March 2, 2012 – New York – AJC mourns the passing of Dr. Tina Strobos, a true hero and moral giant of the Second World War.

Not even twenty years old when the Nazis overran her native Holland, Tina joined the resistance, and, along with her late mother, Marie Schotte, provided refuge for more than 100 Jews over the course of the war in her Amsterdam house, supplying them with shelter, food, medical care and false passports. The fact that 80 percent of Dutch Jews perished in the Holocaust makes this feat even more extraordinary.

She moved to the United States in 1951 and was recognized, together with her mother, as “Righteous Among the Nations” by Yad Vashem in 1989.

“For those who have never been put to the test,” said AJC Executive Director David Harris, “it is all too easy to convince ourselves that we would save persecuted people even at grave risk to ourselves. Actually put to the test, Dr. Strobos was one of the few who had the moral and physical courage to put her humanitarian principles into action during the darkest moment of the twentieth century. May her example serve as an inspiration to future generations of the extraordinary capacity of the human spirit.”