Tina Strobos: The Young Medical Student Who Helped to Save More Than 100 Jewish People

Tina Strobos: The Young Medical Student Who Helped to Save More Than 100 Jewish People

How much courage would it take to continue hiding people when the Gestapo had already searched your home several times?

Today I want to find out a little about Tina Strobos. She was a young Dutch medical student who, alongside her mother and grandmother, helped to rescue more than 100 Jewish people during the German occupation of the Netherlands.

Tina was born Tineke Buchter on the 19th of May 1920 in Amsterdam. Her family had a long tradition of helping people in need. Her parents had previously welcomed refugees into their home, while her grandmother had sheltered Belgian civilians during the First World War.

Tina began studying medicine at the University of Amsterdam. However, after Germany invaded the Netherlands in May 1940, students were ordered to sign a declaration of loyalty to the occupying authorities. Tina and many of her classmates refused, and the medical school was closed.

She soon became involved with the Dutch resistance. Her first act of rescue was helping her Jewish friend, Tirtsah van Amerongen, find somewhere to hide.

Tina lived with her mother in a large Amsterdam boarding house. Together, they began sheltering Jewish people who were attempting to escape arrest and deportation. Usually, four or five people stayed in the house at a time until safer accommodation could be arranged.

A resistance carpenter constructed a concealed compartment inside the attic. The family also installed a warning bell so that anyone upstairs could hide when danger approached. An escape route through a neighbouring building provided another way out.

The Gestapo searched the house eight times but never discovered the hiding place.

Tina herself was arrested and questioned on nine occasions. Although she was threatened and physically mistreated, she never revealed the location of anyone she was helping.

Her resistance activities extended far beyond her home. Tina transported radios, weapons, ration cards and important messages in the basket of her bicycle. She also helped to create false identity documents by obtaining cards belonging to non-Jewish people and replacing their photographs.

Among those she helped was her former fiancé, the Jewish physicist Abraham Pais. When he was arrested in 1945, Tina approached a senior German official and argued that Pais was a gifted scientist whose life should be spared. Remarkably, she succeeded in securing his release. Pais later became a respected physicist and scientific biographer.

After the war, Tina completed her medical degree and trained in psychiatry, including studying with Anna Freud in London. She later moved to the United States and built a successful career as a family psychiatrist.

In 1989, Tina and her mother, Marie Schotte, were recognised by Yad Vashem as Righteous Among the Nations.

Tina Strobos died on the 27th of February 2012, aged 91. Her story reminds us that resistance was not always fought on battlefields. Sometimes it took place inside ordinary homes, behind hidden walls and through the quiet courage of people who refused to look away.

Had you heard of Tina Strobos and her remarkable family before?