True Crime Campfire - The Good Fight: The Story of Three Young Women in the Dutch Resistance in WWII

Episode Date: July 21, 2023

G.K. Chesterton wrote, "The true soldier fights not because he hates what is in front of him, but because he loves what is behind him." It speaks to an important struggle--how to hold onto your humanity when you're caught up in terrible violence. And it's a struggle that only gets more complicated when both friend and foe are not behind or in front of you, but all around, and it gets hard to tell one from the other. This is "The Good Fight," the story of three young women in the Dutch resistance to the Nazis in World War 2.Sources: “Seducing and Killing Nazis: Hannie, Truus and Freddie: Dutch Resistance Heroines of WWII,” by Sophie PoldermansMeet the Dutch girls who seduced Nazis — and lured them to their deaths by Isabel VincentFollow us, campers!Patreon (join to get all episodes ad-free, at least a day early, an extra episode a month, and a free sticker!): https://patreon.com/TrueCrimeCampfireFacebook: True Crime CampfireInstagram: https://gramha.net/profile/truecrimecampfire/19093397079Twitter: @TCCampfire https://twitter.com/TCCampfireEmail: [e-mail]! https://true-crime-campfire.myspreadshop.com/Become a supporter of this podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/true-crime-campfire--4251960/support.

Hello, campers. Grab your marshmallows and gather around the true crime campfire. We're your camp counselors. I'm Katie. And I'm Whitney. And we're here to tell you a true story that is way stranger than fiction. We're roasting murderers and marshmallows around the true crime campfire. G.K. Chesterton wrote, The true soldier fights not because he hates what is in front of him, but because he loves what is behind him. It speaks to an important struggle. How to hold on to your humanity when you're caught up in terrible violence.

And it's a struggle that only gets more complicated when both friend and foe are not behind or in front of you, but all around. And it gets hard to tell one from the other. This is The Good Fight, the story of three young women in the Dutch resistance to the Nazis and World War II. So, campers, for this one, we're in the Dutch city of Harlem in the 1940s. The German officer was having a good time. The beer was flowing freely in the bar on the haute plane, and he was enjoying some flirty conversation with a pretty young Dutch woman. When a foreign army occupies a territory, it's not unusual for some men and women to try to ingratiate themselves with the occupiers.

During World War II, young Dutch women who had relationships with the German invaders were made fun of, called Moffin Girls, which translates to something like Crout Girls. Not that the Germans, most of whom had wives or girlfriends back home, cared what the public thought of their new lovers. It was nothing serious to them, just some fun. So when Truce, the pretty young Dutch woman leaned in and whispered to the German officer that they might go for a, you know, romantic walk in the woods on the south side of the city, he eagerly agreed. On his uniform were the skull and crossbones and double S runes of the SS, the notorious paramilitary branch of the Nazi party. She let him take her hand,

and they walked together in the gloom beneath the old trees. He could tell he was going to get lucky. He could sense a sort of nervous anticipation in the girl. And then a gunshot cracked through the densely wooded park, and the lights went out for the SS officer. He'd been shot in the back of the head, killed instantly. The man who had crept up and shot him from behind, Franz, knelt down and helped Truce as she

quickly and efficiently removed the dead officer's uniform, which would be an invaluable disguise for the resistance movement. Triss's young sister, Freddy, who had been stealthily trailing them through the woods, went to stand lookout. Before long, German trucks pulled up at the park entrance and the barking of search dogs echoed through the night, and Truce, Freddy, and Franz disappeared. through the trees. For almost all of us, the question of how we would act under a hostile enemy occupation

is, thankfully, only ever going to be hypothetical. The Netherlands were occupied by the Germans for most of World War II, from the Dutch surrender on May 16, 1940, after a quick, brutal invasion, to May 5, 1945, when the commander of the German forces surrendered to the Allies. And whatever stories we might tell ourselves, most of us would react to occupation, the same way the Dutch people did. For those five years, 90% of them just kept their heads down and went on with their lives as best they could,

hoping to keep themselves and their families under the radar of the vicious German forces. They might listen in secret to Radio Orange, broadcast from London by the exiled Dutch government and royal family, and outlawed by the Germans, but that was as far as it went. 5% collaborated with the invaders, activities which ran the gamut from snitching on anti-German sentiments

all the way up to joining the SS. Boom. And another 5% actively resisted the occupying forces. For the most part, resistance involved making and spreading illegal newspapers and leaflets, hiding and moving people the Germans were searching for, spying for the allies and acts of sabotage. Direct armed resistance was by necessity, small scale, and sneaky. There just weren't the numbers or the equipment to go toe to toe with. an invading army, and most people in the resistance never fired a gun in anger.

But we're going to take a look at three young women who did. Januchka Shaft would take the name Hani when she joined the resistance, and to avoid confusion and butchering the pronunciation too much, we're just going to call her that throughout. She was born in Harlem in 1920. Both her parents were teachers, and Honey would always do well academically. She loved the learning part of school, but not so much everything else. She was a shy, quiet kid who was bullied because of her red hair and freckles. And I know kids will find pretty much anything to pick on somebody about, but red hair and freckles, really? Aren't she kind of scraping the bottom of the bullion barrel there, guys? You know, I think that's a timeless one because

there was a whole, at least when I was in school, there was a whole thing about gingers. So I think it's just, I think it's just something that makes you different that bullies pick on. And Hani's overprotective parents didn't help much with that. Her older sister Annie had died of Ditherea at 12, and after that, they refused to take any risks with honey. She wasn't allowed to go too far from home, and even on hot days, she had to wear a thick cardigan so she wouldn't catch cold. And it's hard to criticize the choices of grieving parents too much, but they couldn't have done much better in tagging honey as a nerdy weirdo. Yeah. As might be expected in a country that shares a border with Germany, during honey's teen years in the 1930s, a lot of

talk around the dinner table was about Hitler and his Nazi party coming to power in Germany, as well as the rise of similar fascist movements in the Netherlands. It was a nervous time to be alive. Hani left high school in 1937, and at first she thought about following her parents into teaching, but the thought of trying to control a classroom made her skin crawl. Yeah, it ain't pretty. I'm not going to lie. Any teacher can tell you. You got to walk a fine line between bribery and fear. They're going to eat you alive. So she decided on law school in Amsterdam instead.

She wanted to work at the League of Nations after she got her degree. And as is often the case for the smart kids who got bullied in high school, Hani came into her own at university. She was still shy and quiet, but she made some really good friends, including two young Jewish women, Phelene and Sonia. Things in Europe were moving fast. In September 1939, Nazi Germany invaded Poland. Hani started sending packages of food and clothes to Polish POWs through the Red Cross,

and it didn't take long for the war to come much closer to home when the Germans invaded the Netherlands on May 10th, 1940. Hani hurried back to her parents in Harlem, where they all anxiously hunkered down to wait and see what would happen. The Dutch army really didn't have much of a chance. In the next five days, the Luftwaffe bombed Rotterdam just 50 miles from Harlem to rubble, and the Dutch government and royal family fled to London. On May 15th, the Dutch forces surrendered, and the German occupation began. For most people, life was tense and strange, but otherwise it didn't change too much.

But of course, that wasn't the case for everybody. In October of 1940, the Germans made all government officials, including teachers and college lectures, sign an Aryan declaration to prove their ethnicity. the first step in removing people of Jewish origin from public life. A month later, all Jewish people were kicked out of the colleges. Dutch Jews had to register with the government and carry ID cards marked with a big J. Further restrictions followed, including petty shit, like barring Jews from public parks, and by 1942, they had to wear a yellow star on their clothes when they went out in public.

That was also when significant deportation started to the concentration and execution camps in the east. Yeah, this is heavy shit. The 1942 escalation against the Jewish population is what inspired Hani to take her first low-key acts of resistance. Small and shy and easy to overlook, she developed a real knack for stealing ID cards from changing rooms and cloak rooms, which could then be given to Jewish people or resistance members and altered to help them escape detection. Honey soon developed quite a rep. If you needed an ID card for a specific age and gender, she could get you one inside an hour.

The local resistance group, always on the lookout for capable people, took note. When the Germans invaded in 1940, Truss and Freddie Oversteigen were 16 and 14 years old. Like Honey, they'd grown up in Harlem, but these two had had more turbulent childhoods, moving around a lot both before and after their parents' divorce in 1933, which was incredibly rare for the time. You just didn't see a lot of divorces back then. The girls lived with their mom, eventually settling into a little row house. Their mom was a communist and politically active.

In 1934, she offered shelter to five German Jews fleeing the new Nazi regime, which was technically illegal at the time. Right from the start of the war, the Over Stegans printed political newspapers in their home, which were illegal after the occupation, and Truce and Freddie were often on the streets, scrawling pro-resistance graffiti on the walls. Yes, queens, I love these girls so much.

Fuck yes, their punk rock is hell. And one day in 1941, a handsome man in his suit and tie came looking for him. This was Franz von der Veil, a regional commander in the resistance movement, and he wanted to know if the girls would be interested in stepping up their own activities from graffiti and printing newspapers to more dangerous work. Truce was suspicious and Freddie was nervous, but they agreed to meet with Franz again. And when they did, he pulled a gun on them. It was a setup, he said. He was actually from the Gestapo. They better tell him where a certain Jewish man lived or else.

Now, think about what you'd do here seriously. Would you cave? Would you run? Well, if your truce and Freddie, he'd summon berserker rage, bumrush the guy, and start kicking the shit out of him. I said I loved him. I love him. They both got a few good punches in before Franz was like, it was a test. It was a test. We just wanted to see what you'd do. the way, you passed. Now, at first glance, it might seem weird that the resistance would try so hard to recruit two teenage girls, but you have to remember that their work wasn't like Captain America punching out Nazis by the dozen. I mean, it was quiet, sneaky stuff. And one of the most valuable skills a resistance member could have was the ability to walk the streets without arousing anybody's suspicions. A German patrol was a lot more likely to

stop some six-foot-five pissed-off-looking Dutch dude than they were a couple of giggling teenagers. Freddy, in particular, always looked younger than she was, and right up to the end of the war, she could get away with telling patrols that she didn't have any ID papers because she wasn't 15 yet, and that was the age when you had to have them. These girls helped move and hide dissidents in Jewish people, distributed weapons, stole and forged ID cards, and helped sabotage industry and transport routes. Truce would later say that blowing up a freight train was one of her most satisfying missions. And I have to say, oh my God, yes.

I mean, you know, like if it's for a good cause, obviously. But like, who wouldn't want to blow up a train? You concern me sometimes. Oh, I'm fine. I'm fine. Now, by this time, Hani was still mainly just stealing IDs and helping people hide from the Nazis, including having her Jewish friend Philean stay with her. But in 1943, she told the resistance she wanted to do more, even if it meant using weapons. She was quiet and shy, but inside she was toughest steel, and she had a fire in her belly to do whatever she could to fight the Nazi occupation.

So to see if she had what it took, Honey was assigned to go out with another resistance member and shoot dead an SS intelligence officer. Her heart racing, Honey took aim at the man's back and pulled the trigger. And there was just a click. gun wasn't loaded and the SS officer was actually Franz von der Veal again with another of his wild and crazy test Franz my dude I think you maybe enjoyed this part of your job a little too much bless your heart if I were these ladies I think I'd want to kick him in the nuts like just once I mean I know he's one of the good guys but just one good kick right in the nuts

only fair two of them did beat the fuck out of him which you know this is true yeah but he was so zany he had such panache I know. I can't help but wonder how many fake mustaches he had on his person at any given time. Like at least half a dozen, right? At least. In the summer of 1943, the heat was on in Harlem, and Truce and Freddie temporarily moved to Enskadeh in the agricultural east of the country,

where they worked as nurses for a while. The resistance liked their members to work in teams, and Franz Vonderville thought Honey and Oversteigen sisters would be a great match. In an office in the hospital, Honey introduced herself to the girls, telling them that Franz had sent her, not using his last name for security reasons. Trust was a pretty rare thing in the resistance movement, where being a suspicious bitch could keep you alive. Neither Hani or the sisters were confident they weren't being set up by German intelligence, and the three women sat around a table in the middle of the room sizing each other up in silence, each with a loaded gun in their pocket.

it. Then, at the same moment, they all just suddenly realized how ridiculous the whole situation was, and they all burst out laughing. And then I love this part, they all put their guns on the table and started talking. Oh, gosh, I love them. The overstegan girls initially wondered what the hell Hani was doing in the resistance. They liked her a lot, but she seemed way too soft and sweet for this kind of work. When they saw her in action, though, they discovered that when the chips were down, Honey was as badass as anybody else they'd met. And I love that this girl was afraid to

teach children. Like, she was afraid that she couldn't control a classroom. Like, girl, I'm pretty sure you would have handled it just fine. Because like what she did go on to do for God's sake. Can't control kids, but take on the Nazi occupation. Take on the Nazis, right? Yeah. They were a good team.

Honey was brilliant. Truce was good with people and could take charge when they needed her to. And Freddie looked so young and innocent that she was almost invisible. She could move through the streets without anybody noticing her, scouting things out before they took any action. And having young charismatic women involved opened up some new possibilities for the resistance. German soldiers liked to drink, and they liked it even more if a young pretty woman was paying attention to them and hanging on their every word. They might even

share information. They really shouldn't be sharing. Yep, got to love a honey trap. To bait the hook as well as possible, the ladies would get all dolled up in fancy clothes and makeup, which was a new experience for Truce, who although she was 19, had never worn makeup before in her life. Not to worry, though, Franz von der Veal was a man of many talents, a Renaissance man, if you will, and he did all the girls' makeup. He's got a little bit of theater in him. This dude, man, he needs his own episode. God, he really does.

Just every fact I learn about him, I'm like, oh, that's delightful. Which is insane in an episode about fucking Nazis. You know what I mean? I know, right? Initially, their job was to flirt with German soldiers and officers and try to get information out of them. And I'm sure this is going to shock you. But it wasn't hard. Turns out, getting half-drunk evil dudes to brag about the big important evil dude stuff they're doing,

not exactly rocket surgery. But pretty soon, the stakes would get higher. The resistance movement started doing what it called liquidations. Killings, mainly of SS officers, high-level collaborators, and members of the NSB, the Dutch Nazi Party. At first, these were done in public, but the extreme retaliations by the Germans caused a change in tactics. If targets could be killed near the Wooded City Park, Franz von der Veil could put the bodies on his cargo bike, cover them with a tarp, and transport them into the woods to hide them. If the targets just disappeared, reprisals would be a lot less likely. But to make this work, they needed a way to get the targets to go into the woods themselves, relaxed, and off guard.

And that was when Franz came up with the idea of using Hauny, Truce, and Freddie to lure drunk, horny men into the woods, where they would be shot, stripped, and buried. Initially, Franz did the shooting himself, but then the three women got shooting lessons as well as combat training from, I swear, to God. a resistance-friendly dentist who apparently just happened to know a bunch of ways to kill a human being. Yeah, I guess Dutch dental schools just have a more comprehensive curriculum than ours do. You know, it's like Monday morning, learn how to install a crown, Monday afternoon, how to strangle a man so he doesn't make a sound. Ryan, that was beautiful, but I don't know, man. I have had some really awful dentists in my time. I would guess that they're the most likely medical professionals to know several murder.

techniques, second, maybe second only to chiropractors. Oh, definitely. Now, the girls usually arrived for a secret violence class by the back door, but one day they decided to knock on the front door instead. Instead of the dentist, the door was opened by a woman who looked like she'd just eaten a bad burrito, and there was a huge portrait of Adolf Hitler hanging in the hallway behind her. They got the wrong house.

so much the wrong house they all just stood there kind of staring at each other for a second and then Hawny Trues and Freddie just burst out laughing and ran away I just love all those stories about them laughing together because it seems like it would be so hard to keep your sense of humor in that awful situation

but they obviously like very quickly developed this great bond with each other as soon the women were performing the liquidations themselves sometimes in the park and sometimes elsewhere surprising a target in the street shooting them running away. They all hated it, but they were soldiers in a war and they were doing what they had to do. Truce, who was always sharp and decisive during the preparation for one of these

assassinations, would break down after it was done. Sometimes she'd get so upset she fainted. It took a toll on them, every single time. One time in particular would haunt Truce for the rest of her life. Night when, all alone, she came across a Nazi soldier killing a baby in the most brutal way imaginable, right in front of the poor child's family who were sobbing and begging him to stop. Truce didn't hesitate a second. She shot him dead. Later, in an interview, she said it wasn't one of her assignments, but she didn't regret it. She said, we were dealing with cancerous tumors in our society that you had to cut out like a surgeon. Yes. But obviously, it wasn't all about killing. Honey and Truce also helped move Jewish children from one safe house to another. A young woman

walking hand-in-hand with a child wasn't likely to raise suspicion. There was a network of friendly houses with secret rooms where resistance fighters and Jewish people could hide. It was a dangerous proposition for everybody involved. Sheltering Jewish people could get you a death sentence from the German occupiers. One night in February 1944, Truce and Freddie were hiding with four Jewish folks in a safe house over a watchmaker's shop when the SS raided the place. They didn't find the entrance to the secret room, which was was hidden in a bedroom closet, but they forced everybody they found in the shop to leave and then sealed the doors and windows, trapping everybody hiding in the secret room.

Truce and Freddie eventually managed to sneak out onto the roof and scurry away onto the adjoining buildings, but as they were running along the rooftops, Freddie fell through a skylight, which would have been a disaster, except she landed on a mattress, because the building she'd Fallen into, just happened to be a mattress shop. Holy absolute shit. I swear to God, if this was a movie, this is where I'd start booing because it was too unrealistic. Absolutely. The whole story is like that.

Freddie and Truce hid out in the mattress shop all night before moving on to another safe house. Two days later, two Dutch cops who were sympathetic to the resistance finally came and let the Jewish family out of the secret room, and the watchmaker's family snuck in to take out as many valuable watches and clocks as they could hide. in a baby stroller before the SS came back and stole everything. Pricks. In addition to working with Freddie and Trues, Hani was also paired up a lot with a guy named Jan Bonkamp, a resistance member who worked at the Steelworks north of Harlem. And apparently, Hanney fell for him pretty hard.

Which is really not surprising when you think about it. I mean, she was a late bloomer socially, and one of the first guys she spent any significant time alone with was this, like, good-looking freedom fighter that she got up to life and death escapades with. Like, it's a movie, for God's say. It would have been weird if she hadn't fallen for him. But Jan was happily married, so this never went anywhere further than an unrequited crush, which, you know, good for you, Jan. And, honey, honey, I'm sorry, girl. Sometimes the good ones really are taken.

In June 1944, Honey and Jan went after Piet Faber, a confectioner and NSB member who frequently aided his two sons, both in the SS, in their work in clandestine murder squads, targeting Dutch citizens and retaliation for resistance attacks. Faber had gotten when that the resistance was after him and moved to a rent-e. house, but he still biked to work every morning, and that was when Hani and Jan shot him in the street. He died in the hospital six days later. The fact that a woman had shot Faber outraged the Germans who called it savagery and against the natural order of God. Oh, calm down. Jesus Jones, as if the Nazis weren't gross enough already, we can add this sex as shit to the list. How dare a woman try to resist us? Just heck off with that shit. But yeah, it ate their lunch something fierce, and the girl with red hair went straight onto their mom.

most wanted list. Yeah. First of all, y'all are committing genocide, which, you know, I don't know, feels pretty against God's order, too. Yeah, a little bit. But second of all, and I can't believe I'm saying this, it probably goes against everything this show is about, usually. But like, women can commit murder too, okay? Feminism. We have broken that killer glass ceiling, damn it. Like, feminism. It's a lot cooler if the guy's a fucking Nazi, you know? Obviously. Also, I wouldn't call that murder.

I would call that something else. Yeah, community service. Fuck Nazis. Anyway, in that same month, the resistance targeted Willem Ragu for liquidation and gave the job to Hany and Yon. Ragu was chief of police in the city of Zandam. north of Amsterdam, and was also an NSB member who worked closely with the German security police. He'd been responsible for executing several resistance members, and he'd also worked for the service that cataloged and managed goods stolen from the homes of Jewish families sent to the

concentration camps. So, you know, he was a real fucking scumbag. The local resistance group decided that he had to die, but two attempts had already failed, and Ragu was known to have two pistols on him at all times. Just like the other guy, though, Ragu rode his bike to work every morning, and Hany and Yon, also on bikes, lay in wait. When he passed by, they rode up behind him and pulled out their guns. Hani fired first, shooting Ragu in the back and riding on. Then Yon fired as Ragu fell, but the police officer had managed to grab one of his own pistols and fired back at Yon, hitting him in the lower back. Yon stumbled away as Hani fled. It was normal for them to run

away separately after an attack, but she was terrified for her friend. Willem Ragu died in the street. Hani went to Truce and tears, beating herself up for not going back to help Jan. Trues comforted her as best she could and promised they'd do whatever they could to find Jan in the morning. The next day, they went to the main Amsterdam hospital to see if Yon had come in, and while they were there, an ambulance arrived and a stretcher was brought in escorted by armed SS officers. Honey and Truce couldn't get close, but they recognized recognized Jan's curly hair.

After he'd been shot, Jan had stumbled to a nearby house and hammered on the door. The two old women who answered called the police, which I guess I can understand, but the officers who responded passed Jan onto the SS. It seems like it was pretty much a roll of the dice, whether individual Dutch cops would side with the resistance or the Germans. Jan had been shot in his spine and would die shortly after arriving at the hospital, but not before giving up Hani's name and address. Now, before you get mad, it wasn't his fault. The SS sent one of their female Dutch agents to his bedside and she pretended to be a nurse

with the resistance. Yon would normally be too sharp to fall for this, but he was in pain on the brink of death and loaded up on God knows what kind of meds. And he just didn't think, poor guy. Yeah. Truce knew that with Jan captured, Hani would have to move. So she had Honey cover her red hair with a scarf and took her to Franz. A German patrol stopped them on the way, and things could have gotten real bad, real fast. Both women had pistols in their pockets, but Truce was able to talk them through. The resistance told Hani to go into hiding and lay low and quickly moved her Jewish friend Felin out of Hani's parents' house. And just in time, the security police raided the house and took Hani's parents hostage, sending them to one of the Dutch

concentration camps in the hopes that Haunny would turn herself in in exchange for their freedom. Apparently, Adolf Hitler himself ordered the SS to track down the girl with red hair. Hauny dyed her hair black and did her best to straighten her curls. She wore glasses with fake lenses and made up a fake ID card. She and Truce stayed in the attic of a man named Harm Elsinga, a school principal who had worked with Hanne's father and was friendly with the resistance. His 10-year-old son, Hall remembers Honey is very sweet. She helped him with his homework, but more careless than Truce, sometimes leaving ammunition clips just lying around in the house. Truce had to clean up

after her. Honey wouldn't normally be so careless, but she was not in a good place right then. She was grieving for Jan and blaming herself for his death, and she was worried about her parents who were being held prisoner by the enemy. Truce and Freddie had to work hard to talk her out of turning herself in, convincing Honey that she couldn't trust the Nazis to let her parents go. Her parents would be released months later after the Germans failed to get any information about the resistance from them. They knew Honey worked with the resistance against their wishes, but she'd never told them any specifics about her work. Smart girl. Most of the Netherlands was in a better mood than Honey.

June 6, 1944 had been Dede, when the Allies successfully landed at Normandy, and there was a real sense that the tide of the war was turning. The Dutch people could see a future free of the Nazis. To clamp down on the occupied territories, at the end of July, Hitler issued the terror and sabotage decree, tightening the already strict rules on non-German citizens acting against the Nazi regime. Any armed opponents could now be summarily executed. By September 1944, Allied forces were close to the Dutch border, and with the war clearly slipping away from him, Hitler introduced even stricter anti-resistance rules. Suspected resistance fighters didn't even have to be armed now.

They could just be shot on sight. Everyone could see the end of the war coming. It just made the Nazis and their allies more vicious. By September, Hani was active with the resistance again. She, truce, and other resistance members got into a shootout with some collaborationist police officers. Hani shot one in the arm, but then her gun jammed and the guy managed to shoot her in the leg before her fellow resistance fighters hurried her away. She went to her parents' GP. Fortunately, the bullet had gone straight through her thigh without hitting anything.

important. One of the police officers in the shootout, Christ, was a notorious NSB member who specialized in tracking down Jewish people in hiding so they could be deported to the concentration and execution camps. He survived this attack, unfortunately, but on October 25th, a resistant sniper shot him to death as he rode his bike to work. It seems like there's a real flaw in their plan with the biking to work. I got to say, like, what's the point of being in a safe house? If you're just going to ride your bike to work and they're just going to pick you off. It's the most Dutch thing Dutch thing I've ever heard

is them riding their bikes to work. You're being hunted. Stop riding your damn bike everywhere. In retaliation, the Germans burned down a block of houses and killed ten hostages forcing random Dutch citizens on the street who happened to include truths

to watch the executions. And she was the really sensitive one too, like the one he used to faint after the executions. Like, that must have been so horrible for her. Hauny was still depressed. She was skinny and exhausted and her hands would shake. When Truce and Freddie would talk about what they wanted to do after the war, honey would never join in.

She told them she didn't think she'd see the end of the war, but that she might be buried in a coffin draped with a Dutch flag, with the queen there. Fantasizing about having a hero's funeral is not an indication of a happy mind. At the start of 1945, the young women were still hard at work for the resistance. They blew up a railway line, disrupting German movements for weeks, and spied on German construction of the Atlantic Wall, the defenses meant to repel Allied invasion by sea. In March, 1945, Hanne and Truce attacked a hairdresser-slash-dutch SS officer,

just let that combination sink in for a second, and shot him in the head and back, but didn't kill him. His fiancé started screaming for the cops, and Honey and Truce fled into a local bar. Truce pulled out her gun and yelled When the Germans come in We've been here all afternoon If you do not behave

And we're on our way to heaven We'll take a few of you with us I love Truce so much They ordered a quick drink So their breath would smell And when a German patrol came in They acted hammered Truce put her arm around the officer's neck

And said, hey Heinz, come here No one in the bar gave them up Good choice And the Germans left the officer hurrying to get away from this annoying drunk woman. By the spring of 1945, the liberation of the Netherlands was inevitable. The resistance and occupation forces agreed to tone things down. But neither actually followed the agreement.

Hani, Truce, and Freddie kept on following their instructions to liquidate Nazis and collaborators. They had rules. They would never attack if the target had children with them, and unless they were absolutely sure of the target's identity, they would always politely ask their name. before opening fire. On March 21st, with the southern Netherlands already liberated by the allies and the rest soon to follow, Haunny went to distribute resistance newspapers and scout the Atlantic Wall defenses.

She was stopped at a new roadblock and German soldiers found the resistance newspapers, but managed to miss the 9mm pistol she kept in her purse. She was arrested and taken for interrogation, during which she didn't say a word. When the Germans finally found the gun in her purse, she was jailed as a resistance member. An inspection revealed the red roots of her hair, and soon the Germans knew they had Hanie Schaft, the notorious girl with red hair, who had made even Hitler furious with her actions. She was interrogated and tortured. On April 17th, she was dragged screaming from her cell to a car, where three German soldiers drove her to the sand dunes by the coast. One of them had a shovel.

They took Hani out on foot into the dunes. where one of the Germans pointed his pistol at her head and fired. The shot graced her skull, and Haney turned and snapped. Idiot! I shoot better! Then, one of the other soldiers fired with his machine gun and killed her. They buried her in the dunes. The Gestapo officer, who arranged her execution, described it as, not justice, but revenge.

Hundreds of resistance fighters were buried beside her in the dunes. The same day Hani was taken, March 21st, a German patrol stopped Freddie and everyone else on the street. Given a few moments warning by people yelling, Raid, Freddy tossed her gun into the woods by the road just before the Germans appeared. When they asked for her ID, Freddie, who was 19 by now, opened her eyes wide and said, I don't have one. I haven't turned 15 yet. Which, as Whitney mentioned, was the age you were required to get ID. There are advantages to being short and kind of baby-faced, and the Germans let her go. She hurried to find Truce, who was already worried sick about Hani.

The resistance knew that Hani had been taken, but had no idea if the Germans had discovered her true identity. By the time Truce, disguised as a nurse, discovered the prison where Hani had been held and went there. It was too late. She saw a book, with Honey's name crossed out, meaning she wasn't there anymore. Truce fainted on the spot. On May 5th, 1945, just a couple of weeks after Haney's murder, the occupying German forces surrendered to the Allies. Truce, who had managed to convince herself that Hany had just been taken away for interrogation,

waited outside the prison for Hany to be released, holding a bunch of flowers for her friend. And although released prisoners strained by them, Hany wasn't among them. It wouldn't be until May 21st that her family learned she had been executed. A cemetery honoring those killed and buried in the dunes was established close by, and on November 27, 1945, Haunny was buried there after a three-mile procession from the Great Church in Harlem, with her coffin draped in the Dutch flag. The queen and her daughter were there at her funeral.

She was the only woman of 372 resistance fighters buried there, and was posthumously awarded the Dutch Cross of Resistance, as well as being honored by General Eisenhower with the Medal of Freedom. Truce would marry a fellow resistance fighter and go on to have a career as an artist, sculpting the statue of Haney that stands at her memorial. She also named one of her daughter's Hany, which is beautiful. And also, good luck living up to that name, kid. No kidding.

Freddie would have a quieter, but good life. She didn't like to talk about the war, though. Both sisters suffered from what we'd now recognize as PTSD. especially around the Liberation Day celebrations. Truce died in 2016 at the age of 92, and Freddie died at the same age two years later. All three young women have streets in Harlem named after them. And I think we need to step back and look at just what these young women were fighting against.

A lot of their resistance work was about keeping Jewish people safe from the Nazis and their collaborators, but it was a struggle against a rising tide. Hani befriended two young Jewish women at University. Phelene Polak and Sonia Frank. Phelene, with Hani's help, survived the war, often hiding with Hanne's parents. Afterwards, she emigrated to the U.S. and worked at the United Nations. Sonia was not so lucky. In October 1943, hunted in Harlem, she tried to flee to neutral Switzerland, but was

betrayed and captured. The Germans immediately sent her to Auschwitz, where she was killed on November 23, 1943. During the Dutch occupation, 107,000 Jewish people were deported to concentration camps and ultimately to Auschwitz. Only 5,200 survived. 102,000 people, three quarters of the pre-war Jewish population,

were murdered by the Nazi regime. And if people have qualms about haunny, truce, and Freddie shooting people dead in the street, I get it. But you have to remember that they weren't just killers. hated killing, but they were soldiers in a war against a regime of true evil. We'll get back to our regular true crime programming next week, but we happened to come across this story the other day, and we just had to tell it to you. These three women sacrificed so much to do what

they thought was right. I wonder sometimes if I'd be brave enough to do the same. Freddie, truce, honey, you deserve all our respect. I've known about these women for like a week, and I cannot believe I've never heard the story. They were exactly the type of people who we should all aspire to be, brave, tough, and protective of those who couldn't protect themselves. Go stand up for the little guy, campers. Damn, Skippy. So that was a hell of a wild one.

You know, we'll have another one for you next week. But for now, lock your doors, light your lights, and stay safe until we get together again around the true crime campfire. And as always, we want to send a grateful shout out to a few of our lives. lovely patrons. Thank you so much to Anna C. Amanda, Dave, Abby, Kelsey, Liza, and Morgan. We appreciate y'all to the moon and back. And if you're not yet a patron, you're missing out. Patrons of our show get every episode ad-free, at least a day early, sometimes even two, plus all kinds of extra content. And once you hit the $5 and up categories, you get even more cool stuff. A free sticker

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