Occasionally I like to do a post that features someone who wasn’t necessarily dominant in the usual sense of this blog, but was an outstanding and forceful figure. A few past examples have included Beryl Swain, Julie d’Aubigny and Marlene Dietrich. Today’s post features another incredible woman – Freddie Oversteegen.
She was a Dutch resistance fighter in World War II, and passed away recently, aged 93. Aged just 14 when the Nazis invaded in 1940, she worked with her sister and a student named Hannie Schaft. As her obituary in the New York Times explains…
The three staged drive-by shootings from their bicycles; seductively lured German soldiers from bars to nearby woods, where they would execute them; and sheltered fleeing Jews, political dissidents, gay people and others who were being hunted by the invaders.
She obviously didn’t subscribe to the view that there were some fine people on both sides.
You can also read obituaries for her in The Guardian and The Washington Post. Seducing and then shooting Nazis made her a very literal femme fatale. It’s amazing that as a teenager she could do what she did, and also sad that she had to. She was ultimately awarded the Mobilization War Cross by the Dutch government, although not until 69 years after the war ended.
I was originally going to feature some fetishistic femdom military imagery with this post, but then figured that might not be in the best possible taste. So instead here is an elegant Dutch domme – Mistress Manouk. She can definitely pull off the femme fatale look.
Thank you for this one.
Guess we, the people of Flatland, don’t care very much about freedom. Yes, the Dutch are cheap, so cheap in fact that people are given the day off only once every five years to celebrate Liberation Day. At the time the government argued it would be too expensive for employers to fund a new annual holiday. Government employees – no joke – have Liberation Day off every year.
Read about the death of Freddie Oversteegen some time ago in the Washington Post and was upset our local media hardly paid attention. These days I look up obituaries for my fellow countrymen in the New York Times. Come on, Holland is a nation of only 17 million people!
In the Netherlands, Hannie Schaft – better known as the girl with the red hair – is almost as famous as Anne Frank. Her short life, executed three weeks before the end of the war, was made into a movie. Freddie Oversteegen and her big sister were part of the same group of resistance fighters Hannie Schaft was. It makes it all the more surprising Dutch media didn’t pick up on it. And sad.
World War II may be over, but it’s still very much alive. A while back I started gathering info on an future post about BDSM and Nazi uniforms. Since then not a day has gone by without reading something related to WWII in the press. Same thing with Nazi symbolism in the world of BDSM. What I’ve seen ranges from sad ‘n’ silly to utterly disgusting. It’s one of the reasons I find it hard to finish that post. Anyway, back to the present and thank you for this one. I mean it.
Glad it resonated with you. Happy to highlight such a brave and courageous fighter.
I have to admit – despite being a big history geek – I hadn’t read anything about her or Hannie Schaft until seeing these obituaries. We (meaning the US and Western Europe) seem to do a poor job picking historical figures to celebrate or commemorate. US and UK do at least have an annual memorial/remembrance day, but there’s a lot of national symbolism and not a lot of history or information in it.
-paltego