She believed in heroism.
- Apr 6
- 3 min read
If we traveled back in time to May 8, 1940, we would find The Netherlands a peaceful, orderly place with a bustling Amsterdam at the heart of Dutch life. Queen Wilhelmina sat on the throne as head of a parliamentary constitutional monarchy similar to the English government we know today.
Two days later, on May 10, the German Nazis invaded. Interestingly they considered the Dutch a “Germanic brother nation” and therefore handled the invasion entirely differently than they had that of Poland the previous fall. In these early days, Nazi objectives were to maintain law and order, to gradually persuade the Dutch people to adapt to their policies and to integrate the Dutch economy for the ultimate benefit of Germany.
Just three days later, Queen Wilhelmina and her ministers fled to London instructing civil servants to work with the occupying forces in the best interests of the Dutch people. And so on May 13, 1940, we find a Dutch population, leaderless and no longer free, and also aware of Nazi brutality in Eastern Europe in recent months. The confusion and uncertainty must have been immense, but for some, even in these early days, there was clarity. A case in point is Tina Buchter…
Tina came by her strength and courage quite naturally. Hers was family of strong Dutch women; her mother, Marie Schotte, had taken in political refugees between the world wars, and her grandmother, before her, had sheltered Belgian soldiers in WWI. And so we shouldn’t be surprised that when Holland surrendered to the Nazis on May 15, 1940, these three did not sit idly by.
What is quite remarkable, however, is the timing. One day after the surrender, one day after Queen Wilhelmina and the Dutch government fled to London, Tina hid a Jewish friend in her grandmother’s home! One day! Amidst the panic and fear, and uncertainty, Tina’s friend, Tirtsah Van Amerongen, was already tucked safely away in secret. The three women decided that the Nazis were less likely to search an “old woman’s house,” and in addition, Tina described her grandmother as “the only person I knew who scared the Gestapo.”
From that day until the end of the occupation, Tina and her mother would hide more than 100 Jews. The operation moved to their home at 282 Nieuwezijds Voorburgwal, literally just behind the Royal Palace in the heart of Amsterdam, five to six blocks from Prinsengracht 263, where the Franks were hidden. Theirs was a transit operation – four to five people secreted in an attic hiding place for a few days, forged passports created, and then movement to the countryside.
Using her bike, Tina also delivered weapons, explosives, and radio parts to the underground, often pedaling 50 miles and racing to get home before the eight o’clock curfew. She was arrested and interrogated many times, abused and tortured, but still she carried on. Oh, did I mention that Tina was 20-years-old at the time, a medical student keeping up her studies in secret after the Nazis closed the medical school?
Tina would graduate from the University of Amsterdam in 1946 and receive a Fulbright scholarship, which enabled her to travel to the U.S. and study child psychiatry. She devoted her life to helping others, practicing psychiatry in New York until age 89. When asked about the risks she took during the war, she said simply, “It’s the right thing to do. Your conscience tells you to do it. I believe in heroism.”
Dr. Tina Strobos, or Tineke Buchter as she was called in those long-ago days in Amsterdam, and her mother, Marie Schotte, were recognized as Righteous Among the Nations in 1989.
