On Saturday, July 2, Truus Menger-Oversteegen, sculptress and member of the anti-Nazi Dutch armed resistance, died at the age of ninety-two. Her life reminds us of the crucial role communists and socialists played in the fight against fascism. Further, the fact that the Dutch state did not fully recognize her role in the resistance until 2014 tells us something important about the politics of World War II commemorations.

I knew Truus through my grandmother, Mirjam Ohringer, who died just three weeks before her at the age of ninety-one. They described themselves — and a third long-time friend and Communist Party member Els Schalker-Kastanje — as the “three musketeers.”

All three were militant left-wing women. Their “red families” instilled radical politics in them well before the outbreak of World War II.