines Should be Household Names

Khalid Elhassan August 15, 2022 37 min

4. Life After the Resistance

After the war, Truus Oversteegen put down her arms, settled down, and raised a family. She married Piet Menger in November, 1945, and the couple had four children. She named the oldest after her martyred comrade, Hannie Schaft. Truus made a name for herself as a respected artist and sculptress, and as a public speaker about war, anti-Semitism, and tolerance. 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. Truus Menger-Oversteegen passed away on June 18^th, 2016.

The Oversteegen sisters, Freddie and Truus, in old age. Netherlands Ministry of Defense

Like Truus, her sister Freddie put down her arms after the war, proceeded to beat swords into ploughshares, settled down and raised a family. She married Jan Dekker, and the couple had three children. When her sister established the Hannie Schaft Foundation in honor of their martyred friend, Freddie served on its board. In recognition of their wartime exploits, the Oversteegen sisters were awarded their country’s Mobilisation War Cross in 2014. Freddie passed away on September 5^th, 2018, one day shy of her ninety third birthday.

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.