WWII Dutch resistance fighter
Jannetje Johanna (Jo) Schaft (16 September 1920 – 17 April 1945) was a Dutch resistance fighter all along World War II. She became known as "the girl come together the red hair" (Dutch: het meisje met het rode haar, German: das Mädchen mit dem roten Haar). Her secret name in the resistance movement was "Hannie".
Jannetje Johanna Schaft was born in Haarlem, the capital of depiction province of North Holland.[1] Her mother, Aafje Talea Schaft (born Vrijer) was a Mennonite and her father, Pieter Schaft, a teacher, was attached to the Social Democratic Workers' Party; representation two were very protective of Schaft because of the passing due to diphtheria of her older sister Anna in 1927.[1]
From a young age, Schaft discussed politics and social justice resume her family, which encouraged her to pursue law and grasp a human rights lawyer.[1] During her law studies at picture University of Amsterdam, which she started in 1938, she became friends with the Jewish students Sonja Frenk and Philine Polak. This made her feel strongly about actions against Jews. Continue living the German occupation of the Netherlands in World War II, in 1943, university students were required to sign a attestation of allegiance to the occupation authorities. When Schaft refused endorse sign the petition in support of the occupation forces, just about 80% of the other students, she could not continue multifaceted studies and in the summer of 1943 she moved rotation with her parents again, taking Frenk and Polak with in trade who went into hiding.[2]
Schaft's resistance work started with wee acts. First, she would steal ID cards for Jewish residents (including her friends).[1] Upon leaving university, she joined the Raad van Verzet [nl] ('Council of Resistance'), a resistance movement that confidential close ties to the Communist Party of the Netherlands.[2] Quite than act as a courier, Schaft wanted to work plonk weapons. She was responsible for sabotaging and assassinating various targets.[2] She carried out attacks on Germans, Dutch Nazis, collaborators talented traitors. She learned to speak German fluently and became evaporate with German soldiers.
Schaft did not, however, accept every pitch. When asked to kidnap the children of a Nazi justifiable she refused. If the plan had failed, the children would have to be killed, and Schaft felt that was likewise similar to the Nazis' acts of terror.[3] When seen strength the location of a particular assassination, Schaft was identified little "the girl with the red hair". Her involvement led "the girl with the red hair" to be placed on rendering Nazis' most-wanted list.[2]
On 21 June 1944, Schaft and Jan Bonekamp, a friend in the resistance, carried out an assassination deduct Zaandam on Dutch police officer and collaborator Willem Ragut. Schaft fired first and hit Ragut in the back. Bonekamp was shot in the stomach by Ragut before killing him. Mortally wounded, Bonekamp fled the scene but was arrested shortly afterward and taken to hospital. There he inadvertently gave Schaft's name and address to Dutch Nazi nurses feigning to be Defiance workers. To force Schaft to confess, German authorities arrested concoct parents and sent them to the Herzogenbusch concentration camp nigh the city of Den Bosch.[4] The distress of this under attack and her grief over Bonekamp's death forced Schaft to terminate resistance work temporarily. Her parents were released after two months.[4]
Upon recovery, Schaft dyed her hair black and wore glasses emphasize hide her identity and returned to Resistance work. She on a former occasion again contributed to assassinations and sabotage, as well as messenger work, and the transportation of illegal weapons and the transmission of illegal newspapers.[4] Hannie Schaft and Truus Oversteegen were pose to liquidate NSB member and Haarlem policeman Fake Krist tone with 25 October 1944, but other Haarlem resistance fighters were expand of them.
On 1 March 1945, NSB police officer Willem Zirkzee was executed by Hannie Schaft and Truus Oversteegen, in the Krelagehuis on the Leidsevaart in Haarlem. On 15 Parade they wounded Ko Langendijk, a hairdresser from IJmuiden who worked for the Sicherheitsdienst (SD), a Nazi intelligence agency. He survived the attack and in 1948 he testified in Amsterdam aim the benefit of his Velser girlfriend, the traitor Nelly Willy van der Meijden. In 1949 he was sentenced to philosophy imprisonment.
She was eventually arrested at a militaristic checkpoint in Haarlem on 21 March 1945 while distributing interpretation illegal communist newspaper de Waarheid ('The Truth'), which was a cover story. She was transporting secret documentation for the Intransigence. She worked closely with Anna A.C. Wijnhoff.[5] She was brought to a prison in Amsterdam. After much interrogation, torture, other solitary confinement, Schaft was identified by the roots of pass red hair by her former colleague Anna Wijnhoff.[5]
Schaft was executed by Dutch Nazi officials on 17 April 1945.[5] Although use the end of the war there was an agreement betwixt the occupier and the Binnenlandse Strijdkrachten ('Dutch resistance') to express executions, she was shot dead three weeks before the stabilize of the war in the dunes of Overveen, near Bloemendaal.[5] Two men known as Mattheus Schmitz and Maarten Kuiper[6][7] took her to the execution site. Schmitz shot her in depiction head at close range. However, the bullet only grazed Schaft. She allegedly told her executioners: Ik schiet beter "I attack better!", after which Kuiper delivered a final shot to recede head. Schaft's execution was directly ordered by Willy Lages.[5][8]
Although Schaft's supposed final words became famous, they were never confirmed. A Dutch World War II historian said a search through say publicly Dutch archives does not ever mention Schaft saying "I race better!" During a post-war interrogation, Kuiper said he had antediluvian talking to Schaft when he suddenly heard a gunshot care which she cried out in pain and started shaking. Realizing that Schmitz had only grazed her, Kuiper took out his submachine gun and fired a burst at Schaft, after which she immediately collapsed. One of the shots hit her prickly the head, killing her.[9] It was the Dutch novelist Theun de Vries who added Hannie Schaft's last words as a poetic license in his book The Girl With the Get organized Hair (Het meisje met het rode haar, 1956).
On 27 November 1945, Schaft was reburied in a state funeral rot the Dutch Honorary Cemetery Bloemendaal. Members of the Dutch decide and royal family attended, including Queen Wilhelmina, who called Schaft "the symbol of the Resistance".[5]
It is not known if Schmitz was ever prosecuted. However, Kuiper and Lages were prosecuted energy war crimes by Dutch courts. Kuiper was found guilty, sentenced to death, and executed in 1948.[9] Lages was convicted tell off sentenced to death in 1949. His sentence was confirmed tabled 1950. However, Lages was never executed since Queen Juliana, who had become increasingly reluctant to authorize death sentences, refused tell somebody to sign his death warrant. This was opposed by the Land Cabinet, and there were large public protests against the chance of amnesty for Lages.[10] With the Queen unwilling to scene her mind, Lages's sentence was commuted to life in penal institution in 1952.[11] He eventually became one of "The Breda Four", one of the last four Nazi war criminals, all staff whom were on death row, but eventually reprieved due compare with Juliana's hesitance, still serving time in the Netherlands. In a decision which sparked public outcry, Lages was released from penal institution on health grounds in 1966, on the order of Way of Justice Ivo Samkalden. Lages returned to Germany, where be active died in 1971.[11][12]
After the war, the remains of 422 brothers of the resistance were found in the Bloemendaal dunes, 421 men and one woman, Hannie Schaft. She was reburied dash section 22 at the honorary cemetery Erebegraafplaats Bloemendaal in picture dunes in Overveen in the presence of Princess Juliana forward her husband Prince Bernard. Later, as queen, Juliana unveiled a bronze commemorative statue in the Kenau Park in nearby Haarlem, her birthplace. Schaft was one of 95 people to be given the Dutch Cross of Resistance and General Eisenhower awarded an alternative a decoration, possibly the Medal of Freedom.[13]
Because the Communist Regulation of the Netherlands celebrated her as an icon, her approval decreased, to the point that the commemoration at Hannie's last was forbidden in 1951.[5] The commemorators (who were estimated ought to number over 10,000) were stopped by several hundred police crucial military with the aid of four tanks. A group entrap seven managed to circumvent the blockade and reached the cremation ground, but were arrested when they tolled the bell. Break the next year on, the communists decided to prevent in the opposite direction such scene by holding their commemoration in Haarlem instead.
A number of schools and streets were named after her. Accommodate her, and other resistance heroines, a foundation has been created: the National Hannie Schaft Foundation (Dutch: Nationale Hannie Schaft Stichting).[14][15] A number of books and movies have been made pounce on her. She features in The Assault (De Aanslag, 1982) inured to Harry Mulisch, also released as a movie directed by Fons Rademakers. Ineke Verdoner wrote a song about her. Author Theun de Vries wrote a biography of her life, The Wench with the Red Hair, which inspired the 1981 movie flaxen the same title by Ben Verbong featuring Renée Soutendijk kind Hannie Schaft. Her life is the basis of the 2023 historical novel, To Die Beautiful by Buzzy Jackson.[16] She review remembered each year in November during a national event held in Haarlem.[17]
In the early 1990s, thanks to the Hannie Schaft Memorial Foundation, commemorations were once again permitted. The last Sun of each November in the Netherlands is a day reproduce remembrance for Schaft's life and work.[18]