Strobos Tine ; Mother: Schotte Maria

Strobos, Tine (Buchter) Buchter, Maria (Schotte) Already in the early days of the German occupation, Tine (Tineke) Buchter (later Strobos) and her mother Maria Buchter-Schotte, who were living near the Royal Palace in Amsterdam, became active in the Resistance. Their first act was to hide a friend of the family, the famous socialist labor leader Henri Polak, in the home of Tine’s grandmother. After a few weeks, Polak decided it was safe to come out of hiding. Some time later, Tine hid one of the leaders of the Communist armed Resistance, Dr. Johannes Brouwer*. For a few months Tine did courier work for Brouwer’s Resistance group, but found it too violent for her nature. Tine, who was a student of medicine in those days, soon moved on to work for a more peaceful group, which she came to know through her student association. This was the LO, which was principally concerned with finding hiding places both for Jews and others, and falsifying identity cards. Tine’s mother Maria was also involved in the Resistance and their own home became a transit point for Jews on the run. It was too dangerous to keep any fugitives there for longer periods because the house was used for meetings of the underground, illegal university classes of the medical school, and as a place where up to 40 people hidden in the area would clandestinely gather to hear important radio broadcasts. During the war, Tine did everything in her power to procure identity cards for fugitive Jews, to the point of stealing documents from the coats and pocketbooks of guests at her aunt’s funeral. She reasoned that the inconvenience it caused them was nothing compared to the danger of deportation faced by the Jews. Tine also traveled all over the countryside to visit the people she had hidden, sometimes accompanied by her mother. During the hunger winter of 1944-1945, the two went out every day on their bikes to get food from farmers. In Tine and Maria’s home, a carpenter built a secret attic under their roof, which kept the Jews hidden there from being discovered when the house was searched. A spy at Gestapo headquarters would warn them when a raid was imminent, in time to move all those hiding in their home to safer shelters. All in all, the Gestapo visited their home eight times, and Tine was arrested three times and her mother twice. During the first years of the occupation, Tine had been engaged to Abraham (Bram) Pais, who was to become a prominent professor of theoretical physics and was the last Jew to complete his doctorate before Jews were banned from Dutch universities. Their engagement was broken off in 1943, but the two remained close friends, and it was Tine who arranged for Bram to go into hiding on March 19, 1943. Tine was also able to hide Bram’s parents, Jesajah and Kaatje Pais-van Kleeff, on a farm, where she visited them frequently. In 1944, Bram, together with three other friends, all leading members of the Zionist organization, were living with Tine and her mother. They decided to rent their own apartment, so as not to impose themselves as guests any longer. These friends were Lion Nordheim, his wife Jeanne, and Jeanne’s sister, Tirtsah van Amerongen. In February 1945, all four were arrested. Tine immediately went to the apartment and was detained. She was released but not before she insisted on seeing the officer in charge of her friends’ case. She managed to free Jeanne and Tirtsah who had excellent papers as non-Jews. Through connections with influential people, Tine brought a letter by Nils Bohr inviting Bram to postdoctoral studies in Denmark. The officer ordered Bram’s release, fully aware of his being a Jew. Tragically, Tine was not able to free Lion, was shot on April 15, 1945. Among the nearly 100 other Jews saved by Tine and her mother were the industrialist Hans de Jong, the teenager Loe Tukkie, three-year-old Tamar Melkman, and Louise (Schwartz) van Santen. On November 28,1989, Yad Vashem recognized Maria Buchter-Schotte and her daughter, Tine Strobos-Buchter, as Righteous among the Nations.