Transcriber: Quan Tran Reviewer: Sebastian Betti
Trembling with nerves, anxiety and rage, a young woman called Hannie Schaft,
was standing in the pitch dark.
It is the summer of 1943, and Nazi occupied the Netherlands.
Her fellow resistance fighter,
Truus Oversteegen is standing right behind her and has her back.
Shortly before she had powdered her nose and combed her beautiful red hair
because she wants to die beautiful.
Her breath is high and shallow.
Her heart is pounding madly, adrenaline is pumping through her veins.
Her sweaty palm is folded around the cold metal of her pistol. Her arm outstretched.
Her brain is spinning. Will she be able to pull the trigger? Of course, she will.
That’s exactly why she joined the armed resistance, to eliminate Nazis
and Dutch traders, a huge threat to Jewish people, to society and to humanity.
“But this is a human being,” whispers a small voice in the back of her head.
For a split second, she pauses and contemplates,
then she is as certain as she can be.
Her moral compass rooted in her core values as justice,
peace and equal treatment is stronger than anything else.
She knows she has to do this. She knows she can do this for the sake of mankind.
There is no other way.
She nods, aims her gun at the head of the Gestapo officer right in front of her
and resolutely and fearlessly fires.
A couple of decades later, another teenager, me,
is getting off a bus, anxious to meet
an old lady who seemed to have stepped right out of the pages of a history book.
For a high school research project,
I had to write a paper on a self-chosen topic.
Since I’d been fascinated by wars and human rights
ever since I was a little girl exploring my identity
and looking for positive role models of strong women,
the theme for my research was instantaneously clear.
Hannie Schaft, the icon of female Dutch resistance,
who had grown up in my hometown of Harlem --
This very city, who had embraced the same ideals as justice and peace,
and who had roughly been the same age.
The lady whom I was about to interview was no other than Truus Oversteegen,
who had worked closely with her younger sister, Freddie and Hannie Schaft
in an armed resistance cell.
I held my breath when I shook Truus’s hand,
the same hand that had held a gun to kill opponents.
Such a contrast with her granny appearance,
greeting me warmly, feeding me cookies.
Over tea, she shared their story with me, creating a bond for life.
The girls were incredibly young when World War II broke out.
Hannie was 19, Truus, 16 and Freddie, barely 14 years old.
Immediately, they were deprived of their youth and faced
a question far beyond what was expected of them: “Adapt or resist”.
These three remarkable and courageous young women
decided to literally take up arms against the enemy
as some of the very few women to do so.
They would gather vital intelligence for the resistance,
provide Jewish children with safe houses,
steal and forge identification papers,
bomb and attack railways.
But most perilously and brutally,
they would liquidate Nazis and traitors.
“Liquidating is just a nice word for killing”,
is how Freddy once explained this.
The three girls had one advantage over their male counterparts:
They were women; that not only meant that they were less suspicious,
but that they could also employ their youth, their beauty,
their femininity and their sexual power as a secret weapon and strategy of war.
They would dress up nicely, go into bars, seduce these high-ranking Nazi officers,
lure them into the woods and kill them.
What happens when someone gets shot?
“You see them fall and instinctively you want to pick them up.”
That is how Freddie described
this strange cocktail of contradictory emotions
displaying with crystal clarity that they succeeded in their main challenge
of remaining human in inhuman circumstances.
These three girls weren’t natural born killers.
They did what they did because they felt so strongly it had to be done.
In the midst of war, they carried out extremely dangerous missions,
putting their own lives on the line.
For Hannie, time just ran out.
She was arrested and executed by the Nazis,
not even three weeks before the end of the war,
carrying her dream of making this world a better place with her to her grave.
Truus and Freddie survived the war,
but continued their fight for recognition of their resistance work,
for their position in society
and their honorable morals to serve future generations.
When I first met both Oversteegen sisters,
I was in awe of their heroism.
Over the years, however, I learned they were haunted by the demons of their past.
They were traumatized and scarred for life,
suffering from severe nightmares,
depression and post-traumatic stress syndrome.
Doing the right thing, they paid the price.
For them, the war only stopped the day they died, both in their 90s.
In an increasingly divided world,
there are so many lessons we can derive from this story.
WWII didn’t start with gas chambers,
but with discrimination, exclusion and isolation,
which still happen on a widespread and systematic basis.
Wars continue to rage.
People are intimidated at the workplace, children bullied in kindergarten.
Now I'm asking you.
Did Hannie, Truus, and Freddie
waste their lives for a livable world?
Imagine a leader,
with such passion, purpose and perspective as these three,
for people and perseverance are the main driving force,
that person would, without a doubt,
shine on the cover of Time magazine as Person of the Year.
It is the story of Hannie, Truus and Freddie in all its aspects
that inspires me and influences my life every single day.
It started with a teenage infatuation.
After the interview, Truus introduce me to Freddie,
asked me to be the keynote speaker at the National Hannie Schaft commemoration
and to serve the board of this foundation.
It grew to be a 20-year lasting friendship and a life's work.
I’ve always believed in the power of this account,
sharing it with anyone I would meet.
When Freddie passed away in 2018 as the last of this famous trio
and her obituary went viral, I decided the world was ready.
I captured their story in my book, Seducing and Killing Nazis in the US,
investing all my time, energy and money.
Because I wanted to tell this story so badly.
But I’m not done yet, I continue to share their story in my talks,
lectures and speeches because I take the faith Truus and Freddie gave me
as the next generation and bearer of the new ideal,
very seriously.
Although the story of Hannie, Truus and Freddie is very unique,
I discovered something during my research in other war-torn countries
like the former Yugoslavia and Rwanda.
Women are traditionally portrayed as victims,
while in fact, a deeper look at research shows that it’s precisely women
who are better leaders in times of conflict, crisis and change.
We also see that during the current COVID pandemic,
economic crisis and climate change.
In my spare time, I love nature.
The calming effect of green, spacious trees.
I stroll with my three-year-old daughter, Sabina, daily in the Haarlemmerhout --
this spot where Hannie, Truus and Freddie have their first shooting lessons
and where they carried out some of their very few liquidations.
Today, the city forest is so peaceful and so beautiful,
such a dissimilarity with the horrors of the past.
Sabina, the human at the beginning of her life,
walks through the same woods where the remains of the body
of an SS soldier still lie buried beneath the ground.
Life and death are so close.
Let’s go back to the powder puff again, not to powder our nose,
but to turn it around, to allow you to look into this little mirror.
I challenge you to translate
the underlying narrative of this story into your own world.
What are your core values? Who would you stand up for?
What would you have done if you’d been in the shoes of Hannie, Truus or Freddie?
Hannie literally gave her life for her ideals.
Truus and Freddie did so, figuratively speaking.
Now that you've pondered these questions,
we can go back to the introductory question.
Did Hannie, Truus, and Freddie waste their lives for a livable world?
Look around you!
I am positive that you will see the deep impact this story made
in the eyes of some of your fellow members of the audience.
If ever it is only one person serving as a catalyst for change,
it’s already worth it.
Every act of kindness, empathy and compassion,
no matter how small, counts; every person or life saved.
Therefore, I think it is fair to conclude: No
Hannie, Truus, and Freddie did not waste their lives.
These three remarkable and courageous young women did not die in vain,
but for humanity in all its beauty and complexity.