The 10th of May 1940, World War 2, the Netherlands.
Nazi Germany invades Holland and the German Air Forces – the Luftwaffe – use paratroopers in
the capture of tactical points and to assist in the advance of ground troops across the country.
The invasion is accompanied by heavy aerial bombardment of Rotterdam and culminates on
the 14th of May with the destruction of its entire historic center. Because the Germans
threaten to bomb the city of Utrecht in the same way, the Dutch forces surrender one day later.
Soon after the Nazis start to occupy the whole country and pass new anti-Jewish laws
which are designed to exclude Jewish people from society and restrict their livelihood.
The systematic deportations of Dutch Jews to death camps start in July 1942. However,
because some Dutch citizens cannot bear to see what is happening to their country and people,
they join the resistance. Among them is a young woman who will become the Nazi’s
most wanted woman in the Netherlands during World War II. Her name is Hannie Schaft.
Hannie Schaft was born as Jannetje Johanna Schaft on 16 December 1920 in Haarlem, the Netherlands.
Hannie had an older sister, Annie, who tragically died from diphtheria at the age of seven.
In part because of that, her parents raised Hannie with great caution and kept a close eye on her.
Hannie developed a political consciousness from a young age. Both parents followed world affairs and
discussed these openly at the dinner table, also with their daughter. Her father, Peter Schaft,
in particular, was an active supporter of the Social Democratic Workers' Party or SDAP
and conveyed his leftist tendencies to Hannie.. Guided by her socialist parents, from early on,
not only did she develop a strong sense of social justice but also a deep hatred of fascism.
While Hannie was open and talkative at home, at school, she remained rather quiet. Her bright
red hair also made her the target of teasing and mockery. After high school in Haarlem,
in 1938 Hannie started attending the University of Amsterdam in the hopes of becoming a human
rights lawyer. During her university studies she became friends with the Jewish students
Sonja Frenk and Philine Polak, which made her feel strongly about actions against Jews.
World War 2 started on the 1st of September 1939 when Nazi Germany invaded Poland.
Already in early stages of the war, Hannie’s resistance spirit began to show and through
the Red Cross she started sending food and other supplies to imprisoned Polish soldiers.
On the 10th of May 1940 Germany invaded the Netherlands. Soon
after a civil administration was installed under the SS auspices
and Arthur Seyss-Inquart was appointed Reich Commissar of the Netherlands.
Among his first steps were a series of laws posing economic discriminations against the Jews.
During 1940, the German occupation authorities banned Jews from the
civil service and required Jews to register the assets of their business enterprises.
In January 1941, the German authorities required all Jews to register themselves as Jews. The
Germans claimed that the requirement that all Jews register was for their own safety, but the truth
was that it enabled their future deportations as the Nazis could easily track them down.
A total of 159,806 persons were registered, including 19,561 persons born of mixed marriages.
The total number included some 25,000 Jewish refugees from the German Reich.
A Jewish council was established in February 1941.
Around this time, Hannie founded a debate group ‘Gemma’ where critiques against the
Nazi occupation and antisemitism were frequent topics of discussion.
She also started writing articles in the university paper criticizing the segregation
of Jewish students and teachers, who were later banned from campus.
On the 22nd and 23rd of February 1941, German forces raided the Jewish Quarter in Amsterdam,
arresting and deporting more than 400 Jewish men to the Buchenwald and Mauthausen concentration
camps. The Dutch people’s reaction was unique among the Nazi-occupied Europe: they organized
the February Strike, a two-day general strike, which started on the 25th of February 1941.
German officials brutally suppressed the strike. This action was followed by a hardening in Nazi
policy. The German authorities as well as collaborating Dutch authorities and
civil services segregated Jews from the general Dutch population and incarcerated 15,000 of them
in German-administered forced-labor camps. The Germans then ordered the concentration of Jews
in Amsterdam and sent foreign and stateless Jews to the Westerbork transit camp in the northeast
part of the country. Some of the remaining provincial Jews were sent to the Vught camp.
The sign ‘Forbidden for Jews’ appeared on the doors and gates of cafes, swimming pools,
sports fields, museums, zoos, libraries, theatres, markets and many other public places.
Jews had to hand over their valuables, and their businesses were confiscated.
Regulations which forced Jews to wear a yellow Star of David on their clothing as
a means of identification were announced in the Netherlands on the 29th of April 1942.
Those caught without the badge after the 5th of May, when they came into effect,
were arrested, and detained for a six-week period to serve at
Mauthausen. In the Netherlands everyone knew that this was a death sentence.
Deportations of Jews from the Netherlands began in July 1942. The last train
left Westerbork for Auschwitz on the 3rd of September 1944. During these two years,
the Germans and their Dutch collaborators deported some 107,000 Jews, mostly to Auschwitz
and Sobibor, where they were murdered. Only 5,200 survived. In addition, 25,000-30,000 Jews went
into hiding, assisted by the Dutch underground and two-thirds of those managed to survive.
In 1943, university students were required to sign a declaration of allegiance to the occupation
authorities. When Schaft refused to sign the petition in support of the occupation forces,
like 80% of the other students, she could not continue her studies and in the summer of 1943,
she moved in with her parents again, taking her Jewish friends, Sonja Frenk and Philine Polak,
with her. She managed to obtain fake IDs for them to evade Nazi checkpoints as the
Nazis continued stripping Jewish citizens of their basic rights.
Upon leaving university, Hannie joined the Council of Resistance, a movement that had close
ties to the Communist Party of the Netherlands. Whilst at the resistance she met two sisters,
Truus and Freddie Oversteegen with who she became close friends and would survive the war.
Despite being young and female, they formed a famous trio in the Dutch Resistance,
feared by German occupiers as well as by Dutch Nazi collaborators. Hannie, who was pursuing
a career in human rights law, served as the intellectual member; Truus emerged as their
decisive and practical leader and the feminine and fierce Freddie would map out their missions.
The armed resistance was an extremely dangerous activity,
with many fighters arrested and executed. Rather than act as a courier, Schaft wanted
to work with weapons. She was responsible for sabotaging and assassinating various targets.
It is unclear how many attacks can be attributed to Hannie, but it is believed there were at least
six. Before confronting her targets, she would put on makeup including lipstick and mascara and style
her hair. She once explained her reasoning to Truus Oversteegen: “I’ll die clean and beautiful.”
Hannie and the Oversteegen sisters gathered vital information, provided
Jewish children with safe houses, stole identification papers and bombed railways.
Hannie could speak fluent German and with Truus and Freddie she became involved with German
soldiers. They would seduce high-ranking Nazi officers, lure them into the woods and kill them.
Hannie was also involved in killing or wounding a baker who was known for betraying people,
a hairdresser who worked for the Nazis’ intelligence agency, and another
Nazi police officer named Willem Zirkzee.
Soon she became famous as "the girl with the red hair" and was
placed on the Nazis' most-wanted list. Adolf Hitler had personally ordered her capture.
Hannie and the Oversteegen sisters would target mostly Nazis officers but also
Dutch collaborators who gave the Nazis details of Jewish and dissident families.
They did however, refuse to target the children of high-ranking Nazis. When they were asked by
their resistance commanders to kidnap the three children of Reich Commissioner Arthur
Seyss-Inquart, they refused and argued: ‘’ Resistance fighters do not kill children,
we only fight against real fascists, not against children.”
Hannie also worked closely with one of the founders of the resistance, Jan Bonekamp, whom
she admired greatly. Bonekamp was charismatic, fearless, and good-looking and the two were
rumored to have had a romantic relationship. On 21 June 1944, Hannie Schaft and Jan Bonekamp,
carried out an assassination on a Dutch police officer and collaborator Willem Ragut.
Hannie fired first and hit Ragut in the back, but Bonekamp was shot in the stomach
by Ragut before killing him. Willem Ragut died nevertheless, and the two resistance
fighters fled in different directions. But while Hannie managed to get away, the fatally hurt
Bonekamp was arrested and taken to the hospital. Whilst there, he unintentionally gave Hannie's
name and address to Dutch Nazi nurses who were pretending to be resistance workers. Soon after,
Jan Bonekamp died from his injuries and a week later, Nazis raided Hannie’s parent’s house and
sent her parents to a Dutch concentration camp. Hannie, overwhelmed with grief, nearly turned
herself in but resistance members ordered her to stay with the Oversteegens until she calmed down.
She then temporarily stopped working for the resistance due to the distress of the situation
and her grief over Bonekamp’s death. When her parents were released several months later, she
decided to return to the resistance. She disguised herself by dying her hair black and wearing
wire-frame glasses. She once again contributed to assassinations and sabotage, as well as courier
work, and the transportation of illegal weapons and the dissemination of illegal newspapers.
But her dedication was short-lived. On 21 March 1945, Hannie Schaft was caught during
a police petrol while in possession of two resistance-friendly newspapers and a pistol.
She was arrested and brought to a prison in Amsterdam where she was tortured and interrogated.
When forced to wash her hair, the Nazis knew they had finally found
the red-haired assassin they had been searching for over two years.
Although at the end of the war there was an agreement between the occupier and the 'Dutch
resistance' to stop executions, the Nazis nevertheless decided to kill her. Hannie was
executed by Nazi officials Mattheus Schmitz and Maarten Kuiper only 3 weeks before the liberation.
When in the dunes of Overveen, near Bloemendaal, Mattheus Schmitz leveled his gun at Hannie,
the first bullet which struck her in the head, only wounded her.
Schaft was still standing when she said her final words which were allegedly:
“I shoot better,” before she was hit with another bullet shot by Maarten Kuiper that killed her.
Hannie Schaft was only 24 years old when she died on April 17, 1945.
The Netherlands was liberated from Nazi occupation only 18 days later on the 5th of May 1945.
The dunes where Schaft was killed became a mass grave for over 400 Dutch resistance fighters
including Hannie Schaff herself. On 27 November 1945, Schaft was reburied in a state funeral at
the Dutch Honorary Cemetery in Bloemendaal. Members of the Dutch government and royal
family attended, including Queen Wilhelmina, who called Schaft "the symbol of the Resistance“.
Following her death, Hannie became known as one of
the bravest resistance fighters of World War 2, both in the Netherlands and abroad.
Supreme Allied Commander Dwight Eisenhower awarded Hannie a posthumous Medal of Freedom.
Her legacy suffered during the Cold War because of her communist ties, though.
Most recently, however, in 2020, Deputy Prime Minister Kajsa Ollongren honored
her for 100-year celebration of her birthday. Ollongren said,
“Hannie fought for liberty and a society in which everyone has the right to participate.
Her life teaches us that we must not look away from the fight against evil.”
There were many tears shed for Hannie Schaft.
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