The Power of One

1. The Power of One Tina Strobos By: Shannon Turner

2. Her early life • Tina Strobos was born in Amsterdam on May 19, 1920. In her late teens she became a Dutch physician and child psychiatrist who, while a medical student during World War II, helped shelter more than 100 Jews.

3. The Beginning • It all started in 1940 when the Germans invaded Holland, Dr. Tina Strobos was in medical school. It was Tina her mother and her grandmother who were hiding the Jews. Tina was not quite 20 years old when the hiding began. A friend of her parents was Jewish and was the first person to be hidden by the Strobos family.

4. During the Hiding Tina Strobos her mother and her grandmother sheltered many Jews, four or five at a time. Their boarding house was about a ten minute walk from Anne Frank’s house. She carried news and ration stamps to the Jews that were hiding. Her grandmother had a radio transmitter hidden in the house which was used to send clandestine messages from the underground to Britain. They had a carpenter from the underground build a hiding place within their house, where a maximum of five people at a time could hide.

5. Tina Strobos was scolded nine times by the Gestapo. She had  a spy in the Gestapo headquarters who would warn them whenever the Nazis were going to stop by and inspect their home. She says in an interview that whenever they came by asking if she had seen any Jews, she would say she doesn’t speak German, and that she doesn’t understand them. They would then have to get an interpreter. Hearing the question in German, then the translation, it gave her more time to think of a good answer. She would also make the Jews a non- Jewish I.D.  Most of the time she would steal a passport of the appropriate age group, soak off the seal, put their picture in it, and seal it again. She would usually steal the passports from people she knew. For instance one time she went to a funeral and noticed that a lot of people were leaving their pocketbooks beside their coats and jackets, and she would steal passports by going through the pocketbooks.

6. Her Most memorable Hidings In one of her interviews she states that she felt she had to help the children. For instance there was a time parents of a three year old girl called , they had a hiding place but couldn’t bring their daughter with them. She also had a family of five stay in her home. They brought their own bread and food in a bag. They stayed in their room, leaving only to visit the bathroom. They never spoke to the Strobo family.

7. Meaningful quote "... in spite of everything, I still believe that people are really good at heart. I simply can't build up my hopes on a foundation consisting of confusion, misery, and death. I see the world gradually being turned into a wilderness, I hear the ever approaching thunder, which will destroy us too, I can feel the sufferings of millions and yet, if I look up into the heavens, I think that it will all come right, that this cruelty too will end, and that peace and tranquility will return again."- Anne Frank