Madna Tole

Madna, Tolé Saïna, Mima Tolé Madna was born in 1898 on the island of Java in the Dutch Indies (later, Indonesia). In 1916, he immigrated to the Netherlands with his adoptive parents, the Bosmans, who settled in The Hague. When they returned to the Indies, Tolé, by then an adult, decided to stay in The Hague and found work in a restaurant. In 1926, he married a Dutch woman, Johanna van der Roest, with whom he had three children. They hired a nanny to help out, by the name of Mima Saïna, a new immigrant from the Dutch Indies. In September 1942, shortly after the onset of the deportation of the Jews, Johanna Madna, in the meantime divorced from her husband, was asked by her Jewish neighbor, Gitla Munzer, originally from Poland, to hide their 10-month-old son Alfred. Gitla’s husband, Simche, was already in hiding in a psychiatric hospital, and their two older daughters had been placed elsewhere. Initially Johanna referred the boy to her sister, but it soon turned out that her home was not safe enough, with a collaborator as an immediate neighbor. Then, Johanna turned to her ex-husband, Tolé, who agreed to take in the baby boy in addition to caring for their three children in his custody. Together with Saïna the live-in housekeeper, Tolé took care of Alfred, now called Bobby, for nearly three years until the liberation of The Hague in May 1945. Alfred, who looked different from the Madna children with their Asian features, was presented as the illegitimate child of his former wife, who did not want him. The toddler was treated like the younger brother and playmate to the other children, all at least ten years older. It was mostly Mima who took care of him on a daily basis. “Bobby” was successfully protected throughout the entire period and loved by all. After the war, it turned out that Alfred’s mother was the only survivor of the Munzer family. As the boy had no recollection of his own mother, the return to her was a difficult one, even though the transition wasmade gradually. Tragically, Saïna suddenly passed away soon afterwards, but close contact continued with Tolé and the Madna children, even after mother and son moved to the United States. On January 12, 2003, Yad Vashem recognized Tolé Madna and Mima Saïna as Righteous Among the Nations.