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Cato Bontjes van Beek (14 November 1920 – 5 August 1943) was a German member of the Resistance against the Nazi regime. ==Early years== Born in Bremen, Cato was the eldest of three children. She spent her childhood and youth in the nearby Fischerhude artists' colony around her uncle Otto Modersohn. Her parents, the Dutch-born potter Jan Bontjes van Beek (1899–1969) and dancer and painter Olga Bontjes van Beek, née Breling (1896–1995) offered their children a lot of personal freedom while growing up. From 1929 Cato stayed abroad to attend the German school in Amsterdam, and in 1937 she spent time in Winchcombe, Gloucestershire, as an au pair. While religious believes did not play a role in her family and neither she nor her sibling had been baptised, Cato developed an interest for Christianity in 1933. She did not join the League of German Girls (''Bund Deutscher Mädel'', BDM) youth organisation.〔 By her brother Tim, she met the ''Luftwaffe'' sergeant Helmut Schmidt, the later Chancellor of Germany, who from 1937 was stationed in Bremen-Vegesack for his military service and during this time had an intense friendship with the Bontjes van Beek family. However, Schmidt eventually broke off this friendship when he began an officers' training in order to join the ''Oberkommando der Luftwaffe'' in Berlin. From 1940 on, Cato and her sister Mietje lived with their father in Berlin, where he had already moved in 1933 in the hopes of spreading his artistic work. They met friends at their father's house who opposed the Nazi regime. Cato, though, struggled to choose a profession and attempted to become a pilot. This even included joining the National Socialist Flyers Corps to learn gliding.〔 But Cato eventually decided to learn her father's craft. In 1940, Cato experienced to deportation of a Jewish family who lived in the same house. In a letter to her aunt Paula Modersohn-Becker, she then expressed her worries about "something terrible" to come.〔 Both sisters saw the wrong that the Nazis inflicted upon others, were affected by it, and tried to help. Beginning in September 1940, this included giving humanitarian aid to French prisoners of war. Both Cato and Mietje would hand out bread or exchange letters to them while riding the Berlin S-Bahn.〔〔Landesentrale für politische Bidung Baden-Württemberg (2013), (Cato Bontjes van Beek - Als junge Frau im Widerstand )〕 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「Cato Bontjes van Beek」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
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