On this day, 16 September 1920, Dutch communist resistance fighter Hannie Schaft was born.
Under Nazi occupation, she began stealing ID cards for Jewish residents. Schaft then began armed actions: sabotaging and assassinating various targets including Germans and Dutch collaborators.
Known in the movement as “the girl with red hair”, the Nazis found out her identity, and sent her parents to a concentration camp. They were eventually released, and Schaft dyed her hair black and continued her activity. She was eventually arrested, identified by her red roots, tortured and murdered by Dutch fascists.
After Liberation Schaft was buried in a state funeral, however when communism fell out of favour in the Netherlands, commemorations of her were banned. https://www.facebook.com/workingclasshistory/photos/a.296224173896073/2083236415194831/?type=3
On this day, 21 September 1976, Chilean socialist refugee Orlando Letelier and think tank worker Ronni Moffitt were murdered in Washington DC by a car bomb planted by Chilean secret police. The killings by agents of the US-backed dictator General Augusto Pinochet were part of Operation Condor, a Latin American anti-communist program supported by the US which killed up to 60,000 working class militants, socialists and anarchists. https://www.facebook.com/workingclasshistory/photos/a.1819457841572691/2087588064759666/?type=3
He really thought he could use the clout of this interview as a leverage to instrumentalise her against the people and especially women in his own country. He wanted to pit her against the women in Iran protesting for their freedom - and conceal the international solidarity from them. He wanted to show off his power and she said no.
tl:dr; He f*cked around and found out. (But Christiane Amanpour is always worth reading even at length… so you’ll know for next time.)
She’s interviewed me in the past, and is the real deal.
