Last surviving woman in the Friesland WWII resistance dies at 100

The last surviving woman in the Friesland resistance in the Second World War has died. Volie Schermer De-Jong passed away at age 100 this week, Hessel De Walle, who is writing a book about the women in the Friesland resistance, told Omrop Fryslan.

Mrs. Schermer-De Jong was strong as hell, De Walle said. “When she was 16 years old, she skated the Frisian Merentocht. That says something about her strength,” he told the broadcaster. She started working with the resistance at age 19, cycling dozens of kilometers per day to deliver illegal mail.

Volie typically didn’t know what she had in her bicycle bag, but once she knew she was carrying a box of “shooting supplies,” she told the Sneeker Nieuwsblad over a decade ago. “That stuff rattled terribly,” she said. It drew the attention of a German guard. “I looked at him sweetly and was allowed to continue cycling.”

Germans at the time did not think much of women, De Walle said. “They did not believe they were capable of such resistance.” Which is precisely why the Friesland women played such a big role in the resistance. “A woman often didn’t get more than a kick in the ass if she was caught. Especially if she was young and beautiful. Then you don’t want to arrest her. You want to date her.”

After the liberation, Voile worked as a nurse in Amsterdam. She returned to Sneek a few years later and reunited with her childhood sweetheart, Jaap Schermer, from Noorderhoek. They married in 1950.

Her work in the resistance caused her anxiety later in life, and she always grew restless in May. “I think of everyone who died,” she told the Leeuwarder Courant two years ago. She would do it all again, she said. “It had to be done.”