Menger-Oversteegen, Truus.

Menger-Oversteegen, Truus. born 29-08-1923, in Schoten, Netherlands, the daughter of Jacob Wilhelm Oversteegen (1898-1986), merchant, and Trijntje, born van der Molen (1900-1974?). Truus Oversteegen married Pieter Menger (1919-1993) on November 1, 1945, in Velsen. From this marriage, 2 daughters and 2 sons were born.

Truus grew up as the eldest daughter in a communist family, living on a tjalk in Schoten (after 1927 part of the municipality of Haarlem). Her father’s trade in rags and metals brought in little profit. In 1933, her parents divorced, and ten-year-old Truus moved with her mother and two-year-younger sister Freddie to Brouwersstraat (no. 126) – later, she had a half-brother, Robbie. During the years of crisis, the family lived in poverty, with support from Social Welfare. Encouraged by a prize in a drawing competition, fourteen-year-old Truus applied for a scholarship to the Drawing School, but the application was rejected. At that time, she earned some money as a housekeeper.

In the 1930s, German refugees were sheltered at Truus Oversteegen’s home, and antifascist committees held meetings there. Truus and Freddie, Oversteegen were also active in the communist Dutch Youth Federation (NJF). After the German invasion in 1940, it was almost a matter of course for the Oversteegen sisters to resist the Nazi occupiers. They started by chalking antifascist slogans on walls and distributing illegal leaflets (De Koevoet and De Vonk), but with the increasing persecution of Jews, they moved on to more active forms of resistance. In 1941, the Haarlem Resistance Council (RVV) asked Truus and Freddie to engage in armed resistance work, such as carrying out sabotage actions and liquidating traitors and Nazis—alongside courier services and assistance to those in hiding. Thus, the sisters set a German warehouse on fire and lured an SS officer into the woods, where resistance fighters liquidated him. The occupier knew that young women were involved in the attacks, and therefore the sisters had to constantly change their hiding places afterward (Truus counted 51 locations in total).

In 1943, Truus Oversteegen temporarily left for Enschede with her sister, where she worked in a hospital. Here, she had her first meeting with Jannetje Johanna “Hannie  Schaft, who had joined the same RVV group in Haarlem. The three seemingly innocent women, aged 18, 20 (Truus), and 23, carried out various assassinations. With ‘the girl with the red hair,’ Truus attempted to blow up the railroad bridge over the Spaarne in the winter of 1944-1945. When they were in the middle of the bridge setting up plastic explosives, they heard German boots on the gravel. Hanging from the steel exterior of the bridge, they managed to escape. Oversteegen later called it the scariest thing she had ever experienced: ‘We cried, the heroines…’ We were completely exhausted’ (Bleich/Van Weezel, 2013). Other actions with Schaft were more successful, such as blowing up a German train at Santpoort and the liquidation of NSB policeman Willem Zirkzee on 01-03-1945. After Schaft was arrested, Oversteegen – disguised as a German nurse – made another rescue attempt, but she was told that Schaft had already been executed.

After the Liberation, Truus Oversteegen worked for the Political Investigation Service (POD), but she stopped doing so when she married Piet Menger, whom she knew from the resistance, in November 1945. They had four children and named their eldest daughter after Hannie Schaft. Truus Menger-Oversteegen struggled with her war memories—particularly some failed rescue attempts of groups of Jewish children were traumatic. On the advice of her husband, she started drawing and took painting lessons “to get rid of that war a bit” (NRC, 18-2-1993). In 1963, she began a course at the Haarlem Academy/Ateliers ’63, where she was taught by sculptor Mari Andriessen,  also a well-known figure from the resistance. From Haarlem and via IJmuiden, the Menger-Oversteegen family moved in the 1960s to a farm with a studio in Venhuizen.

In the work of artist Truus Menger, the war remained a defining theme. She created sculptures and monuments in memory of the war, the bombing of Rotterdam, the resistance women in Leiden, and for the Jewish children who perished and whom she could not save. A crowning achievement of her work was the monument for Hannie Schaft (Woman in the Resistance), which Queen Juliana unveiled in 1982 in Kenaupark, Haarlem. It was a tribute to all the women in the resistance, but also to communist fighters like herself, who had been denied recognition due to the influence of the Cold War. In the same year, Truus Menger wrote her memoirs about the war years under the title Then Not, Now Not, Never, which also served as her life motto against injustice and inequality. With her art, memoirs, and lectures on the dangers of fascism and discrimination, she sought publicity. After the Yad Vashem award in 1967, and the appointment as Officer in the Order of Orange-Nassau (1998), the long-awaited recognition for her resistance work only came in 2014, when she and her sister received the Mobilization War Cross from Prime Minister Rutte. Shortly thereafter, the Oversteegen sisters each received their own street name in Haarlem. There was also a Truus Oversteegenstraat in Montfoort.

Death and burial ground of Truus Menger-Oversteegen.

with Hannie Schaft.

Throughout her life, Truus Menger remained steadfast in her controversial resistance methods. “The people who were liquidated were actively involved in tracking down and betraying Jews and other fugitives.” They had to be stopped to prevent worse things from happening’ (NRC, 4-5-2009). She never spoke about the number of executions carried out. Truus Menger-Oversteegen passed away on 18-06-2016, at the age of 92 in her hometown of Grootebroek. She was cremated and her ashes came to the family,

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