Bilt van de Albertine

Bilt van de, Albertine Maria Albertine (Tini) van de Bilt was staying with her parents in Arnhem in the summer of 1942 when they were visited by Paul Terwindt*, a member of the Utrecht Children’s Committee (UKC), who brought with him two Jewish children for the van de Bilts to hide. Tini decided she was going to help Paul and he gave her the address of a Jewish couple in Amsterdam who needed assistance finding safe houses for children and who were working together with several Joodsche Raad people. The couple had made contact, via Paul’s sister, with a bank employee from Panningen, Limburg, who was a member of the local LO and had many connections. He provided the required addresses. It was not long before Tini was fully involved in helping Jewish children. She fetched some herself from Amsterdam, where she met Virrie Cohen from the crèche, and she was in contact with the C.I.Z., a Jewish hospital. The Resistance work was looking for hideouts in north and central Limburg and taking on the care of the Jews already hidden in the area. Gradually, the network around Tini and Jan grew, until in the middle of 1943 contact was established with the LO and from that time on they worked within its framework. They were responsible for the care of a total of 114 Jewish children. Around August 1944 Tini was forced to relocate a little girl called Betsie, who she placed with an elderly widower, Christiaan Tielen, and his five unmarried children in America, Limburg. The eldest son, Johannes (Sjeng*) and daughter Maria (Gon*) looked after the child. When Tini herself had to go into hiding shortly afterwards, she remembered the Tielens and went to stay with them until the liberation in November 1944. Almost all the Jews that Tini helped survived the war. On January 3, 1980, Yad Vashem recognized Albertine Maria van de Bilt as Righteous Among the Nations.