Schaft Johanna

Schaft, Jannetje Johanna Following the death of her younger sister in 1938, Jannetje (Hannie) Schaft remained the only child of her parents, both teachers in Haarlem (North Holland). They sent her to study law in Amsterdam but after the outbreak of war she began to involve herself in illegal work, such as stealing identity cards for Jews in need of forged papers and distributing ration cards to partisans and Jews in hiding. She continued her studies even after the spring of 1943, when the universities were closed down, and eventually obtained her first degree. No longer seeing the point of further legal studies, she decided to become a full-time Resistance worker, transporting Jewish children to hiding places and distributing illegal pamphlets. In the winter of 1942--1943, when the women of Stalingrad fought fiercely to defend themselves against the Nazis, Hannie became interested in Communism. She made contact with the outlawed Communist Party in Haarlem. Subsequently, she learned to shoot to kill and took part in the most dangerous illegal activities: disrupting railroads, transporting munitions, and killing collaborators while riding her bicycle. The Germans offered a reward of 50,000 guilders for the capture of “the girl with the red hair.” Hannie dyed her conspicuous red curls black and managed to evade the enemy until six weeks before the liberation. She was captured on March 26, 1945, and shot dead in the dunes near Haarlem on April 17. Hannie was 23 when she died. Hannie Schaft features as the heroine of the historical novel and film The Girl with the Red Hair, written after the war by Dutch columnist and author Theun de Vries. Schools and scout groups have been named after her in the Netherlands, Germany, Czechoslovakia, Russia, and England. On May 10, 1967, Yad Vashem recognized Jannetje Johanna Schaft as Righteous Among the Nations.