They were particularly pleased with this one. It was a tribute to the Brave RussianPeople, which was a lot of words to plaster up on a wall under duress, but working together, the girls managed it. One of the girls would stand blocking the view of passersby while the other worked on the wall.Īfter the German invasion of Russia, the girls were given a large banner to place directly over some government announcements on a wall by the side of the train tracks to Heemstede.
They felt free to paste right over the German announcements posted all around the city. To advertise itself, the paper, which was published by the Party, devised bold slogans cut from stencils made by their mother Trijntje, and pasted on the walls by the girls. One of the girls would serve as a lookout while the other stuffed the paper into the bags of strangers riding the bus or walking on the street. To distribute the Trouw (The Faith), an underground and illegal newspaper that reported on the transgressions of their German occupiers, they worked as a team. And Truus could be a bit of a bully with the casual arrogance of a big sister. The truth was that Freddie could be an annoying little sister, a bit of a tagalong, and more than willing to let Truus take the lead when it suited her, the better to carp at her decisions later. Her mannerisms were like a guy: she would sit with her knees apart, taking more than her share of space on the couch, while Freddie’s legs were always carefully crossed and unobtrusive. Truus was more of a tomboy than her younger sister, particularly when she put her hair up under a cap to bike. She moved with the lightness of a dancer and flitted about Haarlem like a sprite on her bicycle. Freddie had grown into a pretty young woman with soft curls in her hair, a dimpled chin, and a smile that was both mischievous and fetching.
Freddie on the other hand was eager to display her independence. Truus, as the older of the two, was more assertive and dictatorial, and felt she was entitled to boss Freddie around. Using her connections, Truus Wijsmuller was able to pull off unbelievable transport: that of 74 children who she got out of the Burgerweeshuis in Amsterdam just in time to take them to the harbor of IJmuiden, where they embarked on the ship SS Bodegraven the very same time Holland capitulated to the German occupier on May 15, 1940.Like most sisters, Truus and Freddie Oversteegen did not always get along. Truus Wijsmuller, in other words, played an essential role in getting the permissions for the Kinder transports and in organising and guiding these transports.
The Germans who negotiated with Truus Wijsmuller in Berlin and Vienna about allowing the children to leave the country, often were impressed by her courage and the boldness she used to get the desired permissions for the children. Not only the children stand in awe for this umbrella. This umbrella was her identification mark, that she used while waiting for ‘her’ children at the border station in Emmerich, before she would get them to Holland. They were sent on these trains by their parents, grandparents or other family members, with no more than a small bag – the older children often in charge of looking after their younger brothers and sisters and sometimes (even though it was against the official rules) clutching a baby in their arms.įor these children Truus Wijsmuller became ‘The woman carrying an umbrella’. Until World War II officially started in May 1940, a total of around 10.000 children were saved this way. It became one of the first ‘Kinder transports’ that would take children from Vienna, Germany, Prague and Poland to Holland and England.
She personally negotiated with the Germans, met with Adolf Eichmann in Vienna and when he ‘offered’ (challenged) her to organise a transport in a few days, gathering 600 Jewish children – without their parents – to leave Germany by train, she surprised him by indeed getting almost that big of a group together to be transported to safer parts of Europe. Truus Wijsmuller (1896-1978) was an ‘ordinary’ woman, who came into action when the lives of Jewish children were no longer protected and safe in many European countries after the Night of Broken Glass ('Kristall Nacht') on November 9/10, 1938.