Freddie Oversteegen, a Dutch resistance fighter who took up arms against Nazi occupiers as a teenager, died a day shy of her 93rd birthday, on Sept. 5.
Oversteegen had suffered several heart attacks in recent years and was living in a Driehuis nursing home near Haarlem when she died, The Washington Post reported.
She was just 14-years-old when she joined the Dutch resistance with her older sister, Truus Oversteegen.
In an interview with Vice, Oversteegen recounted how a "man wearing a hat" one day knocked on their door and asked their mother if the two girls could join, to which she obliged.
"The man that came to our door said that we would get military training, and they did teach us a thing or two," she said. "Someone taught us to shoot and we learned to march in the woods."
The sisters went on to shoot Nazis riding their bikes on the outskirts of Amsterdam, sabotage bridges and help smuggle Jewish children across the country, The Washington Post noted.
They were also the masters of seduction, luring unsuspecting targets into isolated areas where another member of the resistance was waiting to shoot the men, according to History 101.
In 2004, both sisters were awarded the Mobilisatie-Oorlogskruis (war mobilization cross) for their contribution to the resistance movement and two years later, Truus Oversteegen died, The Washington Post noted.
Despite being commended for her role in the movement, the trauma of the war never left Freddie Oversteegen, who told Vice she often remembered how people were dragged from their homes during Nazi raids.
"The Germans were banging on doors with the butts of their rifles—that made so much noise, you'd hear it in the entire neighborhood. And they would always yell—it was very frightening," she said.
© 2025 Newsmax. All rights reserved.