Page 49 - Discover Spring 2021
P. 49
Reign of Terror
REMEMBERED
By Kate Hofstetter
On May 10, 1940, Dutch residents needed. Most of their food they grew and
observed German bombers flying overhead preserved themselves. However, as the war
toward the North Sea. They weren’t alarmed, continued, rations began to run short, and
as that was the route the Germans always took the occupying soldiers took what the nuns had
when they dropped bombs on England. This produced, leaving them to face hunger. Nazis
time, however, the planes made a 180 degree were known to distrust and dislike Catholics,
turn, flew back, and attacked the Netherlands. and believed them to be less than patriotic.
Although he was raised as a Catholic, Hitler
Hubertina “Tinika” Philippi was six did not want Catholics as part of his country’s
years old when German soldiers invaded her population
village in the Limburg Province of Holland.
They seized control of every government Memories of those days are still vivid to
building, hotel and anything else they Hubertina, now 86 years old, and a resident
wanted, including her school. All of that was of Smith Mountain Lake for the past 20 years.
accomplished easily, because the town’s mayor She is better known to her many friends
was a Nazi sympathizer. as “Tini”. She changed her last name from
Philippi to Bower 57 years ago, when she
Today, nearly 80 years later, she still married George Bower, who was an employee
remembers the curfews, the black-outs, the with the GAO (Government Accountability
bombings, and the 28 Jewish families who Office) and a student at George Washington
were picked up by the Gestapo (the political University, where he attended night classes to
police of the Nazi party) and never seen again. earn his degree.
She also remembers the fear that permeated
the lives of villagers due to the cruelty of the Tini came to the US in 1961 as
Gestapo, who were known terrorists. Her governess to the four young children of
small rural village, called Valkenburg, would an attaché with the US Department of
be occupied for over four years by the SS and Agriculture. The children’s mother had died,
Gestapo. and the man was remarried. His new wife
had no experience caring for or mothering
During that occupation, her parish children, so he decided to hire a governess
priest was whisked away to Auschwitz prison, (“glorified nanny”, as Tini likes to say). Also,
where he spent four years because he said a governess would free up his new wife to
something from the pulpit that offended travel with him on the many trips that his
the Nazis. When he finally returned, she job required. Those trips had quickly become
remembers, he was a broken man. For their tiresome to the children. Tini had plenty of
own protection, the nuns did not leave the experience with youngsters, as she was from a
convent during the entire occupation. Instead, family of eight: six boys and two girls. Shortly
villagers brought them the food that they before applying for the position, she had been
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