Tinbergen Mien

Tinbergen, Mien Fifteen-year-old Bep Denneboom of Zwolle, Overijssel, saw her parents rounded up for deportation. They were taken to Sobibor, where they perished. She managed to escape and obtain false identity papers. Bep then found a family in Eindhoven who took her on as a maid without knowing her real identity. The arrangement worked well until her employers began to give her weekends and holidays off to go to the home she no longer had. Not taking her days off would have aroused suspicion, so Bep had to find a hiding place for these occasions. She was given the name and address of Mien Tinbergen, a teacher in The Hague, who was living in a boarding house. Mien gave Bep a key to her apartment and told her the place was hers whenever she needed somewhere to hide, although she knew that others in the boarding house might have their suspicions aroused by the girl’s presence. Besides giving Bep a refuge, Mien tried to fill the role of confidante for the girl who had lost her family. She succeeded in giving Bep some semblance of security amid the encroaching dangers. During the war, Mien also found hiding places for various members of Bep’s family and kept in touch with them there. On one occasion, she helped a cousin escape from a hideout during a raid and brought her temporarily to the home of her parents until a new address could be located. Mien felt compelled to act in the face of the Nazis’ anti-Jewish measures and never asked for financial compensation. On December 1, 1970, Yad Vashem recognized Mien Tinbergen as Righteous Among the Nations.