Tina Strobos (; May 19, 1920 – February 27, 2012) was a Dutch physician and psychiatrist from Amsterdam, known for her resistance work during World War II. While a young medical student, she worked with her mother and grandmother to rescue more than 100 Jewish refugees as part of the Dutch resistance during the Nazi occupation of the Netherlands. Strobos provided her house as a hiding place for Jews on the run, using a secret attic compartment and warning bell system to keep them safe from sudden police raids. In addition, Strobos smuggled guns and radios for the resistance and forged passports to help refugees escape the country. Despite being arrested and interrogated nine times by the Gestapo, she never betrayed the whereabouts of a Jew.
After the war, Strobos completed her medical degree and became a psychiatrist. She studied under Anna Freud in England. Strobos later emigrated to the United States to study psychiatry under a Fulbright scholarship, and she subsequently settled in New York. She married twice and had three children. Strobos built a career as a family psychiatrist, receiving the Elizabeth Blackwell Medal in 1998 for her medical work, and finally retired from active practice in 2009.
In 1989, Strobos was honored as Righteous Among the Nations by Yad Vashem for her rescue work. In 2009, she was recognized for her efforts by the Holocaust and Human Rights Education Center of New York City.
Early life
Tina Strobos was born Tineke Buchter on May 19, 1920, in Amsterdam. Her parents, Marie Schotte and Alphonse Buchter, were socialist atheists and fluent in four languages. Schotte supported the women's peace movement. Strobos' maternal grandfather founded a freethinking movement, and her maternal grandmother had been part of the labor movement in the late nineteenth century. The family had a history of offering shelter to those in need: Strobos' parents had previously taken in refugees from earlier conflicts, while Strobos' grandmother had sheltered Belgian refugees during World War I.
When Strobos was ten years old, her parents divorced. She lived with her mother.
By the age of sixteen, Strobos had decided she wanted to become a psychiatrist. At university, she began studying medicine, but her studies were interrupted after Germany invaded the Netherlands in 1940.
World War II resistance work
When the Germans invaded the Netherlands in May 1940, Strobos was living with her mother and their maid in Amsterdam. She was about to turn twenty. University students were ordered to sign an oath of loyalty to Hitler, but Strobos and her classmates refused to sign. The medical school was subsequently shut down, and Strobos and many other students joined the underground movement.
Safehouse and secret compartment
Strobos began her rescue work by hiding her best friend, a Jewish girl named Tirtsah Van Amerongen. Family friend Henri Polak—a socialist writer and labor leader—also decided to go into hiding, and Strobos' grandmother agreed to help him.
Working with her mother and grandmother throughout the war, Strobos rescued over 100 Jewish refugees by hiding them four or five at a time in the family's boarding house at 282 Nieuwezijds Voorburgwal. The house had once been a city school and had three floors. Once Strobos and her mother started hiding refugees, a carpenter from the Dutch underground arrived at their house and constructed a small hiding place in the attic. The secret compartment was located inside a gable. Although the Gestapo raided the house eight times, they never found this secret compartment. Strobos and her mother had a warning bell system installed in the house, which they used to warn refugees on the upper floors of unexpected Gestapo visits. If the Jews had no time to hide in the secret compartment, they could escape through the window to an adjoining building. The family was also assisted by an anonymous ally at the Gestapo headquarters, who sometimes phoned them to warn of an impending Nazi raid. They never learned the identity of this ally.
Although some Jews stayed at their house for extended periods, Strobos and her mother mostly used their house as a temporary safe space, sheltering Jews for a short time until they could be moved to a safer refuge. Some refugees were smuggled to Spain, Switzerland, or the Dutch countryside. Strobos and her mother often visited the people that they had arranged hiding places for, cycling miles out into the countryside to provide isolated refugees with valuable news and conversation. Among the refugees Strobos helped was impressionist painter Martin Monnickendam, who painted her portrait and gifted it to her. She kept the painting well into her old age.