Rye Resident Tina Strobos: Hero Saved Jews During World War II
Theall Road's Dr. Tina Strobos is featured in the January issue of Psychiatric News for her heroic work saving more than 100 Jews in Amsterdam during World War II. At age 89, Strobos just recently discontinued her psychiatric practice. She has been honored by a number of organizations for the work she did as a young woman with her mother sheltering Jews in their Amsterdam home from the Nazi Gestapo.
The recent piece in Psychiatric News is worth the read:
"…Sometimes the Gestapo (the secret police of Nazi Germany) would bang on the door of the house in which Strobos and her mother lived. They'd then enter the house, push Strobos or her mother into a chair, and bark, “You're hiding Jews! You're going to jail.” They didn't say “concentration camp,” although a number of Strobos' friends whom the Nazis arrested were sent to concentration camps. After that, they'd search the house.
“You know, we could be killed for this,” Strobos' mother once commented after the Gestapo had left. “Of course I know,” Strobos said.
Strobos also took news and ration stamps by bike—at great risk—to Jews hidden on farms outside the city. She carried radios and hid boxes of guns for the Dutch resistance. She was seized or questioned nine times by the Gestapo and once was hurled against a wall and knocked unconscious.
Strobos not only survived these ordeals, but went on, after the war, to receive a Fulbright scholarship, which enabled her to travel to the United States and study child psychiatry. After she became a psychiatrist, she remained in the United States. Today she is 89 years old and living in Rye, N.Y. She retired from practicing psychiatry only last May."
