On April 17 1945, the Second World War and German occupation of the Netherlands would
last for no more than three weeks. Yet on that day, two Nazi officials led a 24-year-old
red-haired girl into the Dutch dunes. A bit before, policemen arrested her at a military
checkpoint, and they struck gold. This girl, listed on the most-wanted list of the Nazis,
was responsible for a long list of Dutch collaborators and Nazi officials’ assassinations. Although
the occupational forces agreed not to execute any prisoners during the final days of the
war, they made an exception for this girl. She knew her end was coming, yet she faced
it with incredible composure. One of the men took out his Lüger, aimed at her and fired…
but aside from a flinch she remained standing. The bullet grazed her, and she boldly exclaimed
‘Ik schiet beter’, translating to as much as ‘I shoot better.’ The second man stepped
in and shot her through the head execution-style. With one final act of bravery in the face
of certain death, the ‘girl with the red hair’ Janneke Johanna Schaft, better known
by her alias Hannie, was no more.
Beginnings
Hannie was born as Jannetje Johanna Schaft on September 16, 1920, to a schoolteacher
Pieter and his wife Aafje. Her mother was a protestant and her father supported the
Dutch social-democratic worker’s party. Known as “Jo”, she wouldn’t call herself
Hannie until she began working for the Dutch resistance. Early on values such as solidarity
and a just world were imprinted on her. She grew up in the Dutch city Haarlem. Classmates
later described her as a quiet and smart girl, interested in reading books instead of going
on adventures. In 1938 she started her Law studies at the
University of Amsterdam, specialising in international law, hoping to revive the faltering League
of Nations one day. She joined the all-girl fraternity where she met two girls that would
become her close friends: fellow students Philine Polak and Sonja Frenk, who both happened
to be Jewish. The three girls studied together and went on excursions.
Obviously, when the Nazis invaded the Netherlands in May 1940, and the antisemitic legislation
and eventually deportation of Jews began, Hannie felt a very personal connection with
the fate of the Dutch Jews under the new occupiers. She couldn’t do much to help, after all
she wasn’t even 20 yet. Instead, she began sending Red Cross packages to captured Polish
officers, which she kept up for months. Together with her friends, she continued her
studies, listened to the illegal radio station Orange and discussed the war. Initially, she
simply avoided German soldiers, and any resistance involvement was yet to come. In late 1940
antisemitic legislation meant Jewish students and professors weren’t allowed to attend
or lecture at Universities anymore. Throughout the next year, legislation limited the freedom
of these citizens even more.
First acts of resistance
When in spring 1942, the yellow badge became compulsory, Hannie joined the resistance through
mutual friends. Initially, Hannie began stealing identity documents from her peers at swimming
pool locker rooms. She then used these documents to forge identity documents for her friends
Sonja and Philine. When waves of round-ups took place, she located addresses her friends
could hide at. One of her friends, Erna, was involved with a resistance group and often
requested Hannie deliver identity documents. For months she stole dozens of identity papers
from public places, pickpocketing people or raiding lockerrooms. These were then distributed
to Jewish citizens or members of the resistance. In 1943 the German occupiers forced all Dutch
students and teachers to sign a loyalty declaration to the Nazi regime. Hannie, together with
approximately 80% of students, refused to sign it. As a direct result, she wasn’t
allowed to continue her studies and moved back in with her parents in Haarlem. She arranged
for Sonja and Philine to go into hiding at her parent’s place as well. But Sonja couldn’t
stand her ‘voluntary imprisonment.’ She ended up trying to flee to Switzerland through
France, but someone betrayed her. Although Hannie probably never found out, Sonja was
deported to Auschwitz, where she met her end. Gradually, Hannie became more involved with
the Dutch resistance. One of her first ‘ways in’ was to establish contact with sisters
Truus and Freddy Oversteegen. The three of them actively aided people in hiding by giving
them stolen ration cards and identity documents and acted as a courier, smuggling pamphlets
and weapons. As I said, her real name was Jannetje, and around this time she began using
the nom-de-guerre Hannie to identify herself to other resistance members.
The three girls frequented local swimming pools where they became friendly with German
soldiers, gathering intelligence and stealing revolvers. They joined the Dutch council of
resistance, received shooting lessons deep in the woods, and became more involved in
dangerous missions. Hannie stood at the lookout during assassinations and smuggled ammunition
to resistance members before receiving her first real mission: together with another
member she had to assassinate a Sicherheitsdienst agent. Locating the man, another resistance
member handed Hannie a revolver. She aimed at the agent, walking on an abandoned street,
and pulled the trigger. But she only heard a faint click instead of a shot. The revolver
was empty, and the Sicherheitsdienst agent subsequently walked up to her and introduced
himself as Frans van der Wiel. He was a member of the resistance, and Hannie just passed
her loyalty test. Clearly, she was angry, but it proved she was trustworthy and willing
and able to carry out actual assassinations.
Killing Collaborators
Because of the Council’s close ties with the Dutch Communist Party, other resistance
organisations distrusted them. She began dating one of its members, 27-year-old Jan Bonekamp.
On June 8, 1944, together with Jan, Hannie carried out the assassination of the Dutch
collaborator Piet Faber. Piet was critically injured and died six days later.
Two weeks later the couple planned to assassinate the collaborating police chief of Zaandam,
Willem Ragut. What they didn’t know was that Ragut expected an attempt on his life
by the Dutch resistance. They caught the police chief during the early morning of June 21
as he was cycling to the police station. Jan shot him in his back, but unbeknownst to him,
Willem carried two guns. The policeman managed to retaliate fire, critically injuring Jan.
Willem passed away not too long after due to his injuries. But Jan was too injured to
flee from the Sicherheitsdienst called to the scene. Hannie had already left the scene
and didn’t realise Jan was mortally wounded. Sicherheitsdienst officers combed out the
surrounding houses. It didn’t take too much trouble to find Jan, hiding nearby. Mortally
injured, he was interrogated before passing away. He gave up several addresses, and right
before he died he gave up Hannie’s name and her parent’s address. He also carried
her photo in his wallet, blowing her entire cover. The Sicherheitsdienst now added this
‘terrorist’, a 23-year-old girl, to their most-wanted list. Hannie was probably not
expecting her partner to betray her; but she still took the necessary precautions and went
into hiding. Later letters reveal the hurt Hannie experienced by Jan’s death.
Soon after, the Sicherheitsdienst raided her parent’s house and took them hostage. The
Nazis interned them in Vught concentration camp, communicating they would be released
if Hannie gave herself up. But she remained in hiding, and her parents ended up released,
hoping she would visit them once free. Hannie now dyed her hair black and adopted a set
of glasses. Together with Truus and Freddie, the three
girls launched at least eight assassination attempts in the next several months, some
more successful than others. But they also refused missions. The girls refused to do
anything to children, believing they would be no worse than the Nazis if they did so.
As such, they refused to abduct the children of Arthur Seyss-Inquart, Reichskommissar of
the occupied Netherlands. In September, Hannie failed to assassinate
the collaborating policeman Willem Meindert Willemsen. Another attempt at the collaborator
Fake Krist’s life came too late because another resistance group managed to liquidate
him before Hannie got to him. Together with another resistance member, she carried out
two more assassination attempts, although one of their targets survived the attack.
The End
But on March 21 things went horribly wrong. Police officers halted her for a routine check
at a military checkpoint. They discovered Hannie carried Communist newspapers and secret
documents for the resistance. Policemen took her to the local police station, where they
found out she carried a Browning Hi-power semi-automatic handgun. The Germans realised
this was the girl linked to multiple assassinations of collaborators, and she was probably the
girl on the photograph taken from Jan’s wallet.
They interrogated Hannie at length. She confessed her involvement in Ragut and Faber’s assassinations,
and after a while, she also admitted to being responsible for killing Ko Langedijk. Unbeknownst
to her, this confession saved the lives of five women scheduled to be shot as a reprisal.
The end of the war was rapidly approaching; it would last not even for two more months.
The Germans knew this all too well, and the occupational forces even agreed not to execute
any prisoners towards the end of the war. They generally didn’t execute women anyway.
But they made an exception for Hannie. SS -Sturmbahnführer Willy Lages personally ordered
the 24-year-old to be executed in the Dunes nearby Bloemendaal.
On April 17 1945, three weeks before the war officially ended in the Netherlands, Hannie
Schaft was executed. Supposedly, the initial round of fire only grazed her. Hannie replied
‘Ik schiet beter’, literally translating to ‘I shoot better’, or ‘I am a better
shot.’ Still, this most likely is a romanticised account of her death, because the official
autopsy report describes two bullets lodged in the back of her head, fired from close
range. In May, the Netherlands was liberated. In
November that year, Hannie’s remains were found in a shallow grave, nearby a mass grave
of another 400 resistance members. She received an official state burial with military honours,
with the Dutch Queen referring to her as ‘the symbol of the Resistance.’ In 1946 she was
posthumously awarded the Dutch Cross of Resistance, the Resistance Memorial Cross and the American
Medal of Freedom. Because she was part of the Communist resistance,
her name became a problem as the Cold War nearly got heated several times in the decades
after the war ended. From 1951 onwards the Dutch military even guarded the cemetery she
was buried on, so people couldn’t organise a memorial service. Still, even today, in
2021 Hannie Schaft remains a name widely associated with Dutch resistance during the war. Many
streets and squares are named after her, and ask any Dutchman and her name will most likely
ring a bell. Thank you for watching this video. If there’s
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