Hannie Schaft.
Hannie Schaft Memorial Foundation (Stichting Nationale Hannie Schaft-Herdenking)
THE WINTER OF 1944–45 was a particularly cold one that would become known in the Netherlands as the hongerwinter (hunger winter). Certain areas of the Netherlands had already been liberated by the Allies, but the western sections were still in the control of the Germans when, on March 21, 1945, a dark-haired, bespectacled young woman on a bicycle was stopped at a checkpoint—a concrete wall with a narrow opening built over a street—in the northwestern city of Haarlem. The guards searched the girl’s bag and found a bundle of illegal newspapers. She was obviously part of the local Dutch Resistance. This didn’t surprise them; they had discovered many women working for the Resistance during the occupation. But they found something else in the bag that did surprise them: a pistol. Most female resisters in the area didn’t use weapons. If this woman’s hair hadn’t been so dark, the soldiers might have thought she was “the girl with the red hair,” who had been spotted during several assassinations but who had thus far evaded capture. They arrested the woman and took her away for questioning.
Auburn-haired Hannie Schaft was born Jannetje Johanna Schaft on September 16, 1920, in Haarlem, the capital city of the Dutch province of North Holland. She was a shy child, perhaps because she was teased by schoolmates for her reddish-brown hair and freckles or perhaps because her parents became protective of Hannie after the death of her older sister.
But though the Schaft family kept to itself, mother, father, and daughter engaged in lively discussions regarding politics and social justice. As a result, Hannie grew up planning to obtain a law degree focusing on human rights. Her dream was to eventually join the League of Nations (an organization later replaced by the United Nations).
While Hannie was a law student at the University of Amsterdam, the Netherlands was invaded by Nazi Germany. Life in the Netherlands didn’t change right away under the Nazi occupation. But when anti-Semitic laws were enacted a few months later, gradually stripping away the rights of Dutch Jews, Hannie had to do something. Her sense of justice was, of course, offended by the new laws, but because her two best university friends, Sonja and Philine, were Jewish, her desire to help was all the greater.
Hannie became involved in small acts of resistance. She went to a public swimming pool and stole two identification cards for her Jewish friends. The ID cards of Jews were stamped with a huge J, easily identifying the bearers as Jewish and making them vulnerable to the ever-increasing anti-Semitic laws. Hannie began to do this type of work sporadically for other Dutch Jews who were desperately in need of false IDs.
In the spring of 1943, the Nazis passed a law that forever altered the course of Hannie’s life. All Dutch university students were required to sign a loyalty declaration to Nazi Germany, promising, among other things, to spend a certain amount of time working in Germany after graduation.
Hannie, like 80 percent of Dutch university students, refused to sign the declaration. She left the university and went back home to live with her parents in Haarlem. It was there that she became involved with a Resistance organization called Raad van Verzet (the Council of Resistance), or RVV, that had ties to the Dutch Communist Party.
The RVV was a militant Resistance group, one that used explosives and bullets to fight the German occupiers and Dutch NSB agents who were being paid to betray Dutch resisters and Jews. Women were always in demand as couriers for the RVV because they generally wouldn’t be stopped and searched as much as their male counterparts. But Hannie wanted to do more than courier work: she wanted to fight with weapons.
The RVV agreed to her request. Her first assignment was to connect with another resistance worker and assassinate a certain target. At the designated spot, the contact handed Hannie a pistol. Together, they waited for the target to pass by.
“Now!” called the contact. Hannie took aim and squeezed the trigger. But instead of hearing the “bang” of a bullet, there was only an empty click. Another empty click and then another. Suddenly, the person, who should have been dead, walked over to Hannie and introduced himself as the head of the Haarlem RVV. Hannie had been given a test, and she had passed.
Hannie was initially furious for having been deceived about the man’s true identity and wouldn’t shake his extended hand, but she eventually calmed down. It was unusual for Dutch Resistance women to be directly involved with explosives and weapons, yet Hannie, along with sisters Truus and Freddie Oversteegen, began to do sabotage and assassination work for the RVV.
The RVV was working to avenge the deaths of Resistance workers and also to protect more of them from betrayal, imprisonment, and death. Most of its assassination targets were members of the NSB—Dutch Nazis—who were being paid by the Germans to locate hidden Jews and betray Dutch Resisters. The NSB agents, along with the Germans, tortured captured resisters for information, then either sent them to a concentration camp or killed them. The RVV didn’t have the means to capture these Dutch traitors and had nowhere to imprison them. So they stopped these betrayals in the most effective way they knew. And Hannie helped them in this effort.
Hannie, Freddie, and Truus had no qualms about shooting Germans or Dutch traitors, but they didn’t accept every assignment. One day they were told to kidnap the children of Reich Commissioner Seyss-Inquart, the Nazi official in charge of occupied Holland, so that the RVV could exchange them for Resistance prisoners. All three women refused. If the plan failed, they’d have to shoot the children. “We are no Hitlerites,” Hannie said to Freddie and Truus as they walked away together. “Resistance fighters don’t murder children.”
While participating in one particular assassination attempt, Hannie was spotted by witnesses who claimed that they had seen a red-haired girl involved. The Girl with the Red Hair was now put high on the Nazis’ most wanted list.
Hannie sometimes also did sabotage and assassination work with Jan Bonekamp, another RVV member. One night, Hannie knocked on Truus’s door. Truus pulled her inside, very glad to see her good friend. Hannie burst into tears.
“I messed up my job and Jan got caught,” she sobbed. “I rode away and Jan was shot down.” Truus tried to calm Hannie by handing her a glass of water, but Hannie was shaking so badly the water spilled all over.
Hannie and Jan had just attempted to assassinate a traitorous Dutch police captain, William M. Ragut. All three were on bicycles. Hannie cycled up next to Ragut and took the first shot. Then she quickly cycled away. Jan cycled by next to make sure that Ragut was dead. He wasn’t. Just as Jan came near him, Ragut pulled out a gun and shot Jan in the abdomen.
Hannie and Truus waited outside the hospital where the badly injured Jan was going to be treated. They saw an ambulance arrive. Two armed SS guards accompanied the nurses who carried Jan into the hospital on a stretcher. “Oh Jan, Jan,” was all Hannie could whisper. There was no way to save him.
Jan’s injuries had blinded him, damaged his spine, and caused him excruciating pain, but he still refused to give out any information under questioning. Finally, NSB agents sent in two nurses posing as Resistance workers. They quietly asked Jan if there was anyone they could contact on his behalf since he was dying. He gave them Hannie’s name.
The day after Jan’s death, Hannie’s parents were arrested and sent to Vught, the Dutch concentration camp. The Germans were laying a trap for Hannie that her friends begged her to avoid. Hannie was deeply grieved that she had put her parents in such a situation, but she did not turn herself in. She became ill and depressed and temporarily ceased all Resistance activities. (When the Nazis saw that their plan had failed, they eventually released Hannie’s parents.)
When she recovered enough to resume her work with the RVV, Hannie was determined to take the most dangerous jobs available. She took the new name of Johanna Elderkamp, dyed her hair black, and began to wear fake glasses. In addition to participating in more assassination and sabotage work with Truus and Freddie, Hannie also busied herself with courier work, transporting weapons and illegal Resistance newspapers from place to place.
On the evening of March 21, 1945, Hannie was on her bicycle transporting a packet of underground papers, De waarheid (The Truth). She was stopped by German soldiers at a checkpoint in Haarlem. They found the newspapers and a pistol in her bag. They arrested her. After they brought in pro-German Dutch witnesses who claimed to have seen Hannie in action, they noticed the auburn roots of her hair. They had finally captured the Girl with the Red Hair.
Hannie was interrogated, tortured, and placed in solitary confinement, but she refused to give any information on her fellow resisters. Truus concocted a desperate rescue plan, but it failed.
On April 17, 1945, three weeks before the liberation of the Netherlands, Hannie Schaft was taken to the sand dunes near Bloemendaal. A German SS officer took a shot, but only grazed Hannie’s temple. “I am a much better shot!” Hannie cried. Then a Dutch NSB agent took out a submachine gun and fired. Hannie was dead. Her body was buried in a shallow grave.
After the war, the bodies of more than 400 resisters were found in those dunes, all men and one woman—Hannie Schaft.
On November 27, 1945, Hannie’s body was reburied in a state funeral presided over by Queen Wilhelmina, who called Hannie “the symbol of the Resistance.” Hannie received several posthumous awards, including the Wilhelmina Resistance Cross and the Medal of Freedom from General Eisenhower.
Because Hannie had worked with the communist RVV, she became a heroine of the Dutch Communist Party. After the war, when it became clear that the Communist Soviet Union was as oppressive as Nazi-occupied Europe had been, and that country became an enemy to the democracies of Western Europe, the Communist Party fell out of favor in the Netherlands. All commemorations for Hannie were banned.
But in 1982, a memorial sculpture dedicated to Hannie, created by Truus Oversteegen, was displayed in Kenau Park in Hannie’s home city of Haarlem. Several Dutch-language books were also written about her. One of them, Het meisje met het rode haar (The Girl with the Red Hair) by Theun de Vries, was made into a film starring Renée Soutendijk as Hannie.
In the early 1990s, due to the work of the Hannie Schaft Memorial Foundation, commemorations for Hannie resumed, and she again became a valued symbol of Resistance. Every year, on the last Sunday of November, there is an annual commemoration to Hannie’s life and sacrifice, which is attended by hundreds of Dutch citizens.
LEARN MORE “Hannie Schaft: Symbol of Resistance”
Haarlem Shuffle (English language resources for Haarlem, Holland)
www.haarlemshuffle.com/history/topic.php?id=12.
Hannie Schaft Memorial Foundation Web site (in the Dutch Language)
http://www.hannieschaft.nl/.